Most well run companies steer by defining and tracking key performance indicators (KPI) that gauge success at a departmental and company level.  You can always find examples of this in customer service teams. Ticket backlog,  inbound tickets, length of calls and mean time to resolution are all useful gauges to track.  However, how do you know your KPIs matter? Are you a slave to your gauges? Are you serving the machine or are you serving your customers?

I’ve personally witnessed data overload wherein departments become so fixated on measuring and tracking KPIs they lose sight of what actually matters: serving their customers. An old colleague of mine shared a sophomoric example of this in a recent Beavis and Butt-Head episode. Yes, MTV has brought Beavis and Butt-head back and I am happy, don’t judge me. Obviously Beavis and Butt-head aren’t exactly a beacon of best practices, but this episode made me think of previous experiences I’ve had (with other companies) while managing customer support teams. In the episode (Season 9 Episode 2 around 12:40 find it at MTV.com), Beavis and Butt-Head inadvertently wander into a customer support call center and find themselves working customer support calls.  Beavis and Butt-Head’s frequent hang ups and inappropriate responses  to “set it on fire”, etc does wonders to drop the average call times and lower support costs. Soon the entire call center is instructed to take their lead.

This isn’t too far from reality. Departments can become slaves to the gauges. To avoid this, reset your thinking every quarter. Look at your key performance indicators and ask yourself: are you’re serving the KPI machine or are you serving your customers?