In today's digital landscape, software solutions are ubiquitous, turning the spotlight on a differentiating factor – customer support.

This critical aspect often becomes the deciding factor for customers navigating through a myriad of similar solutions. Imagine a scenario where the quality of customer support is no longer a well-kept secret, but a transparent metric available to the public. Such a radical shift towards openness might seem daunting, but it holds the potential to revolutionize customer experience and corporate accountability.

Why is this level of transparency intimidating?

The answer lies in the vulnerability it brings. When customer support metrics are out in the open, every misstep, every delayed response is not just an internal statistic; it becomes a public testament to your company's performance. Such visibility means that bad days aren't just internal hiccups—they're broadcasted to your current and potential customers, and even to your competitors.

But why should companies embrace this bold move?

The answer is twofold.

Firstly, in the absence of tangible data, customers are often left to speculate about the kind of support they will receive. This uncertainty can be detrimental in a market where every competitor boasts about their support quality. Actions speak louder than words, and actual, public data speaks volumes.

Secondly, this approach compels a company and its team to adhere to a higher standard of accountability. Transparent metrics do not just foster trust with customers; they also create an internal culture of continuous improvement and responsibility.

Discover three different support teams who made the move!

The Rippling example

Rippling has been one of the first companies to publish its support metrics in real time. As far as I know, they have been pioneers in this area, perhaps encouraged by their CEO Parker Conrad's customer-centric vision:

Many companies already publish real-time "status pages" that show downtime, incidents, and more. Stephanie Ho and her team aimed to do something similar and create a dedicated "status page" for support. This page would showcase Rippling's support quality and responsiveness. Here is Rippling Real-Time Status page looks like:

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Percentil vs Median :

And what I love most is that they not only provide rosy averages, but they also publish response times for the 90th percentile. This more stringent metric reveals how long it takes them to respond in the worst 10% of cases

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I totally agree with Justin Michaud. One of the reasons I love percentiles so much is because they cannot be cheated:

Why percentile is better than mean or median

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The Hightouch example: be scrappy!

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Teresa Nesteby got inspired by Rippling and Vanta real time support metrics page.

In response, she created a Notion page and shared the support metrics for Hightouch, making them accessible to everyone.

Granted, it may not be perfect (yet).Sure, there's room for improvement. But it definitely fulfills its purpose and gets the job done!

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The Vanta example

The Vanta support metrics page follows the same idea as the Rippling one. I appreciate that they display the different percentiles for their First Response Time.

They also added a fun KPI by mentioning that "68% of the support team has pets," which adds a human touch.

The only drawback is that they do not show the daily results for the past 90 days like Rippling does, which, in my opinion, would build more trust. Anyhow, congrats to Margarita Wilshire and her team for leading the way!

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