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Customer support teams do a lot: They create help documentation, provide feedback to product teams, and, yes, answer customer questions. Though all of those different activities absolutely have an impact beyond customer support, that impact isn’t always obvious to others.

That said, there is a way you can more effectively communicate that impact to others: through customer support data. Customer support data is the universal language that allows you to share the influence your team has with others who aren’t in the inbox every day.

In this article we’ll cover different types of data you can collect, common places to collect it, a couple of metrics to consider, and ways to present your customer support data to have the most impact.

The two types of customer support data

When looking at data, there are two primary types: quantitative and qualitative. You’ll sometimes also see them referred to as structured (quantitative) and unstructured (qualitative) data.

Quantitative data — which is what we’re primarily focusing on in this article — is anything that can be put into numbers, or quantified. Qualitative data is any data that can’t be expressed as a number and is generally concerned with sentiment.

For example, asking someone to rate something on a scale of 1-10 gives you quantitative data. You could chart the responses on a graph. Asking someone why they gave the answer they did gives you qualitative data.

To put it in support terms, a CSAT score is quantitative data. The additional comments some respondents leave on your CSAT survey is qualitative data.

Why you should collect customer support data

We’ve all seen plenty of people and organizations describe themselves as “data-driven.” Though that sounds nice, there’s hardly ever an explanation as to why they’re so obsessed with data.

The truth is, the answer will vary from team to team. However, in the case of customer support teams, there tend to be a few main reasons:

Visibility — Data is a very digestible item to present to a larger group to help them better understand what your team is doing and how they’re contributing. It’s also a very shareable item to include in things like company meetings or quarterly reports.
Performance — Data shows how you’re currently performing and gives insight into areas where you’re excelling and where you can improve. That baseline measurement is also a tool you can use to set future performance goals and a standard to measure against to gauge success.
Buy-in — Data is the primary language of senior leadership. Having strong data points could help strengthen your case to get budget approval for additional team members and tools.
Morale — Your team wants to know how they’re doing. With support data you can show how they’re improving and contributing to the overall success of the business. Knowing that information can help engage and motivate employees.

Common sources of customer support data

For some, the idea of collecting customer support data is intimidating. Though that’s completely understandable, the truth of the matter is that finding customer support data isn’t usually that complicated. In fact, many of the best sources of customer support data are the tools you use to support customers every day.

Help desk

Most help desk software includes data about volume of conversations, busiest times of day, and busiest channels, as well as performance data like first reply time and average handle time. With some tools you can dive even deeper with reporting features like tags to understand the most common reasons people contact support.

Some tools, like Help Scout, even have pre-built dashboards, making accessing your data even easier. You’re also able to create customized dashboards if you want to focus in on certain areas, teams, or agents. Dashboards can also be a good way to share data with others, as it’s easier to digest than raw data.The customer support platform for growing teams12,000+ support teams in 70+ countries use Help Scout to deliver outstanding multi-channel support to their customers. Start in minutes with a free trial.Try for free

Knowledge base

With knowledge base software you can get insights like how many people visit your help center and which articles are most popular. Depending on your tool, you may also be able to see most-searched topics to understand if there are any gaps in your content.

Data that’s automatically collected for you through support tools is great because it’s not very resource intensive. That said, it usually only tells part of the story. In order to make that information richer, there are a few other sources to consider.