Evaluating customer service by the dollars or time spent per unit compared with historical company data, industry standards, or benchmarking partners provides a measurement of:

• A. Quality
• B. Efficiency
• C. Effectiveness
• D. Productivity

Answer: (B)

Efficiency focuses on how resources are used to produce output. When you evaluate customer service by dollars spent per unit or time spent per unit and compare those figures with historical data, industry standards, or benchmarking partners, you’re assessing how much resource is required to deliver each unit of service and how that resource use stacks up against expectations. This tells you whether the process is being run with minimal wasted input.

Quality would look at how well the service meets standards or customer expectations, not how much resource per unit is used. Effectiveness is about whether the service achieves its intended goals, regardless of the resources used. Productivity typically refers to the rate of output relative to input (for example, units produced per hour); measuring dollars or time per unit is the inverse relationship of that concept and is used to gauge efficiency.