Customer service audit checklist for better CX

It’s easy to assume your own customer service strategy is perfect. You’ve worked hard, you’ve trained your team, and you’ve built out processes that seem to have a positive impact.

But we all have blind spots. A customer service audit is one of the best tools in your toolbox to ensure your support is truly up to par.

Conducting a regular customer service audit forces you to step back and assess more objectively whether you’re delivering the quality customer experience you’re hoping for.

In this article, we’ll explore what a good customer service audit looks like, review the benefits of regularly auditing your customer service efforts and support team, and take a detailed look at how to audit your customer service effectively.

In this guide:

• Why perform regular customer service audits
• How to perform a customer service audit
• Customer service audit checklist
• Audit your customer interactions with Zendesk QA

Why perform regular customer service audits

A customer service audit takes work, but it’s well worth your time. Some of the benefits of performing a regular customer service audit include:

Getting valuable insights into your customer service quality

A customer service audit provides you with a clear understanding of what’s working well and what’s not. It’s an effective way to identify strengths to capitalize on and weaknesses that need to be addressed. You get to really understand what your customers are experiencing when they interact with your customer service team.

Identifying training needs

A customer service audit shows you if your customer service team needs more training in certain areas.

When customer service agents have the necessary skills and support, they are more confident and effective in their roles, leading to better customer interactions—and sticking around for longer. Keep that in mind when designing a training program for your customer service staff.

Improving customer retention

It is not uncommon for customers to churn and take their business elsewhere after a poor customer service experience. More than half of the surveyed consumers would immediately switch to a competitor after just one bad support conversation, while 73 percent would make the switch after more than one customer service incident.

Auditing your customer service can reveal areas where customers might not be fully satisfied. Improving these areas can significantly increase customer satisfaction, foster customer loyalty, and help you ensure your customers keep coming back.

Driving more revenue

75 percent of customers are willing to spend more money with companies that provide quality customer service. What’s more, great customer service not only retains existing customers but also attracts new ones through positive word-of-mouth. Thus, enhancing your customer service through regular audits can directly contribute to an increase in revenue.

Most companies that perform regular customer service audits will do so quarterly or annually. Finding the right frequency is important, but it’s not make or break. The critical thing to achieve is to build a regular habit of objectively reviewing your customer service.

How to perform a customer service audit

There are five general phases involved in a customer service audit. While the specific items will vary from business to business, these five phases are crucial:

1. Set goals

Start by defining your audit objectives. What specific parts of your customer service do you want to evaluate? What are you after? Clear goals help ensure that your audit remains focused and aligned with your support goals and overall business objectives. Take a look at the following examples:

• Increase customer satisfaction by responding to all customer issues, and keep FRT under 2 hours on a monthly basis.
• Improve the quality of customer service by delivering 85 percent CSAT and 92 percent IQS by the end of the year.

• Maintain a high level of support via phone and live chat by keeping IQS over 90 percent across channels at all times.

2. Collect data

Gather relevant data and information to assess your customer service performance. This can include customer feedback surveys, support ticket data, key customer service metrics, and quality assurance reviews. Try to get data from a variety of sources for a more comprehensive audit.

3. Analyze the results

Once you’ve collected the data, analyze it to identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. Look for both quantitative metrics, such as average response time, and qualitative insights, such as common customer complaints or positive feedback.

4. Identify areas for improvement

Based on your analysis, you can pinpoint specific areas and aim to improve customer service. Prioritize these areas based on their impact on the overall customer experience, your existing resources, your business goals, and the level of effort involved.

5. Take action and measure progress

An audit that doesn’t result in any action is a waste of time (unless you’ve got a perfect team—in which case, well done!). Empower your team to make improvements and track your progress to ensure those goals are achieved.

If you aren’t already, you may want to consider using customer service quality management software to make your audit process go much smoother.

Customer service audit checklist

Having a clearly defined customer service audit checklist ensures that everyone involved in the process is on the same page.

Treat the following items on the customer service audit checklist as the baseline, and add additional items based on your audit objectives and your unique business needs:

Keep reading to learn how to cross these items off of your customer service audit checklist.

1. Reviewing internal processes, including tools and automations

Every customer service process and software varies, depending on the company. Whatever those look like for you, your audit should ensure that they’re the right fit for your current and future needs. Start here:

• Check that your tools are up to date, that you’re using relevant features, and that you still need the software

• Review macros and other automated responses for accuracy

• Assess team onboarding and training materials

• Review your ticket escalation processes to ensure they’re still appropriate

• Assess your process for handling negative customer feedback

2. Monitoring customer service KPIs and metrics

Think about the customer service metrics you track to determine how your team is performing and where you need to improve your customer experience. You’ll probably have metrics at the agent, team, and customer service department level (and of course, you’ll also want to make sure they align with top-level business goals).

Whatever your preferred customer service KPIs are, your customer service audit is a great time to evaluate if those metrics are still the right metrics for your team and to identify ways to improve customer service. Customer service metrics—and related questions to ask—might include:

• First Reply Time (FRT). What’s your average first response time? How does it differ across support channels? Are you meeting SLAs? Do you need to make adjustments to your scheduling and workforce management?

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). What are the key drivers of customer satisfaction? How have you seen your Customer Satisfaction Score evolve over time? What can you do differently?

• Internal Quality Score (IQS). What are your quality customer service standards? How is your quality score trending? What areas does your customer service team need more training in? Can you leverage customer service representatives who excel at quality to teach and mentor agents who are struggling?

• First Contact Resolution (FCR). How can you improve your FCR rate? What types of tickets require multiple contacts? How can you streamline the process for those tickets?

3. Evaluating your reports and dashboards

Every support team relies on reports and dashboards to visualize performance. During your audit, consider whether your reports and dashboards need to be updated or improved.

• Check the customer service metrics on your team dashboard. Do they still make sense? Do the filters need updating?

• Consider what reports are missing. Since your last audit, what questions were you unable to answer easily? What areas of your customer service representatives’ performance are you unclear on? While it’s not possible to measure everything quantitatively, a great customer service report can be a powerful motivator.

4. Reviewing customer service interactions

Customer service quality reviews are an incredibly important part of improving support quality, training your team, and providing a consistent customer experience. If you haven’t already, make them a part of your customer service strategy.

Your customer service audit is a great time to launch a quality assurance (QA) program or evaluate if your existing customer service QA scorecard needs to be updated. According to the Customer Service Quality Benchmark Report, commonly evaluated quality categories are:

• Solution

• Grammar

• Tone

• Empathy

• Personalization

• Following internal processes

• Going the extra mile

5. Revising your self-service resources

Review your knowledge base or self-service resources to make sure they are accessible and provide accurate, up-to-date information to your customers.

• Are article titles clear and understandable?

• Do you need to update certain help center articles because of product changes?

• Are there content gaps or things your customers are searching for that your knowledge base doesn’t answer?

• Does the organization and structure of your help center still make sense?

Audit your customer interactions with Zendesk QA

A customer service audit is a critical process for assessing and improving the quality of support you provide to your customers. Without a regular audit, you risk blind spots, missed customer inquiries, and settling for a less-than-stellar experience.

Customer service audits don’t have to take a ton of time, especially when you can start with a customer service audit checklist like the one above. The more regularly you conduct an audit, the easier it will become and the more benefits you’ll see from it.

With Zendesk QA, you can leverage AI-powered quality assurance capabilities to launch your own QA program and start reviewing 100 percent of agent interactions.

Learn more about how Zendesk QA can help your business.