Measuring customer experience is, perhaps, one of the most vital aspects of any business. And, it’s even more important if you’re a SaaS-based business.
Before we start, here are a few questions for you:
Are you doing pretty well with your customer experience? Is there any scope for improvement?
Do you use the right CX metrics to measure your customer experience?
If your answer to these questions is no, we’re here to help.
In this blog, we’ll walk you through some of the top customer experience metrics for 2021 that are essential for any company if you want to stay relevant and competitive.
These include:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
- Customer Effort Score (CES)
- Customer Churn Rate
- Customer Referral Rate
But before we go in-depth on this topic, it’s essential to define what customer experience metrics actually are.
What is Customer Experience Metrics?
Essentially, customer experience metrics enable you to keep track of and measure the customer’s experience when they use your product.
The ultimate objective of customer experience metrics is to see whether or not your customers are satisfied with your product. And this insight will help you see how likely your customers are to recommend your brand to others.
Customer relationships are a critical aspect of ensuring that your business is progressing at the right pace. For that to happen, you need to monitor how well you are doing in terms of customer relationships.
Now, if you’re wondering how to measure your customers’ experience and your relationship with them, then the answer is simple: identify and track top CX metrics.
And below, we’ll cover these metrics in detail so you’ll have all the insight you need to see where your customer relationships stand.
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Top CX Metrics to Measure Customer Experience
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What is it all about?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is considered one of the most used CX metrics by customer success managers. The reason for that being, it helps you to measure the customers’ readiness to refer your company to others. It gives a broad perspective into the level of satisfaction derived by your customers while using your products or services.
To measure your NPS score, start by enquiring customers about their likelihood to recommend your product on a scale between 0 to 10. Here, ten is regarded as “very likely”, and 0 being “not at all.”
There are also different criteria that you need to take into consideration while using NPS surveys:
- Customers scoring between 0 to 6 are termed, detractors.
- Customers scoring between 7 to 8 are termed passive.
- Customers scoring between 9 to 10 are termed promoters.
How can you utilize it to improve your customer experience?
You should not consider NPS to be the parameter to measure product success. The reason for that being, it provides only a broad perspective. Rather, you can contemplate utilizing it as a tool to understand your customers better. The level of satisfaction your customers derive from your products or services and how this impression can change with time.
Instead of asking closed-ended survey questions using NPS, we recommend you ask open-ended questions to get further insights from your customers. These insights can then be used to enhance their satisfaction.
Formula to calculate it
NPS can be calculated by subtracting the total number of detractors from the promoters.
NPS = % of Promoters – % of Detractors
2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
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What is it all about?
This CX metric helps in getting the customer’s average satisfaction score. Typically, an automated survey is used to rate a specific experience like a product purchase or a service call.
Customers are then asked questions frequently to rate their satisfaction levels on a scale of “very satisfied” to “not satisfied at all.”
You can get the latest feedback with this metric since it can be calculated quickly to gauge their satisfaction. It usually takes hours or even less once a customer has used your product or service.
How can you utilize it to improve your customer experience?
With the help of the CSAT score, you learn the percentage of customers who are pleased with your services and those who are not. This way, you can plan for their next interaction with your brand. The survey also helps you get valuable insights into the areas where you can exceed customer expectations and enhance customer retention rates.
Once you use the CSAT score effectively, it will help you to reduce the customer churn rate. And, since the customers will keep coming back to your site, it will increase their chances of them purchasing from you again. This will ultimately help increase your customer lifetime value (CLV).
The best way to enhance your customer satisfaction scores is by providing timely service to each customer and having all their information available to you from multiple interactions when they contact you.
Formula to calculate it
You can calculate the customer satisfaction scores by dividing the total of positive responses received by the total number of responses received and then multiplying by 100.
This way, you end up getting your CSAT score in percentage. Here, 100% is considered a great score, while 0% being the lowest score.
CSAT = (Total number of positive responses / Total number of responses) X 100
3. Customer Effort Score (CES)
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What is it all about?
Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy it is for your customer to interact with your business.
The metric rating can range from “very difficult” to “very easy” when it comes to rating the ease with which your customers could search for your products or complete the transaction from your online store.
A prime example of using CES where customer effort can be ranked can be the number of departments a customer is transferred to while resolving their complaint. If the customer has to move to a different department multiple times to get his problem solved, chances are they will give you a low CES score.
How can you utilize it to improve your customer experience?
The more you provide an excellent customer experience, the more likely the customers will purchase your products or services again.
Once you better understand your CES, it will help you understand whether the customer experience you provide makes your customers’ lives easier or if it can be improved. Once you’ve had a chance to analyze the data, it can help you work towards making your customers’ interactions with your brand effortless.
Formula to calculate it
You can calculate CES by dividing all customer effort scores by the number of customers who participated in the survey. The higher your CES, the better the customer experience.
CES = Total of all individual customer effort scores / Total number of customers
4. Customer Churn Rate
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What is it all about?
Customer churn rate is a vital CX metric, especially if you sell a SaaS-based product that charges your customers a monthly fee. It calculates how frequently customers cancel their subscriptions or opt-out of purchasing products from your brand.
How can you utilize it to improve your customer experience?
Once you keep an eye on the churn rate metrics with other operational data, it helps you identify churn patterns, which can help you decipher where your customer experience issues lie.
The lower the number, the better it is for the business since it’s more expensive to acquire new customers than maintain existing ones.
Also, the lower the churn rate, the more loyal your customers will be.
Formula to calculate it
Customer churn rate can be calculated by subtracting % of lost customers at the end of the month with % of lost customers beginning of the month and then dividing it by the percentage of customers at the beginning of the month.
Customer churn rate = (% of lost customers at the beginning of the month – % of lost customers at the end of the month) / % of lost customers at the beginning of the month
5. Customer Referral Rate
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What is it all about?
Earlier, we explained NPS, which tells you the number of customers that will refer your products or services to others who can benefit from it. Taking things forward, customer referral rate is a CX metric that shows how many customers are making purchases based on referrals.
How can you utilize it to improve your customer experience?
If you learn that your customers are referring your products or services to their peers and relatives, it signals that they perceive your product to be high-quality.
However, for that to occur, you need to have favorable customer interactions with them. This will encompass every interaction that they have with your business throughout their customer journey. The smoother these processes, the more likely are they to refer you to their peers and relatives. The less effort it takes for them to use your product, the more positive results they’re experiencing because of it, etc., the more likely they are to refer you to their peers and relatives.
Formula to calculate it
Customer Referral Rate can be calculated by dividing the total purchases with the total number of referred purchases multiplied by 100.
Customer Referral Rate = (Total number of referred purchases / Total purchases) X 100
Should I Measure All the CX Metrics?
Not really. It’s crucial to shortlist a select few that are relevant to your business. At most times, choosing a single customer experience metric and one related behavioral metric can work best for most companies. If you try and increase the complexity, it will hardly bring you the right results.
Whereas a simple survey, targeting one aspect of your business and tracking it with one or two metrics can do wonders.
Also, keep in mind, not all customer experience metrics are created equal. To get the maximum leverage for your content and website, you need to find the right ones for your company and represent the most up-to-date technology.
Final Thoughts
Every company should—and can benefit from—devoting its time and money to measure customer experience metrics. With the help of the CX metrics mentioned here, you will see how your customers perceive your product.
It will also provide you with actionable insights into the best ways to enhance your SaaS-based product. This can help your company overall by decreasing churn rates or driving up your retention and trial-to-customer scores.
It will also encourage your teams to perform more efficiently and ascertain if there is any room for improvement. The same can be said about your SaaS-based product and its functionality.
The more you learn how your customers are using it, the more positive changes you can deliver. And the more positive changes you provide, the more delightful you make your customers’ experiences.
Dattatraya Shetty is an IT Professional with 2 Decades of experience in areas of Product Development, Implementation & Service Delivery Management. As the Head of Implementations and SOC Compliance in Smartkarrot he is on a mission to provide relishing customer experience.
Published September 17, 2021, Updated February 28, 2023
