Essential Customer Experience Metrics to Improve Engagement

Did you know that 80% of companies now compete based on customer experience (CX)? That speaks volumes about just how important it is to measure CX. 

There’s a challenge, however: customers' experience stretches across different channels and touchpoints, making it complex to track and interpret.

But out of the many CX metrics, each revealing different insights, which ones should you track?

Keep reading to learn the eight CX metrics you should focus on as part of your CX research and how to measure customer experience across every touchpoint.

TL;DR - Customer Experience Metrics to Track 

We’ll be looking at the following CX metrics:

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
3. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
4. Customer Effort Score (CES)
5. Churn Rate
6. Retention Rate
7. First Response Time (FRT)
8. Average Resolution Time (ART)

You can track these metrics from various feedback sources, like surveys, interviews, reviews, etc. But how do you use the feedback to understand the customer experience?

HeyMarvin, our AI research tool, can speed up customer feedback analysis from surveys, interviews, and unstructured sources like support tickets and sales calls. It then detects patterns and discovers sentiments about customer behavior.

Start analyzing for free to collect feedback from all avenues and build products that people love.

What Are Customer Experience Metrics?

CX metrics are measurements that reflect how customers perceive their interaction with your company. They can be qualitative and quantitative metrics that show:

• Brand loyalty
• Customer satisfaction
• Customer engagement
• Product performance

Why Customer Experience Measurements Matter for Product Teams?

Beyond their impact on customer satisfaction, CX metrics are beneficial to the product teams in these ways:

• Drive Innovation: By consistently tracking CX measurements, your product team can identify evolving customer needs, which can inspire new features and products that might not have surfaced otherwise.
• Identify Improvement Areas: CX metrics help your product team pinpoint the specific pain points in customers' interactions with your business. Once they identify these shortcomings, they can tailor products to customers’ preferences and anticipate their needs.
• Make Data-driven Decisions: When your product team can access actionable insights into how customers interact with and feel about your brand, they can prioritize designs that improve satisfaction and provide a more intuitive experience. 

What to Include in a Customer Experience Monitoring Framework

A CX monitoring strategy is essential for continuously providing positive experiences at every touchpoint and ensuring long-term success for your business.

Check out what your actionable framework should have:

Definable Goals

Your framework should have broad objectives, such as boosting customer satisfaction, reducing customer churn, and increasing repeat purchases.

Then, categorize them into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals (SMART), such as optimizing the onboarding process by 30% and achieving 80% satisfaction within the next four months.

Customer Touchpoints

Identify the CX touchpoints and understand where to capture data across the different phases of the customer journey. 

The data sources could be analytic tools, CRM systems, customer feedback surveys, social media interactions, or sales data.

Customer Feedback Systems

Set up clear systems to ensure the feedback reaches your team promptly and that they can take immediate action. 

For example, if you get a low CSAT score, it can trigger an email or Slack notification to the support team. You can also set it up to attach the customer’s feedback to the notification.

Key CX Metrics

Your customer experience framework should include key metrics that align with your business goals and needs. For example, if you want to track customer retention, you should track the churn rate. Other key metrics to measure include the CES, retention rate, and CSAT (all of which we’ve discussed in the next section).

Customer Experience Tools

Another aspect of the CX framework is analytics tools like HeyMarvin, which allow you to gain valuable insights into how your users interact and how to optimize the design to engage them better.

List of Customer Experience Metrics to Track

We’ve established the importance of monitoring CX metrics. But which ones should you evaluate?

Although the number of metrics you can track is large, we’ll discuss the top 8 popular ones.

In general, they are a combination of:

• Customer satisfaction and voice of customer (VoC) metrics
• Contact center and customer support metrics
• Operational metrics

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures your customers' loyalty and satisfaction. It is based on a simple survey in which your customers rate how likely they are to recommend your product (or service) to others on a scale of 0 to 10.

You then categorize the responses into three sections:

• Promoters (score 9 to 10): These are loyal customers who are most likely to share your brand with others.
• Passives (score 7 to 8): They are satisfied customers but are not expected to become promoters.
• Detractors (score 0 to 6): These are unhappy clients who are unlikely to make repeat purchases and might dissuade others from considering your offering.

Formula for NPS

If you get a positive score, your brand has more promoters than detractors; it means your CX  is strong and effective.

Why Should You Measure NPS

• With an NPS score, you can segment and tailor your marketing efforts based on the satisfaction levels.
• Identify loyal clients and encourage them to promote your products or services.
• Follow up with detractors to address their concerns and hopefully turn them into promoters.

2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The CLV is the total revenue a customer provides to a company throughout their relationship with the brand.

Formula for CLV

Why Should You Measure CLV

• Identify customers who contribute the most revenue, and make strategic marketing efforts to allocate resources wisely.
• With the CLV, you can focus on retaining existing customers and saving on customer acquisition costs.

3. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

In addition to calculating the NPS, you can use CSAT surveys to measure customer satisfaction levels and the percentage of satisfied customers.

Formula for CSAT

The higher the CSAT, the higher the satisfaction of your customers.

Why Should You Measure CSAT

• Measure the success of a specific event in the customer purchase journey. For example, after watching a demo or when interacting with a chatbot.
• Identify problems in your business and the overall customer loyalty.

4. Customer Effort Score (CES)

CES measures the ease with which your customers can achieve specific tasks or resolve issues when interacting with your brand.

Formula for CES

Why Should You Measure CES

• Identify pain points where your customers feel frustrated.
• With CES, you can make efforts to make customer interactions smooth and efficient.

5. Churn Rate

The churn rate is the percentage of clients who stop using your product or service over a specific duration. 

Formula for Churn Rate

High churn rates may indicate issues with your product, customer satisfaction, or stiff competition.

Why Should You Measure Churn Rate

• Evaluate if your marketing strategies resonate with your target market and implement efforts to reduce churn proactively.
• Get insights on how to improve your offerings.

6. Retention Rate

The opposite of the churn rate is the retention rate. It measures the number of customers your company has retained in a given period.

Formula for Retention Rate

A high number indicates that you have loyal customers, which highlights a successful customer experience strategy.

Why Should You Measure Retention Rate

• Get insights into your customer retention strategies.
• Help you predict revenue and plan growth initiatives.

7. First Response Time (FRT)

Another key CX metric is the FRT, which evaluates the time between a customer contacting support with an issue and the support team responding to it.

Why Should You Measure FRT

• Understand the efficiency of the customer support team in addressing inquiries.
• Help to meet the client's expectations and make them feel valued.

8. Average Resolution Time (ART)

In addition to the FRT, you can measure the average time it takes to resolve a customer's issues.

Formula for ART

A longer ART can drive away customers and lead to dissatisfaction.

Why Should You Measure ART

• Track how quickly your customer support team resolves customer needs.
• Assess your existing systems and determine if your support team requires additional training.

How to Evaluate Customer Experience Across the Journey

While you can measure the holistic view of the customer experience, some stages of the customer journey stand out more than others.

That’s why you should follow these 5 steps to measure and optimize interactions across every touchpoint:

1. Define Your Customer Journey and Touchpoints

Begin by understanding the stages your customers go through as they engage with your brand until they purchase goods and services. Typically, these stages include awareness, consideration, conversion, post-conversion, and advocacy.

Once you determine the customer journey phases, identify the touchpoints where clients interact with your brand. They can include:

• Apps
• Text
• Emails
• Surveys
• Websites
• Chatbots
• Social media channels

2. Pick Metrics for Each Touchpoint

Select the right metrics to track for each stage to ensure you’re evaluating the right experiences. Consider these metrics:

• Awareness: Use impressions, click-through rates, share of voice (SOV) in the market, and number of website visitors.
• Consideration: Check the page views, keyword traffic, time spent on the page, leads generated, multiclick behavior, and the focus rate.
• Conversion: Use metrics such as cart abandonment rates and average order value.
• Post-conversion: Check retention rates, customer sentiments, and customer satisfaction.
• Advocacy: Use metrics such as churn, customer lifetime value, NPS, and referrals.

3. Collect Data from Various Sources 

Gather data from various sources once you’ve picked your metrics to track. For instance:

• Monitor your social media channels to detect the sentiments and complaints about your brand.
• Monitor website analytics to analyze the average time per page and the bounce rate.
• Send out surveys to gather insights on key metrics, such as CSAT and CES.

4. Analyze Data using an AI Analytics Tool

Once you have collected data, you need to organize and analyze it. That’s where HeyMarvin, our AI research assistant, comes in:

• Analyze both the structured and unstructured data, including interviews, customer feedback, and sales calls.
• Extract insights, patterns, and trends to gain a deeper understanding of the data.
• Go a layer deeper and run a sentiment analysis on your data.
• Seamlessly direct feedback to every member of your organization so they can implement insights swiftly.

Book a quick demo and see how to turn scattered customer feedback into actionable CX insights.

5. Compare Data and Continuously Optimize

Finally, compare your CX metrics against your past performance and industry standards. 

Don’t forget to double down where you excel in the buyer journey and make improvements in other areas to enhance the customer experience.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

We’ve compiled answers to questions frequently asked about how to evaluate customer experience:

Why CX Measurement Drives Long-Term Loyalty and Retention?

By measuring the CX, you can implement strategies to improve your offerings to resonate with the customers' needs. You can also provide a consistent experience across different interactions and create a stronger emotional bond with the customers.

Ultimately, satisfied clients become loyal customers, and you can maintain a relationship with them over the years.

What Is the Difference Between Tracking Customer Experience and Measuring It?

Although tracking and measuring CX are often related, they differ in these ways:

• Tracking involves observing and collecting real-time feedback as it happens.
• Measuring, on the other hand, consists of analyzing customer interactions using structured metrics and systems.

What Are the Best Customer Experience Measurement Tools?

Here are our top tools for measuring customer experience:

1. HeyMarvin, the best qualitative data analysis software, analyzes CX feedback from surveys, customer support, and sales calls to understand trends, patterns, and even discover sentiments.
2. Zendesk is a CRM software that can track metrics, including CSAT and resolution time, across multiple channels.

Conclusion

Remember, if you don’t pay attention to the top eight CX metrics, such as CSAT, churn rate, and ART, your competitors definitely will. To get started, you simply need to create a CX monitoring framework using feedback systems and visualize your customer journey.

With HeyMarvin, you can get actionable, real-time insights out of these feedback systems to improve your customer experience. Our AI-powered agents can spot recurring patterns, sentiments, and trends.

Try HeyMarvin for free and discover the hidden ROI of your customers’ insights.