A superior customer experience is as important as any other aspect of a business, such as service and product quality. With increasing competition in the digital age, more companies are turning towards customer experience management to build a loyal customer base and get recurring revenue. This article explores various customer experience metrics in-depth. Tracking these metrics can help improve customer experience in your company and earn the trust of returning customers effortlessly.

Customer Experience Metric – The Basic Idea

A customer experience metric is an instrument that measures data related to a customer’s journey and experience with using a particular service or product from the company. The sole objective of these metrics is to ensure that the customers are satisfied. Standard metrics include:

·   Churn rate

·   Sales/revenue

·   Early cancel rate (ECR)

·   First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Simple Customer Experience Metrics

#1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net promoter score or NPS measures how likely the customers are ready to refer the company to their friends and acquaintances. NPS is a clear and direct indication of customer satisfaction.

NPS asks the customers to rate their likelihood of recommending the service on a scale of 0-10.

Businesses can utilize the Net promoter score to address the complaints of customers and eventually resolve them. Thus, they can improve the customer experience so that they can meet the expectations in the future.

#2.Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

Customer satisfaction score or CSAT collects the average satisfaction score on the customers’ experience. Typically, an automated survey asks a customer product or service-specific questions. The spectrum of possible answers lies between, “Very satisfied” to “Not satisfied at all.” CSAT helps obtain valuable feedback that can get used to deliver better quality services and maintain high customer satisfaction rates.

Advanced Customer Experience Metrics

#3. Customer service satisfaction (CSS)

Customer service satisfaction is a metric that measures customers’ satisfaction level with your after-sales services, such as customer care. CSS is straightforward to obtain as you can ask for their honest feedback each time they interact with one of the customer service agents. It is often included in the CSAT score and many CXM platforms measure customer service satisfaction through the CSAT metric.

A company has various options to obtain CSS data:

·   Online forms

·   Pop-up quizzes on the official website

·   Live chat

·   Social media surveys

The key is to keep the survey questions consistent to spot trends and patterns. If done right, you will be identifying areas of improvement with less effort.

#4. Customer health score (CHS)

A customer health score is responsible for predicting whether a customer will remain loyal to the brand in the future. Several factors influence the outcome of the CHS indicator.

·   Product usage period

·   Product type (free or paid)

·   Money spent on the brand

·   Willingness to answer the survey questions

·   Engagement with the support team

Unlike traditional CSAT scores, CHS scrutinizes behavioral patterns over a period of time. Using CHS will allow you to assess the customers’ health and classify them into weak, healthy, or at-risk and take action to resolve ongoing issues.

Other Essential Metrics

Here are a few other metrics businesses can utilize

·   Customer Effort Score (CES): It measures the amount of effort a customer requires to interact on a relative basis.

·   Sentiment analysis: This tool uses cutting-edge AI technology to find the underlying emotions of a customer from their written feedback on social media or emails. This method uses complex algorithms and hence must be leveraged prudently.

Which Metrics Should You Measure?

Remember, all metrics may not be relevant for your business. Therefore, gain thorough knowledge and guidance about these tools before you start asking for feedback from the customers. This way, you will avoid losing time and resources. Typically, going for one customer experience metric in combination with another behavioral metric works best for most businesses. To improve customer experience, you need honest feedback and nothing else. So, do not opt for complex surveys and focus on the bare essentials for enhanced results.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, an effective customer experience management strategy should only measure those metrics that matter. Depending on the industry or niche, expert marketers can suggest an actionable plan to obtain the desired outcome from marking efforts. Tracking the suitable metrics doesn’t just give insights into the brand’s recall value but also provides adequate data that help you grow and improve customer experience to outperform the competitors.