Updated: August 7, 2025
"I need help creating a customer service plan."
That's an email I've received many times from busy customer service leaders. There’s always some opportunity for improvement that triggers the request:
Customer complaints are rising.
It's time for annual business planning.
The customer service leader is new to the role.
These leaders are all looking to give their team clear direction, but they don’t know where to start. My advice is always the same: do a gap analysis.
A gap analysis looks at the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. It analyzes the reasons you aren't there already so you can pinpoint your action plan. It's deceptively simple, yet highly effective.
Here's how to conduct one.
Step 1: Set customer service goals
Your customer service plan should have specific, measurable goals that are tied to the overall business strategy. You'll need those goals to perform a gap analysis and ultimately write the plan.
⚠️ Avoid vague, squishy goals like these:
Improve customer service
Conduct customer service training
Explore new customer service channels
Reduce customer churn
Deliver world-class customer service
These statements are too vague. They aren’t clear enough to measure, change behavior, and drive performance. Some, like "conduct customer service training," aren't even goals at all. They're tasks or activities.
Your customer service plan should be based on at least one SMART goal. This gives you and your team a specific target to focus on achieving.
Here's an overview if you're not familiar with the model:
S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Relevant
T = Time-bound
You can use this primer to learn more about SMART goals if you get stuck.
The focus of your SMART goal should be something critical to your business. Think about how your team creates value. Here are some questions to help you create that link:
How does your team increase revenue?
How does your team decrease costs?
How can your team improve overall company efficiency?
Another approach is to look for your CEO or boss’s “hot button.” Their hot button is the thing they talk about most often when it comes to your department. They are happy when the hot button is going well, but agitated when it isn’t.
One client approached me to ask for customer service training. I asked the CEO some probing questions about the customer service team and learned what he really cared about was sales conversion.
Customers would contact customer service with questions about the company's products. The customer service rep could convert the call into a sale if they successfully answered the customer's questions.
Conversion rate was his hot button. It had a clear connection to revenue and the overall success of the business. I discovered it was something the CEO tracked constantly.
The CEO wanted the team to covert 35 percent of customer inquiries into sales. He explained that was the level that made the team profitable once you subtracted marketing and operating costs. That became the SMART goal:
Achieve an average sales conversion rate of 35 percent by the end of each month.
⚠️ Avoid new metrics. Some customer service leaders are tempted to create a new metric and build the plan around that. Avoid this whenever possible. You’ll have more data and find it easier to get buy-in if you use an existing metric that you know your boss or CEO already cares about.
Take action:
Identify how your team creates value.
Create at least one SMART goal for your team.
Step 2: Identify where you are now
The GPS on your phone or in your car needs two things to give you directions. The first is a destination. The second is your current location.
A gap analysis relies on the same information. Setting a goal is essential. Once you have a goal, you need to identify your current position. Only then can you create a step-by-step plan to bridge the gap.
This is another common failure point for customer service plans. The leader sets a goal, but doesn't have any data to measure where they are in relation to the goal.
For example, let's say you wanted to reduce customer churn. Great! What's your customer churn rate right now? It's pretty hard to reduce it if you don't have a specific measurement already.
My client wanted to achieve a 35 percent sales conversion rate per month. The team was currently averaging 33 percent.
Why is this important?
Because our strategy to get to 35 percent would be wildly different if we were at 10 percent versus 33. This second step in the gap analysis told us we were really close, and it would likely take just a few small tweaks to close the gap.
Take Action:
Identify your team’s current performance for the metric(s) you want to improve.
Step 3: Analyze the reason for the gap
Now that you have concrete data on where you are now, and the SMART goal you're trying to achieve, you need to analyze the gap between those two numbers.
This analysis leads directly to your customer service plan.
I like to approach this step like a detective trying to solve a case. You might have some hunches, but you'll need solid evidence if you want to convince people your hunch is right.
One of the easiest things you can do is spend time observing your team and talking to them. Discuss the goal and ask them to share barriers they encounter that currently make it difficult to achieve it. (Guide: how to do performance observations.)
It didn't take long to help my client analyze the gap between the 35 percent conversion rate goal and the current 33 percent average. The team already knew most of the answers and readily shared them with me.
Scheduling. The team's schedule didn't match demand. Customers had to wait on hold an average of 30 minutes on Monday mornings, making it much harder to sell to people who called. By contrast, the team had very little to do on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, when call volume was much lower.
Rapport. Several of the team members admitted they sometimes struggled to uncover customer needs. They knew their products fairly well, but didn't always know the right questions to ask customers.
Leadership. The team leader hadn't been spending much time with the team. As a result, the team members weren't exactly sure what they were doing well and where they needed to improve.
This led to a simple customer service plan:
🎯Goal: 35 percent conversion
🔎Gap: 2 percentage points
🧭 Plan:
Adjust schedules to better meet demand.
Deliver a 30-minute rapport skills training session to the team.
Hold a monthly team meetings to discuss progress and make adjustments.
Take Action:
Use the results of your gap analysis to create a customer service plan for your team.
Step 4: Track your progress
The final step is to monitor the progress of your plan. I suggest reviewing using the same cadence you’re already using to review important goals. For most teams, this is at least monthly with a full review each quarter.
Tracking went well for my client who wanted to improve conversion. One month into the new plan, the team exceeded the 35 percent goal by achieving a 45 percent sales conversion rate.
The CEO was ecstatic. The customer service team demonstrated its value to the business and helped fuel a significant revenue increase.
Conclusion
A gap analysis is an essential first step when writing a customer service plan. You can use a gap analysis for many other situations, too.
Reducing customer complaints.
Identifying your team's training needs.
Creating a customer-focused culture.
If you have a LinkedIn Learning subscription, you can also use my Quick Fixes to Attain Excellent Customer Service course to walk you through more sophisticated gap analysis techniques.
Here's a short preview.