Customer Care Report — FY2024 (January–December 2024)

Executive Summary

In FY2024, Customer Care handled 1,284,116 total interactions across phone (31%), live chat (44%), email (19%), and social/other channels (6%). Overall CSAT averaged 92.4% on 372,981 survey responses, with First Contact Resolution (FCR) at 78.2% and a median Time to Resolution of 9.6 hours. We achieved or exceeded SLAs in 10 out of 12 months, with notable recovery in Q4 following targeted staffing and process improvements.

Service levels improved steadily: phone answer speed averaged 84.7% within 20 seconds against an 80/20 target; chat median first response was 48 seconds; and email first reply averaged 3 hours 52 minutes against an 8-business-hour target. Abandonment rates declined to 3.9% for voice and 2.6% for chat by December. Backlog aged >48 hours fell from 6.2% in Q1 to 1.9% in Q4, despite a 7% year-over-year increase in total volume.

Customer advocacy strengthened: NPS finished at +48 on 22,306 responses (62% promoters, 24% passives, 14% detractors), up 6 points year over year. Contact rate per 1,000 monthly active users (MAU) dropped from 29 to 27, aided by a 23% self-service deflection rate. We estimate $477k in variable cost avoidance from deflection and a 0.9 percentage point reduction in churn among supported cohorts, contributing to $3.1M in retained annualized revenue.

Volume and Service Level Performance

Monthly volume ranged from 92,114 contacts (February low) to 128,903 (October high). Seasonal peaks aligned with product launches in May and October and year-end billing cycles in December. Weekday volume distribution skewed toward Tuesday–Thursday (57% of weekly contacts), with a predictable 18% dip on weekends; 24/7 P1 support absorbed 2.1% of total contacts.

Average Handle Time (AHT) held within target bands: phone 6m 31s, chat 8m 14s (including concurrent handling), email 11m 20s (work time), and social 6m 05s. Occupancy averaged 81% (target 78–85%), bolstered by improved schedule adherence of 89.6% and shrinkage of 32% (inclusive of PTO, training, meetings). Intraday recovery blocks introduced in Q3 reduced SLA misses during the 10:00–12:00 and 14:00–16:00 peaks.

We met or exceeded published SLAs for 10 months. The two exceptions were May (product release spike; voice SLA 76% in 20s) and October (security update; email first reply SLA 88% within 8 business hours). In both instances, rapid redistribution of concurrency and activation of 12 on-call surge agents restored SLAs within 72 hours.

Channel Mix and Behavior

Live chat continued as the preferred channel at 44% of total volume, reflecting faster perceived response times and guided in-session troubleshooting. The chatbot contained 22% of chat sessions without human handoff (up from 17% in FY2023), primarily for password reset guidance, plan comparisons, and simple navigation help. Chat concurrency averaged 2.4, with peak concurrency of 3.1 during launches.

Voice accounted for 31% of contacts and remained essential for high-complexity and high-emotion cases. Callbacks (offered selectively when estimated wait >4 minutes) were accepted in 38% of eligible scenarios, improving abandonment from 5.7% to 3.9%. Email comprised 19% of interactions, favored by enterprise customers for audit trails and multi-step configuration requests. Social and community channels combined for 6%, with amplified reach during outages and product announcements.

Self-service adoption increased, with the help center logging 3.4M page views (unique visitors: 1.1M) and a 72% search success rate (up 9 points). Guided flows in-product—particularly for billing changes and workspace setup—reduced contact propensity by 2.3 points among new users in their first 30 days.

Customer Satisfaction and NPS

CSAT by channel: phone 94.3% (n=112,408), chat 92.1% (n=198,334), email 90.2% (n=58,901), social 88.7% (n=3,338). Drivers of satisfaction included fast first response, agent empathy scores (average quality rubric “relationship” dimension: 96.1%), and improved resolution accuracy (QA issue rate fell from 9.2% to 5.8%). Detractors most commonly cited delays during release weeks and policy clarity on prorations and refunds.

NPS closed at +48 overall on 22,306 responses. Promoters highlighted reliable uptime, clear onboarding guides, and knowledgeable chat agents. Detractor analysis (topic modeling of 4,119 comments) identified three primary themes: authentication friction (2FA resets and SSO mapping, 24%), billing/proration confusion (19%), and advanced configuration complexity (17%). Two P1 incidents—2024-05-14 (38 minutes) and 2024-10-22 (21 minutes)—temporarily depressed NPS by 3–5 points in affected cohorts; proactive status updates and postmortems mitigated longer-term impact.

Customer Effort Score (CES) averaged 4.6/5 (n=64,502), with the largest gains in onboarding pathways. Where effort was high, the median number of transfers was 2 (target ≤1); routing refinements in Q4 reduced multi-skill transfers by 26%, driving a 0.2-point CES improvement month over month.

Cost, Efficiency, and ROI

Total Customer Care budget for FY2024 was $7.6M: wages and benefits (78%), tooling and licensing (9%), telecom (4%), training and QA (5%), and facilities/other (4%). Estimated variable cost per contact: phone $5.90, chat $3.10, email $2.70, social $2.40; weighted average $3.85 based on channel mix. Process improvements and self-service reduced the weighted average by $0.22 year over year.

Self-service deflection (124,000 sessions successfully resolved without human contact) yielded approximately $477k in variable cost avoidance at the current mix. Additionally, knowledge-centered service (KCS) practices reduced recontact rate from 12.4% to 8.7%, saving an estimated 31,000 follow-up interactions. These efficiencies enabled reallocation of 6 FTE to enterprise concierge support without incremental headcount.

Customer Care influenced $1.8M in ARR via assisted upsell/cross-sell (9,214 assisted transactions; 7.3% conversion when an agent presents a contextual upgrade path). Median expansion pathway was from the $29/month plan to $79/month, with usage-based add-ons closing in 18% of enterprise chats during quarterly business reviews.

Quality, Root Causes, and Corrective Actions

Quality assurance reviewed 2,400 interactions per month (stratified by channel, region, and case type). Average QA score was 93.7% with calibration variance of ±1.8 percentage points across three calibrations monthly. Top improvement areas included policy articulation and escalation notes completeness; remediation included targeted micro-coaching and rubric refinements to weight accuracy over speed.

Root causes of contact volume: authentication and 2FA issues (24%), billing and invoicing (19%), onboarding/configuration (17%), product defects/bugs (12%), usage and how-to questions (21%), and other/miscellaneous (7%). The following initiatives are in flight with named owners and deadlines to compress contact drivers by 15–18% in H1 2025:

• Implement passwordless + improved SSO mapping (Owner: Identity PM; Pilot 2025-02-10; GA 2025-03-31) to cut auth-related tickets by 40%.
• Redesign billing portal with live preview of prorations and taxes (Owner: Billing PM; UX complete 2025-01-20; Launch 2025-04-15) to reduce billing contacts by 35%.
• Guided onboarding checklists for top three enterprise configurations (Owner: Onboarding Lead; Beta 2025-02-28; Rollout 2025-05-01) targeting a 25% reduction in configuration questions.
• Defect triage SLA of 5 business days for P2s with weekly public changelog (Owner: Eng Manager; Effective 2025-01-05) to lower bug-related contacts by 30%.
• Knowledge base revamp: 80 articles refreshed, 20 new videos, article search synonyms expanded (Owner: KCS Manager; Complete 2025-03-15) to push search success to 80%.

Compliance and Risk

We maintained compliance with SOC 2 Type II (report date: 2024-11-05; zero major findings), GDPR/CCPA, and internal data retention policies (24-month retention, least-privilege access). QA audited 2.5% of all interactions for PII handling and consent; one minor observation on redaction timeliness identified in October was fully remediated by 2025-01-15 via tooling updates and refresher training.

Security and privacy incidents: zero confirmed PII breaches; three fraud attempts detected and blocked (two payment fraud, one account takeover). Call recording consent is captured via IVR prompts and visual banners in chat; opt-outs honored with no degradation in SLA. All agents completed 8 hours/quarter of mandatory compliance training (100% completion), including updated modules on generative-AI-assisted responses and data minimization.

Workforce and 2025 Forecast

Headcount closed the year at 145 FTE: 92 agents (tiers 1–2), 18 QA/coaches, 14 team leads/supervisors, 8 WFM/analytics, and 13 operations/program roles. Regional distribution optimized follow-the-sun coverage across North America, EMEA, and APAC. Attrition was 12.1% (voluntary 8.7%), down 3.2 points year over year, attributed to clearer career ladders and updated compensation bands.

WFM forecast accuracy (weekly) averaged MAPE 4.2%, enabling precise staffing for peak windows. Schedule adherence averaged 89.6% with variance concentrated in the late-afternoon window; targeted adherence coaching and flexible shift bidding improved late-day coverage by 6%. Occupancy maintained at 81%, balancing productivity with burnout risk; sick leave dipped to 1.9% from 2.3% following wellbeing initiatives.

For 2025, we project a 15% volume increase driven by product expansion and a 2-point reduction in contact rate via deeper in-product guidance. Net FTE requirement is +18 (12 agents, 2 QA, 2 WFM, 2 program managers) with an incremental budget of $1.2M, partially offset by an expected $620k in additional deflection savings and $400k from automation of dispositioning and summarization.

2025 Priorities and Investment Requests

To sustain SLA performance and elevate customer outcomes, we will prioritize platform unification, knowledge maturity, and proactive outreach. Investments are sequenced to deliver measurable reductions in contact drivers, improved resolution quality, and higher customer loyalty in H1, with scale efficiencies compounding in H2. The ROI model assumes steady-state volumes by Q3 with benefit realization lag of 6–8 weeks post-launch.

Funding requests include $380k for platform consolidation and analytics upgrades, $210k for multilingual expansion (initially DE/FR), and $160k for advanced QA tooling (screen capture, form validation) to lift QA coverage to 3.5% of total contacts. The roadmap below includes cross-functional dependencies and go-live targets.

• Unified omnichannel inbox + refreshed routing (Go-live: 2025-05-15) to cut transfers by 30% and raise FCR to 82%.
• KCS v6 adoption with article workflow automation (2025-03-31) to reach 80% search success and 28% deflection.
• Proactive comms engine for release/incident messaging (2025-02-20) to reduce reactive volume during events by 35%.
• Enterprise SLAs (P1: 15m/24×7; P2: 2h) and named contact pilot (2025-04-10) to drive +5 NPS in enterprise cohort.
• Multilingual support (DE/FR) with native QA (2025-06-30) to open new markets and reduce translation latency by 80%.
• Automation of case summarization and disposition (2025-03-15) to save ~45 seconds per interaction and improve analytics fidelity.

Contact and Escalation Details

Support hours: standard support is available Monday–Friday, 06:00–20:00 Pacific Time, and Saturday–Sunday, 08:00–17:00 Pacific Time. Priority 1 incidents are covered 24/7 with a 15-minute response target. Self-service and status updates are available at https://support.example.com and https://status.example.com, respectively.

Primary contact methods: toll-free (US/Canada) +1-800-555-0149, voicemail-to-case backup +1-415-555-0127, and email at [email protected]. Mailing address for correspondence and escalations: Customer Care Operations, 123 Market St, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94103. Vendor and audit requests may be directed to our compliance desk at [email protected]; enterprise customers with premium support should use their named manager’s direct line as listed in their MSA.

What are the 7 key elements of customer care?

Promptness: Quick responses and efficient problem-solving signal respect for the customer’s time. Personalization: Tailoring service to meet individual customer needs shows care and attention to detail. Professionalism: Maintaining high professionalism even in challenging situations, builds trust and credibility.

How do I contact Consumer Reports customer care?

Email: To email us, please use our email webform. Phone: Our phone number is 1-800-333-0663.

What is an example of customer care?

Examples of good customer service
For example, self-service options like online FAQ sections let customers get answers to questions about business hours, return options, and shipping without waiting in a phone queue during regular business hours.

What is a customer service report?

Customer service reports analyze key metrics to provide a 360-degree view of interactions, satisfaction and team performance. They collect data from various touchpoints in the customer journey, such as phone calls, emails, chat logs and surveys.