The customer experience, or CX, is the total sum of someone’s interactions with an organization across the customer journey—and how those interactions make that person feel. CX relates to, affects, and is affected by similar concepts, such as customer satisfaction, customer retention, customer loyalty, and customer effort. For example, if a consumer enjoys a positive experience when interacting with a brand or organization, they are likely to be satisfied and, therefore, likelier to purchase a product again or re-sign for another service or contract term.
By tracking certain customer experience metrics, organizations can evaluate, understand, and improve the customer experience they deliver.
Why customer experience metrics matter
CX metrics matter because customer experience matters. If an organization provides a subpar customer experience, they will almost certainly lose customers, no matter how good their product or service is. An effective product can only make up for so much; if acquiring a product or service requires too much effort (customer effort score) or if a company isn’t responsive to customer queries and concerns, consumers will be turned off.
CX metrics help organizations understand the customer experience they’re delivering. These metrics are critical to informed and effective customer experience management strategies. It’s difficult to understand CX without metrics; CX is an abstract concept, so tying it to metrics that a company can quantify can help uncover actionable insights.
9 key customer experience metrics to track
Knowing and comparing CX metrics can help an organization understand just how good—or bad—of a customer experience they provide. But just what are these metrics? What should organizations measure? And how should they do it?
Here are nine of the most important CX metrics to measure:
Average resolution time
An organization’s average resolution time (ART) is one of the more important contact center metrics. The ART is the average length of time it takes a contact center team to successfully resolve a customer issue. Typically, the quicker the resolution time, the better.
Because ART is an average of all customer requests, it covers a large swath of situations. For example, a password reset is a type of request, and agents can often resolve these in minutes. Other calls can take much longer, though, so companies may want to segment customer inquiries to gather more detailed data.
Contact center analytics
Contact center analytics involve collecting, measuring, and analyzing data to improve an organization’s operations. It can include key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics related to contact center agent productivity, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
Gathering and analyzing data analytics enables a company to find its strengths and weaknesses in its contact center or call center. By collecting important contact center data, a business can identify trends and uncover opportunities to reduce costs. Contact center analytics enable organizations to gain a holistic view of the customer experience they offer.
Customer effort score (CES)
CES measures how easy or difficult it is for customers to access a company’s products or services or to interact with the company. It’s a key customer service metric because it can reflect not just how a business responds to customer issues, but also how it deals with a customer before they even buy anything.
An organization can obtain a CES by sending out a short survey after an interaction. The overall CES matters, but it’s also valuable to analyze the distribution of scores. If customers find it easy to change the tier of service they receive but find it very difficult to get troubleshooting help, this suggests a business may need to train more agents to provide troubleshooting assistance.
Customer lifetime value
This is the revenue the average customer is expected to bring to a company over their lifetime as a customer. While it doesn’t explicitly measure satisfaction, this is a key metric because it indicates overall satisfaction. If the customer lifetime value increases over several years, this suggests the overall customer experience, from product or service satisfaction to contact center interactions, is positive. However, it’s important to note that many variables can affect customer lifetime value, such as price increases, added product lines, and other factors that don’t directly relate to how a brand interacts with its customers.
Customer retention rate
Customer retention changes depending on how an organization does business. Companies with a subscription model might have higher retention rates because it’s common for customers to stay on for more than one term. Re-buying a product is often an active decision that depends on several variables. In either case, a satisfied customer is typically a loyal customer.
The customer churn rate is a complementary metric to the customer retention rate. Churn measures how many existing customers leave and how many new customers there are in a given period.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
Measuring customer experience is tricky because so much of CX doesn’t directly relate to data. You can measure how many units you sell, how many people call your contact center, and how many customers re-buy a product, but you can’t necessarily quantify how customers feel.
The customer satisfaction score seeks to rectify this. An organization can obtain their CSAT by sending email surveys to gather customer feedback after an interaction. You can simply ask customers to rate an interaction or their overall experience on a scale from one-to-five. The higher the CSAT, the better.
Customer sentiment
This metric is a great starting point for companies looking to understand and improve their customer experience. Organizations can understand customer sentiment by issuing customer feedback forms and by analyzing how they interact with their contact center. For example, if a contact center platform has a natural language processing feature, a company can use this to analyze a customer’s intonation and mood.
First response time
This customer service metric measures the average time it takes a contact center agent to respond to a customer request. This can be how long it takes for a call center agent to answer a call or how long a customer success team takes to respond to an email. Responding to customers quickly is a key tenant of customer support.
Net promoter score (NPS)
NPS is an important customer experience KPI. An organization can obtain its net promoter score by sending out customer feedback forms consisting of just two questions:
- How likely are you to recommend our product/service to somebody else?
- Why did you give that score?
The language doesn’t have to be identical, and you can use a numerical scale or a worded scale (e.g., not at all likely to very likely), but whatever it is, it should be simple. NPS is a valuable customer service metric and product/service metric. If a business is meeting customer needs, it will probably get a high NPS.
How to select and implement the right customer experience metrics
Before you start tracking a given CX metric, ask yourself, “What will we do with this data?” If the answer is, “I don’t know,” then don’t track it, at least until you can figure out how it will help. If you know, for instance, what you’ll change if your NPS is low, then track NPS.
Linking customer experience metrics to business outcomes
Does a good CES guarantee good revenue statistics? The answer is no, not just because there are no guarantees in business, but because it’s impossible to draw a direct correlation between the two.
No one CX metric can tell the whole picture of your organization’s health. Some are better than others, though. For example, if your business has an excellent CSAT score, you can’t be doing too poorly. But the true value of these metrics is the picture they paint together.
Some metrics may relate to the value of your product or service, while others are contact center metrics. It’s valuable to track various CX metrics that relate to different departments of your company or different aspects of the customer experience you provide.
For example, if you have a good customer effort score, but your average resolution time and first response time scores are lacking, then you know your organization needs to upgrade its contact center processes. This might mean hiring more agents or upgrading your contact center solution.
Every company is different, so it’s important to figure out which CX metrics affect your prioritized business outcomes the most.
Boost your customer experience with Webex
Webex Contact Center empowers organizations to measure and track critical CX metrics. Contact center agents and managers can access this important data easily and add to or share it as needed. This provides organizations with a clear path for improving customer interaction processes and delivering a more positive customer experience.
Discover Webex Contact Center and find out how our solution can help your organization’s contact center deliver a more positive experience for your customers.
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