What Metrics Do You Use to Measure and Enhance Your Customer Experience?

I am often asked, “What metric should we use to measure the customer experience (CX) we provide?”

I seldom have an answer to this question.

It is a more challenging question than it looks on the surface. Different metrics will have to be measured to understand various elements of providing a customer experience.

When you don’t measure any metrics, the easiest way to look at the effectiveness of the customer experience you provide is to look at the customer feedback. Have regular conversations with your agents – the front line of your customer experience and absorb the sentiments on social media.

No one metric would allow you to understand what your customers are thinking. They act as pointers, and the best way to understand the CX you provide will be to focus on what your customers tell you with their words and actions.

5 Metrics for Customer Experience

It absolutely does.

A combination of metrics will have to be looked at, combined with what your customers and agents tell you, to get a grip on how well you are doing.

Let Us Look at Some of the Metrics.

1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

This is the bread and butter of measuring customer experience. Many argue against using this metric, but I am all for it.

This is more like housekeeping to me.

What Is the Most Fundamental Question That You Ask?

Are You Satisfied With Our Service? You Ask Them on a Scale of 1-5.

The argument is that merely providing a satisfactory service beats the idea of offering the best possible experience. For me, it is a gold standard, as that would allow you to figure out if you can first satisfy your customers before beginning to delight them.

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Let us look at how you calculate the NPS scores. On a scale of 1-10, responses are segregated into promoters (9-10), passives (7-8), and detractors (1-6). You deduct the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, and you get your score.

What Is the Fundamental Question That You Ask Here?

How Likely Will You Recommend Our Service/Solution to Your Friend or Colleague?

This is the most defining question when it comes to the voice of your customers.

You measure the NPS, and you come up with a score. What do you do with it?

The natural tendency would be to compare with industry averages and competitor scores. Avoid doing that. Instead, see how you trend over time.  

Don’t sweat over the numbers. Identify the reasons why your scores are the way they are and act on them consistently to improve the scores. Over time, your NPS scores will improve, along with customers giving you more business.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

This is one metric that is sacrosanct for me. This defines the likelihood of customers being loyal to our offerings.

What Is the Most Fundamental Question That You Ask Here?

How Easy Is It to Do Business With Us? On a Scale of 1-10.

This allows you to understand what your customers perceive about you. You don’t have to make the qualification whether it is easy or hard.

You can dig deeper to discover why they feel something is hard and act on them to improve your Customer Effort Score (CES).

4. Customer Health Score (CHS)

We use this metric called Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), where you predict the lifetime value of a customer and give them priority services.

CHS is closely related to CLV without you having to predict. The data would present itself.

Customer Health Score is a metric used to understand the likelihood of a customer to grow, stay consistent, or churn. This is very appropriate in the SaaS industry, and that’s why you find that every SaaS company has a customer success manager.

The customer success leaders monitor the CHS and identify power users, account expansion opportunities, potential churning customers in advance, and uncover success and failure patterns.

5. First Contact Resolution (FCR)

This metric would allow you to figure out the customer’s overall experience with your brand. The fewer times a customer has to contact to resolve an issue or accomplish a task, the better it is.

This is something that the CX function will have to work on consistently to improve its performance.

FCR would allow you to identify where you are – or are not – empowering your customer-facing representatives with the processes, tools, and policies to address customer requests.

This score will allow you to improve both the customer experience and employee experience (EX).

People measure a bunch of other metrics like customer churn rate, abandonment rate, acquisition costs, sales/revenue per customer, and sentiment analysis, among others.

The five metrics I have listed here define CX, and focusing on them would help your organization reach the top of the CX pyramid.

For every metric mentioned, there must be follow-up questions with open-ended responses.

A Good Follow-up Question Is, “Why Did You Choose That Response?”

A tiny percentage would respond, but the insight you gain would be invaluable towards providing excellent customer experiences.