According to research, six in ten of us will switch brands if we have a negative experience with a customer service team.
That statistic demonstrates the importance of creating a positive customer experience. It also highlights the danger of overlooking customer service.
Yet for all your efforts, there is a chance that customers aren’t as happy as you think. The only way to get a true picture is to measure your customers’ satisfaction with your business.
In this guide, we’ll outline seven customer experience KPIs you need to track to help your business thrive.
1. Net Promotor Score
You might see a net promotor score by its common abbreviation, NPS.
It’s a core customer experience metric and an essential one for any ambitious business. This metric measures your customer’s happiness and loyalty to you as a brand.
You obtain this score by asking your customer a straightforward question, and it’s probably one you’ve seen before when you’ve bought a product online:
How likely are you, on a scale of 0-10, to recommend our product to a friend?
You might see slight variations in the wording, but the purpose of this question is always the same. It’s a valuable indicator of whether your customer has had a positive experience that they’ll tell their friend to check out your company.
You’ll find that customers fall into a few categories when you aggregate this data. Marketers tend to split these into three groups.
The Three Groups: Promotors, Passives and Detractors
At the high-scoring end are customers called promoters. These people will give you a score of 9 or 10. They love your product and are enthusiastic enough to recommend it to a friend.
In the upper range, but not quite at the top, are what marketers call passive customers.
These people will give you a score of 7 or 8, so they are still happy with your product or service. But they are less likely to go out of their way to tell a friend.
Below this, scoring 0-6, are the detractors. Scoring in this range generally indicates a customer wasn’t happy or impressed with your product or service. They may be dissatisfied.
When you aggregate this data for hundreds of customers, you subtract your percentage of detractors from your promotors. It will give you a score anywhere from -100 to 100. Your aim is a score above 50.
2. Customer Satisfaction Score
A customer satisfaction score is your primary way of measuring customers’ happiness after they’ve bought from you.
Unlike the NPS, this isn’t about whether or not they could recommend you to a friend or family member. It’s raw feedback about whether their buying experience from you met their expectations.
This metric can help you target specific problem areas in your business depending on how you survey a customer.
For example, you can ask your customer if they are satisfied after interacting with one of your customer service agents.
Doing this lets you gauge whether your support team keeps your customers happy.
Furthermore, by asking the question immediately while the experience is still fresh in your customers’ minds, you’ll get an accurate picture of your customer’s happiness and their perception of your brand.
When using this question in a survey, you’d typically provide scales for responses. For example, you’d ask a customer to tell you whether they were very satisfied, to the opposite end of the scale (very unsatisfied).
It’s an easy and quick question to ask and a simple one for customers to answer.
3. Customer Churn Rate
The next KPI on our list is one that you must track, not only to check customer happiness but to ensure your company is growing. That KPI is the customer churn rate.
This metric tells you the percentage of customers who have left you over a specific period.
If more customers depart from you than new customers you acquire, this is a troublesome sign for your business. Your company is shrinking.
Good businesses boast loyal customers. A happy customer will want to stay with you for the long haul, and that will show itself in a low churn rate.
This number is a vital metric because it’s often cheaper (from a marketing perspective) to hold on to a customer than to attract a new one.
You must track customer numbers joining and leaving your business to measure this KPI.
To monitor it accurately, select a suitable period, like monthly. High churn rates are a sign you need to introduce customer loyalty programs and improve customer satisfaction scores.
4. Customer Effort Score
As a customer, you’ll sometimes notice that interacting with a business feels easy. Other times, it’s not; it’s frustrating and can cause dissatisfaction.
That’s where measuring the Customer Effort Score can come in handy. This metric shows whether or not your customer had an easy time interacting with you.
It will tell you whether you solved their problems quickly and easily if they contacted your support team. Or it will tell you whether they found your payment and checkout process simple.
The best way to do this is via a survey; you must time this soon after the customer has interacted with you.
List the touch points a customer has with your business and use a survey for the main ones to get the most comprehensive feedback. You may want to ask a question like: how easy was it to buy from us today?
You need a high customer effort score because it means your customers see you as a straightforward and hassle-free brand. That’s important in an era where customers have many choices and want convenience.
5. First Contact Resolution
One of the key interactions a customer will use to decide if they value your brand is your customer service team.
If you can quickly and satisfactorily resolve issues for them, your customer is more likely to have a positive experience and return to buy from you again. You can measure this through a KPI called first contact resolution.
That tells you whether your customer found your support team efficient, competent, and professional.
One way to measure this is to look at the percentage of resolved support tickets in one interaction.
In other words, one phone call, chat, or email. Suppose a customer hasn’t returned to ask more questions or complain about their experience. In that case, it’s highly likely they were happy with that initial interaction.
Low scores in this metric mean you need to improve your customer support setup. That could mean having better technology or improved processes. It might mean having better-trained staff or providing an FAQ for customers.
6. Average Resolution Time
It’s not only the number of queries a customer has that determines the success of your support system; the timescale is a vital metric, too. The average resolution time is your KPI here.
It will tell you whether you were efficient at helping customers. After all, you don’t want to leave customers waiting days or weeks with open support tickets. It’s almost guaranteed to leave you with unhappy customers.
You’ll need to track your support interactions to measure this KPI.
That means logging the time when a new support query arrives at your service desk, whether by email, phone, or chat. Then, you’ll measure the time until the customer or your support staff closes the ticket.
Once you have that, you can find the average time across your business.
This KPI is a valuable metric for identifying bottlenecks. For example, suppose you find that customers have a longer resolution time via your online chat.
In that case, you can examine ways to improve the conversation to help speed up the resolution, perhaps by using a chatbot.
7. Customer Lifetime Value
Our final metric will give you another indication of brand loyalty. Loyal customers will continue to buy from you repeatedly, and that’s what’s measured here in the form of customer lifetime value.
This metric offers a sound projection for your business finances. It calculates the average amount of money a customer will spend in all the months or years they are with you.
Knowing that figure will help you estimate future revenue patterns based on the new customers you acquire. Your churn rate is also a helpful KPI here.
By measuring the total worth of a customer, you’ll discover whether you offer plenty of products and services that interest your customers.
From that perspective, this is a valuable metric for your marketing and product development teams. If your lifetime value is low, you have an opportunity to create a new product line that you can offer to existing customers.
Customer Experience KPIs: the Value of Metrics
Thanks to technological advances, modern businesses have thousands of data points at their fingertips. Yet, only the companies that use this data wisely will reap the benefits. You must understand what to measure and how.
These seven customer experience KPIs are the perfect starting point. Measuring them will ensure you have happy customers and a solid brand reputation.
Our team at Synaptech can help you with your data gathering and metrics. Why not schedule a free consultation with one of our experts to learn more?
