Customers today have a multitude of options, with many brands offering similar products at competitive prices. It only takes them a moment of hesitation to leave your store and go to your competitors. But what makes them stay? It's not just about the products, but also about how customers are treated. A customer-centric approach to marketing is crucial to encourage them to stay.
The term customer experience (CX) refers to the impression that brands make on their customers, which influences how they perceive your company and, as a result, fosters brand loyalty. If you want to increase client retention and prevent churn, it's critical to measure customer experience in the right way.
Customer experience (CX) management is an expanding area, and there are no signs of it slowing down anytime soon. Today, there are dedicated CX leaders in more than 5,000 firms worldwide, with roughly half of them reporting to the CEO.
Most successful companies with more than $1 billion in revenue have more than 50 CX metrics, and some even have 200, all of which are owned and maintained by specific people across the company.
Metrics are like checkpoints that can help brands make changes to their procedures to better serve their customers. Rapid problem resolution can increase a customer's likelihood of remaining a customer by 2.4 times. In fact, 76% of customers are more likely to recommend a company to others if they are provided with specific, simple-to-use products and services, lowering the customer effort score (CES).
A customer experience matrix can also be used to justify previous investments, confirm whether improvements have been made, set goals and objectives for future progress, and intervene when corrective action is required.
Positive customer experiences can result in repeat business. Keeping that in mind, let's look at how to measure customer experience.
What is customer experience?
The customer experience (CX) refers to customers' overall perception of your brand during the entire buyer's journey. Their perception of your brand affects revenue and brand image.
The customer journey begins when a customer learns about a company and continues during and after the purchasing process. Also, CX takes into account how a consumer uses a product or service weeks, months, or even years after purchase.
Customer experience focuses on the interaction between a brand and its customers. Every connection is considered. Every interaction between the customer and the brand strengthens (or weakens) the relationship, whether it's a phone call to a customer service center, watching an advertisement, or even something as simple as paying a bill. What matters in each case is how buyers perceive those experiences overall.
According to Dave Dyson, senior customer service evangelist at Zendesk, customer experience is how customers feel about the sum of their interactions with a brand. This includes the advertising a potential buyer sees before becoming a customer, the sales experience, the quality of the product or service itself, and the customer service they receive after purchasing.
Businesses may put in considerable effort to lure customers into buying something, but it's crucial to consider the long-term relationship, which can entail offering help to clients even years after their purchase.
Why is it important to measure customer experience success?
The cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than the cost of keeping an existing one, and 32% of people have claimed they would stop availing of the service of a company after one negative experience.
One of the most crucial initiatives a business can undertake is measuring the customer experience. Customer feedback, when properly gathered and utilized, can help brands improve their products and services, refine their marketing message, drive sales, and more.
However, measuring customer experience presents numerous challenges. Making judgments based on inaccurate data, upsetting consumers with excessive survey frequency, sending poorly designed surveys, or neglecting to act on feedback gathered can all harm the same relationships you aspire to strengthen.
Your brand will lose out on a mine of useful information that may guide all areas of your organization if it fail in collecting customer feedback. Let's look at three benefits of measuring the customer experience matrix.
There are three main reasons why it is important to measure customer experience:
1. Drives sales
Brands need to periodically consider how their customer experience strategy effect the acquisition of new clients. Customer satisfaction and loyalty rise when you're committed to building solid relationships with your clients. Repeat customers are a gold mine for the sales team. They are more likely to re-purchase from you and, on top of that, they are good ambassadors of your brand and spread positive word-of-mouth to their relatives and friends. This results in faster sales cycles and higher close rates.
Another advantage is the competitive knowledge you'll learn by measuring the customer experience. Take a look at the responses to the open-ended survey questions you posed. When reviewing transcribed feedback, we frequently read remarks that demonstrate competitive advantages or shortcomings that customers have mentioned. We also learn more about our clients' market perspectives in comparison to competitors. Your sales team will then have access to this data, which they can use to improve their pitches.
In conclusion, brands can increase the percentage of loyal customers and drive sales if they measure customer experience.
2. Produces devoted employees
People are naturally drawn to and more committed to a goal when they believe they have a stake in its expansion and advancement.
The same is true for providing satisfying customer experiences and receiving positive feedback: doing so gives employees a reason to feel good about your organization's goals and their role in achieving them.
Consider that, in general, satisfied customers are preferable to angry ones to work with. And employees prefer to work for companies that have a good reputation in the markets they serve. Measuring and improving the customer experience improve both aspects: it makes customers more satisfied and improve the company's reputation. Hence, employees are more motivated to offer excellent service.
3. Defines priorities
A brand's senior management decides how to run the company daily. Does client feedback influence how decisions are made?
In most cases, businesses approach issues based on the experience and incomplete information. Instead, they should be considering reliable, quantifiable data that allow them to identify the best options.
Making the best decisions for your company is easier when you rely on client input. For instance, if you are planning to introduce a new product, gathering user feedback will make it possible to avoid wasting time and resources creating features no one will use.
8 Metrics to monitor customer experience success
Before we analyze the most important customer experience metrics to measure success, we must distinguish between qualitative and quantitative metrics.
Quantitative metrics
can be calculated using a specified quantity to be measured. It provides you with accurate data in mathematical form.
Qualitative metrics
are more like an opinion you make based on the data you receive. Let's look at some of these metrics in detail.
1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
One of the simplest ways to gauge your customers' experiences is to use the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).
CSAT can help you get a sense of the customer experience even though it is normally employed as a customer service metric because support interactions are a significant part of CX. This short survey measures customer satisfaction with your company after an encounter.
For instance, a consumer can rate a support agent's response depending on how satisfying or useful the solutions are after speaking with a live person via online chat. You can also inquire about a customer's satisfaction with a good or service after they have purchased it.
All you have to do to determine CSAT is send a survey immediately after a transaction or interaction. On a similar scale, this survey will ask respondents how satisfied they were with their overall experience. The average result of such a poll is the CSAT.
2. Customer Health Score
Customer Health Score provides you with a broad picture of the state of a particular customer account. Along with your previously established standards for what you deem to be excellent or poor for a customer success scorecard, it considers various customer behavioral factors. Your customer success tool determines the health score based on these inputs and displays it to you.
3. Customer Effort Score (CES)
CES refers to how much effort your customers will take to do a task. It could be anything from receiving a response to a support request to discovering the good or service they needed.
CES is a transactional metric gauging how easily customers can locate what they're looking for. Your clients are more inclined to make additional purchases if you can make the customer experience as simple as possible. According to research, compared to 4% of consumers who put in an effort, 94% of those who had an effortless experience are likely to make another purchase.
To calculate CES, you wouldn't ask your customer about their experience by sending them a post-interaction survey. The poll will ask them to rank convenience and ease-of-usage, from low to high. Follow the average score and scoring distribution to determine your median score.
4. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
One of the most common ways to gauge customer satisfaction is via the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Your NPS will reveal the ratio of customers who adore, are neutral toward, or dislike your brand.
To calculate NPS, brands need to survey their customers, asking them a question about various likelihoods (would you recommend our brand to a friend, would you shop again with us, etc.) on a scale of 0 to 10. Scores 0–6 indicate detractors, 7-8 indicate passives, and 9–10 indicate promoters.
Your NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of negative feedback from positive feedback. (NPS= % of promoters - % of detractors)
For instance, if the percentage of promoters is 70 and the percentage of detractors is 20, your NPS will be 50%.
5. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
MRR in customer success survey reveals how much money your clients bring each month for your company. These can be obtained in several ways, including renewal fees, upselling, cross-selling, etc.
It is known as Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) when computed annually. With this score, you can quickly determine how many consumers are satisfied with their customer experience to the point that they have started endorsing your brand.
MRR = Number of subscribers under a monthly plan * ARR
For instance, if you have 5 subscribers on the $200/month plan. The MRR will be: (5 $200) = $1000*
6. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
CLV measures the total value a customer has contributed to a company throughout their relationship. In other words, it refers to how much they "value" a company. The amount spent by the company to retain that customer is also factored into the assessment.
It's a useful customer experience statistic since you can observe if a client is happy and spending more money with your company or if they are dissatisfied and spending less.
To calculate CLV, customer value and average customer longevity are multiplied together to determine CLV. The higher the CLV, the better the CX.
Let's look at how a grocery chain may view CLV as an example. Based on information from the company's ERP system, it can be determined that throughout a seven-year relationship, the typical consumer spends $50 per visit and frequents the business 26 times on average per year. These three numbers—50 x 26 x 7—can be multiplied to determine the grocery store's CLV, which comes to $9,100.
However, if the customer's spending decreases over time, you can figure out why and devise remedies to increase the CLV.
7. Customer Retention Rate
It measures how many consumers continue to use or pay for your services over a specific period.
Retention can tell you whether or not a customer will stop using or paying for your services. This can occur a week, a month, or a quarter later. Additionally, you may observe how retention impacts various audience groups.
When analyzing retention, you can better understand the customer experience by keeping track of particular user groups or stages in the product lifecycle. Over time, you'll gain insight into how much users appreciate your product and have the ability to make adjustments.
Your retention rate can be calculated in a few different ways. You can use the straightforward method mentioned below to determine your customer retention rate (CRR) using the clients you had at the beginning (S), end (E), and during the measurement period (N).
The formula is as follows: CRR = ((E-N)/S) x 100
Imagine you have 130 clients at the beginning of the month. You lose 9 consumers in that month while gaining 23 new ones. 144 customers at the end of the period and 130 customers at the beginning of the period. Therefore, the retention rate is 93% (144-23/130x100).
8. Customer Journey Analytics
Examining the customer journey is another method to measure customer experience.
Your customer journey map can provide information about your customers' needs, wants, and pain areas. Additionally, it will assist you in comprehending every interaction a customer has during their journey. You will collect your client journey analytics in the same manner.
To investigate a customer journey, you should gather information from your social media accounts, advertisements, website, corporate events, product evaluations, onboarding, customer loyalty programs, emails, and surveys before analyzing the customer journey. Then, to assess your customer experience, you can make a page or tab on your customer journey map just to report the metrics of your touch points.
How Layerise can help you improve your customer experience
If you want to exceed all expectations and delight your customers with a remarkable experience, consider Layerise. With Layerise, you can combine appealing analytics with insights to produce the finest customer experience, enhancing your customer satisfaction and your brand’s revenue stream.
Layerise will help you master:
First-party customer data collection.
Feedback gathering.
Customer support and education.
If you want to learn more about how Layerise can help you improve your customer experience, book a free demo now!
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