11 Customer Service and  CX Metrics You Must  Use Like a Pro

Discover valuable insights on how customers experience your brand!

15/05/2024; 7 min to read

Have you ever heard “Data is the new oil.”?

The concept of "data being the new oil" is related to the similarities in how the two resources become valuable. Just like oil, raw data isn't valuable in and of itself; rather, the value is created when it is gathered quickly, completely, and accurately, and connected to other relevant data.

It is very valid for customer experience area as well. Today, certain metrics can help marketers and CX professionals to understand and measure customer experience. Good curation on metrics and meaningful connection among indicators would potentially be very powerful tool for delivering excellent experience and drive business value.

So, here are 11 customer service and CX metrics you must  use in order to understand how customers experience your brand:

Loyalty and advocacy

1. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT):

This may be the most popular way to measure how satisfied a customer is with your product or service, or any part of the customer experience. It’s a rating scale, typically 1-5 or 1-10 (0-10 is also used).

Larger scale means higher probability to catch up the nuances in customers' response.

In 1 to 5 scale, response translates to the following:

• Very satisfied – 5 (Excellent)

• Somewhat satisfied – 4 (Good)

• Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied – 3 (Neutral or Average)

• Somewhat dissatisfied – 2 (Poor)

• Very dissatisfied – 1 (Very Poor)

Every major customer transaction must be followed with a CSAT survey answerable between “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied”. This allows the brand to understand if it has met customer expectations. 

Here are some examples of CSAT questions:

• How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the brand?

• How satisfied are you with the product you just purchased?

• How satisfied are you with our customer service? 

• Would you buy another product from us? 

CSAT is very flexible. You can change the questions based on what you really want to know and the touchpoints you wish to evaluate. 

To complete the survey, ask an open question about the motivation on why they answered the way they did. This will give you a better idea of where you need to improve. 

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS):

Bain & Company created NPS as one of the most powerful metrics to determine if the customer experience was good enough to garner a recommendation.

Net Promoter Score is also seen as customer loyalty metric, which evaluate the likelihood that customer will buy again and resist market pressure to defect to a competitor.

As this metric measurement is standardised it allows direct comparison between businesses from same industry, while from industry to industry there a lot of specifics and thus making parallel is inappropriate.

The standard NPS question is: On a scale of 0 to 10, what is the likelihood you would recommend (the company) to a friend, colleague or family member?

The customer provides a numerical answer between 0 and 10, with 0 indicating “not at all likely” and 10 meaning “extremely likely.”

The customers are divided into these groups based on their scores:

• Detractors (0 to 6) – They are not fans of the brand and have the ability to impede growth by negatively spreading their dissatisfaction to others. 

• Passives (7 to 8) – They are mostly satisfied with the brand, but are not enthusiastic enough to spread the good word. Moreover, they are prone to be enticed by other brands with more attractive offers or better products.

• Promoters (9 to 10) – They are enthusiastic about the brand and will continue to support the company while encouraging others to do the same.

There several dimensions of Net Promoter Score: Transactional, Relational and Benchmark.

• Transactional NPS is used once after specific purchase or with particular transaction or in the end of a client’s journey and measure a key moment and its impact on recommendation.

• Relational NPS survey normally is done once per year with the Company you buy every week/month and evaluate overall experience and identify generic painpoints.

• Benchmark NPS survey is done usually once per 2 years with the Company you buy every week but also with competitors and its support setting NPS objectives and identify key battles to reach those objectives.

This metric will be more useful when supplemented with other CX metrics. 

3. Customer Effort Score (CES):

Customer Effort Score measures the amount of effort that a customer must expend to interact with a company. It shows the ability of the company to provide easy access to products & services.

It’s a good complementary metric for the NPS, so you will get holistic data on what constitutes an outstanding customer experience. NPS and CES will also give you a glimpse of business growth and customer retention.

To get your brand’s CES, you must prepare a survey in this format: “The (brand) made it easy for me to handle my issue.” The customer is asked to score from 1 to 5 or 1 to 7, with 1 as “strongly disagree” and 5 or 7 as “strongly agree.” 

A high CES score means that your company provides an effortless experience for customers, while a low CES means that people find your processes arduous or your customer support ineffective.

The less effort required, the better the CES—and, arguably, the higher the customer satisfaction. 

Financial impact

4. Customer Lifetime Value:

Tracking customer lifetime value (CLV) is crucial in any customer experience program. It represents the overall value a customer brings to your company, taking into account their entire relationship with your business rather than just individual purchases.

Knowing what the average customer is worth can help you make good decisions about how much to invest in customer service and experience or how much to spend to retain your customers.

Moreover, keeping track of CLV elements can enhance customer loyalty and enable more informed choices for boosting revenue.

5. Customer Retention and Customer Churn:

These two go side-by-side. Retention measures the percentage of customers who return. Churn measures customers who don’t.

Customer retention is the opposite of churn. It measures the percentage of existing customers who continue to spend money on the brand over a certain period. 

Because customer retention is more profitable than acquisition, brands should discern customer loyalty: what makes them come back?

Complement customer retention and customer churn with another metrics to gain customer feedback and provide a better customer experience.

6. Customer Referral Rate:

Referral rate is a metric that measures how many clients were referred to a business by existing customers. It helps businesses understand the effectiveness of their referral programs and the satisfaction level of their current customers.

Referrals via clicks or links are easily measurable. However, if there are no referral codes or specific methods to measure referrals, employees just ask customers how they heard about the brand to determine if a referral occurred.

While NPS asks customers how likely they are to refer the brand to others, the referral rate measures the actual referral action.

Operational efficiency

7. First Call Resolution (FCR):

The first call resolution or first contact resolution metric is a contact center measure how many customer calls or contacts are resolved on the first interaction.

FCR often correlates with other metrics such as average wait time and customer satisfaction rate. A reduced waiting time enhances the customer experience and increases the likelihood of resolving issues on the first contact.

Ideally, it’s the first time every time!

This metric plays well next to Customer Effort Score (CES) above. And an improved FCR directly translates into higher customer satisfaction (CSAT)

8. Average Handle Time (AHT):

As the name implies, this is about how long a customer support agent spends “handling” the customer’s issue.

It’s best to resolve customer issues as quickly as possible to increase overall customer satisfaction. This is why average handle time (or resolution time) matters, especially in call centers or live chats . And it is still a useful benchmark to encourage your customer service team to keep improving. 

Many companies use this to measure an agent’s productivity, and that can be a mistake. If agents know they are graded on how many calls they make, they will hurry the customer off the call, which can cause the customer to feel under-appreciated.

If you talk about short AHT and also care about NPS or CSAT, then you’re going to struggle to have strong ratings and reviews.

9. Average Wait Time (AWT):

Average Wait Time (AWT), helps with the confusion between hold time and handle time. Making a customer wait can cause frustration. If the customer was upset or frustrated with the company or its product before the call, how do you think they will feel after being put on hold for an unreasonable period of time?

Most of customers feel companies don’t value their time when they call customer support due to long waiting time. The goal is simple: reduce AHT/AWT!

When customers have a long wait time, they start the call by complaining about how long it took to answer the call. Therefore, the average handle time (AHT) is higher due to the time spent by the customer inquiring about the wait time and the agent apologising for the long wait time.

Customer delight

10. Time to Happiness:

This measures how long it takes a customer to go from unhappy (disappointed, angry, etc.) to being happy.

This begins the moment they start to resolve their problem, which could be time spent on a website, interacting with a chatbot, on a phone call (including the hold time), etc. And keep in mind that the customer often doesn’t call the moment they have a problem. While we can’t control that, we must not forget it’s there.

Time to Happiness isn’t often considered, but it’s an important way to understand the customer’s journey to resolution from beginning to the end.

11. Time Well Spent (TWS): 

People want value for their time. Time is the key driver of experience value at work and in life. When people enjoy the time they spend with your product / company, then you’ve produced Time Well Spent.

Time Well Spent is the best indicator that you are creating an experience that has value.  It is focused on product/solution improvement first.

A focus on time well spent will help you think through the linkages between product, channel, and engagement. 

Choose Which Metrics to Track

No one becomes a leader in their industry without listening first to the customer. Companies often have multiple touchpoints with customers that occur across including sales, delivery, support, etc.

You should know what data your company needs and find the most relevant metrics. Talking about customer experience most companies start with three metrics that are simple yet insightful: NPS, CES, and CSAT. 

However, in order to proof the value of all the efforts you put to improve your customers' experience always look for combination of metrics that give broader perspective on clients suitable for your company's current situation.

And, it’s important to always close the loop with a customer if they’re unhappy and thus fully understand what you could do better to keep them to business.

The most effective Voice of Customer programs allow you to connect and engage with customers at key points along the customer journey.