Customer service scorecard: How to build one + free template

Many businesses want to prioritize customer service and creating outstanding customer experiences (CX). However, few have the systems to ensure they deliver those experiences—customer service scorecards can help.

Customer service scorecards are an evaluation method that helps your team monitor agent performance and ensure they deliver the experiences customers will rave about. This guide covers what you should include in your scorecards and how to use them to improve customer loyalty and CX.

More in this guide:

• What information is included in a customer service scorecard?
• How to build a customer service scorecard
• How to use a customer service QA scorecard to improve your operations
• Frequently asked questions
• Improve your customer service with Zendesk

What information is included in a customer service scorecard?

A customer service scorecard can provide valuable insights into the inner workings of your customer support system, but only if you structure it correctly. Here is some of the most crucial information to include in your scorecard.

Reviewers and support reps

The scoring process involves input from reviewers and reviewees. Reviewers can be supervisors, managers, or QA specialists, while the reviewees are the support reps or other staff members being evaluated. To ensure the conversation review process is clear and transparent, list all participants in the quality management process in your documentation.

Review period

Review periods show when the review took place. This is important because businesses should revisit prior reviews to track progress and determine whether agents are improving. Depending on your support volume, use a new document for every week, month, or quarter. Keep the review lists short and easy to use.

Review goals

First, determine the percentage of conversations you aim to review each month. If you’re doing QA manually, this percentage is likely to be small. According to the Customer Service Quality Benchmark Report 2023, only 2 percent of conversations are reviewed manually. However, for many organizations, the ultimate goal is to review 100 percent of customer interactions—in that case, you’ll need an AI tool like Zendesk QA.

From there, set goals based on your key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, you may strive to increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) by 10 percent by the end of the quarter or double your internal quality score (IQS) in 18 months. You may also want to improve overall team performance in areas like product knowledge or empathy. Whatever you decide, ensure your progress is measurable.

Rating categories

The rating categories are what the reviewer evaluates the reviewee on—these can be aspects like how effectively they solved the customer’s issue or communicated product knowledge. Choosing these categories is an important step, and they should reflect your company’s support goals and customer service objectives.

That said, you need to find the sweet spot. Too many categories can lead to decision fatigue for your reviewers, whereas using too few might not provide you with enough insights into your support operations and agent performance.

A good balance is typically between three and seven categories, such as:

• Solution

• Grammar

• Tone

• Empathy

• Personalization

• Following internal processes

• Going the extra mile

You can use the categories above or choose others based on your goals—focus on the aspects that will help you deliver good customer service.

Category weights

Category weights give more importance to the rating categories that matter most to you. For example, if your organization prioritizes empathy and personalization in customer interactions, you would assign higher weights to those variables and establish that they account for a higher percentage of the overall score. You can take this weighted approach or give equal weight to every category for a well-rounded review.

Aside from your team’s support goals and values, the exact categories and weights will also depend on the support channel. For instance, during a phone call, factors like tone, empathy, and closing are more important than grammar or follow-up, which matter a lot when replying via email or live chat.

Rating scales

Rating scales, like number ratings from 1 to 5, indicate how effectively the reviewee performed in that category. For example, a support agent who performed exceptionally well in the personalization category may receive a 5, while an agent who could use improvement may score a 3.

Many teams use a binary rating scale to rate categories on a customer service scorecard, although rating scales can be far more granular. Organizations typically use 2-point to 5-point rating scales.

Feedback

Finally, customer service scorecards should include space for constructive feedback so reviewers can expand on numerical ratings and provide context more easily. Additionally, reviewers should schedule conversation reviews and feedback sessions with agents. This allows reviewers to explain their grading while agents can ask questions and understand where they can improve.

Combining customer service quality assurance reviews with regular, well-structured feedback sessions fosters better results. It helps your team members understand their QA scores and develop their skills. By including all this information in your customer service scorecard, you can ensure everybody works toward the same goals.

How to build a customer service scorecard

Now that we’ve covered what your scorecard should include, let’s dive into how you can build it.

1. Utilize a template

It can be challenging to build an effective scorecard from scratch—instead, consider using a customer service scorecard template. Templates can help you hit the ground running with your customer service QA strategy and provide inspiration and customization opportunities to match your goals.

2. Define your goals

Whether you use our template or create your scorecard by hand, you must define what “quality” means to your business. Start your process by defining your customer service goals—both in terms of what you want your service quality to look like now and what you want it to be in the future. Assessing customer sentiment to see how customers feel about your service may also be beneficial.

Businesses have different aspirations. Some may want to focus on providing personalized customer service to drive product engagement and upsells, while others may want to prioritize delivering fast, accurate service so customers can get on with their day. Once you define your customer service aspirations, moving forward and attaining those goals is easier.

3. Select rating categories

Next, choose your rating categories based on your previously defined support goals. Rating categories can be variables like solution, tone, empathy, personalization, or other customer service skills. Pick categories that reflect your standards and ensure you adequately represent your support vision.

4. Customize it for your team and choose your rating scale

Decide on your rating scale. Some businesses may opt for a simple 3-point scale, while others prefer a wider range for more nuanced scoring.

Then, determine how the categories will be weighted. For instance, if personalization is a top priority, it should have a higher weight than other variables on your scorecard. If your team struggles with tone and initial greetings, these categories should receive the most attention. Combine your customer service goals and your team’s areas for improvement to create an effective scorecard.

How to use a customer service QA scorecard to improve your operations

After building your scorecard, it’s crucial to implement and use it effectively. While scorecards themselves don’t independently improve support operations, they enable reviewers to evaluate customer conversations systematically and are an invaluable part of customer service QA programs. Here are a few strategies and customer service tips to help you best implement QA scorecards.

Embrace AI and automation

As we’ve touched on, businesses can’t effectively review high volumes of support conversations manually. Even the most efficient operations can review only 2 percent of all interactions manually, causing learning opportunities to fall through the cracks. To successfully review every interaction, you must embrace AI in customer service.

Products like Zendesk QA provide instant insight into your support performance. AI automatically analyzes every interaction and alerts you to the conversations needing further attention. Additionally, our system can identify churn risk, outliers, and escalations so you can easily pinpoint problematic interactions, help support agents in real time, and address knowledge gaps.

Introduce the QA framework to your team

The way you communicate the QA process to your customer service team plays an important role in its adoption and acceptance. Your agents may not feel comfortable with being evaluated, so take a strategic approach to ensure everyone buys into the new system.

• Explain the reasons for doing QA reviews: If your agents are on board with your customer service goals, they’ll understand that internal reviews and customer service reports will help them achieve those objectives.
• Describe what agents will gain: Conversation reviews boost agents’ professional development and help them advance their careers.
• Agree on a scorecard together: Every individual on your team will have a strong opinion about what they consider essential to deliver good customer service—make drafting a QA scorecard a collaborative experience.
• Use the right feedback techniques to make evaluations more constructive: QA reviews only work if you provide honest, empathetic, and helpful feedback.

Using these methods will help you gain teamwide support for your new QA system.

Select the conversations you want to review

Businesses can receive hundreds to thousands of customer inquiries per week, and managers can’t review all of them. As such, you need a system for selecting which conversations to review. For example, some organizations opt for random sampling of customer interactions, while others may focus on the longest interactions or those with low customer satisfaction scores.

If you want to review all support interactions, you must utilize artificial intelligence. Quality assurance software like Zendesk QA uses AI and automation to streamline conversation reviews. These tools analyze every customer interaction, pinpointing problematic conversations so managers can focus on the most critical interactions.

Plan calibration sessions to align QA scores

You’ll likely have multiple reviewers conducting QA reviews of your support agents. To ensure reps receive the same feedback quality from every reviewer, you should plan calibration sessions.

QA calibration sessions help reviewers synchronize their assessments and eliminate bias from quality service ratings. During these meetings, revisit your rating scale criteria and feedback best practices and discuss any applicable nuances—for example, if an agent handled the ticket correctly but missed a specific aspect of the conversation.

Review and improve

After building and implementing your customer service scorecard, consistently measure your support performance to ensure your strategy is effective. Track customer service key performance indicators like CSAT and Customer Effort Score, schedule calibration sessions, discuss progress in team meetings, and provide individual feedback in regular one-on-one syncs.

It’s important to remember that you can—and should—tweak your QA strategy if it’s not as effective as you anticipated. For example, say you chose “personalization” and “going the extra mile” as your key rating categories and weighted them the highest, but your CSAT isn’t improving. In that case, you may want to place more emphasis on other categories to improve your customer experience.

Frequently asked questions

Improve your customer service with Zendesk

Customer service scorecards can help you turn customer interactions from suitable to spectacular. That said, you don’t need to do it alone. With Zendesk QA, you can harness AI to assess 100 percent of support interactions, identify churn risks and problematic conversations, streamline the evaluation process, effectively coach your agents, and enhance service quality.

Learn more about how Zendesk QA can supercharge your support experience.