Customer Experience Metrics and User Science Tools to Keep in Mind
It’s been awhile since we have discussed this topic together and I wanted to share a fresh perspective and share it on my blog as well. I wanted to bring the metrics discussion specifically because there are very few companies out there that offer an excellent customer experience to their customers. I believe we should be talking about this way more than we do.
Benchmarking customer experience metrics is one of the most important things companies should keep in mind when thinking about improving their user experience. We’re all seeing how companies who are customer service centric are exceeding in their fields.
The challenge is how we measure the experience your customers are having with your product line. There are different ways to quantify and qualify so in this article we’ll explore a little bit more what are the metrics you should keep in mind.
How Do You Measure It?
User science is the ability to understand the user’s needs and behaviors. As Peter Drucker said, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. We understand every business is different, but keep in mind that depending on the industry, the metrics might also be different although the metrics are not exactly what will fix your company’s customer experience and make all your clients suddenly going to be happy.
It takes time, but it is a way to get you where you need to be. If you start tracking your customer metrics now, it’ll be so much easier to find out if the changes your team is making is actually improving your user experience. You can start by benchmarking some of the metrics mentioned in this article while combining qualitative information to provide more insights about the story and why’s behind the metrics you’re seeing.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
You probably heard about NPS before which means Net Promoter or Net Promoter Score that is the percentage of customers rating their likelihood to recommend a company, a product, or a service to other folks like their friends and family in a scale between 1–10. The scale means:
- 9–10 means they’re “promoters”.
- 7 or 8 are referred to as “passives”.
- 6 or below means they’re “detractors”.
You can find out about your product NPS by asking your customers to respond to a survey where you’ll ask them how likely it is that they will recommend our products, services or company to measure the responses by the number by the methodology (1–10) of our unique links conversations.
The scale will always be between 1–10 and the NPS score is calculated by subtracting the “promoters” from the “detractors”. One interesting thing is that it is important, you won’t enter the “passives’ ‘ numbers in the overall percentage calculation of customer responses.
Churn Rate
The churn rate is also sometimes called the attrition rate and it is used to measure the number of individuals or items moving out of a collective group over a specific period. For example, they’re your customers that won’t make a repeat purchase or the customers that cancel their subscription for a subscriber-based service model. The term can also be used to participant turnover in peer-to-peer networks.
The calculation is very simple, by dividing the numbers lost (customers, subscriptions, repeated purchases) by the total of active customers in any given cycle. The churn rate is an input into the customer lifetime value modeling, and you should keep in mind that companies without a subscriber-based service model might need to define what their churn means. This metric can be used to simulate the impact of many different areas, marketing investment being one of them.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
People use the term CSAT and it represents the measure of how services and products supplied by a company are or surpass their customer expectation. This metric will give you a rate that your customers have about your organization and you should keep in mind and analyze with your team.
The Customer Satisfaction is calculated by dividing all positive responses about your product or service by the total number of responses and multiplying by 100. Your result will be a percentage. The way you can gather this customer feedback can be by sending them a survey asking them to rate your service for example from “Very Satisfied” to “Not satisfied at all”.
Customer Loyalty & Engagement
Another metric to keep in mind is customer loyalty since loyal customers can be strong advocates of your brand, product or service with higher changes to be also engaged with the company announcements. To track this metric you can measure for example, how often your customers make their regular purchases. This behavior of buying and returning might be an indication they’re not consuming the competitors products or services.
An important aspect is to keep in mind it’s how engaged your customers are with your brand, product or service. Things you can keep in mind while measuring engagement are how long they spend on your website, which pages they engage with, how often they communicate with the brand via email and social networks for example.
Average Time Resolution
The Average Time Resolution metric measures the total time it takes for the company to resolve an issue since the first contact with a customer where the issue is first brought to the team’s attention and until the time it is fully corrected. In summary, the timing since you first sent that email notifying the company about your problem, until the time they actively solve it is called Average Time Resolution.
Of course, customers are happier when the company resolves their issues or answers their questions quickly. To calculate the average time resolution, you’ll need to divide the sum of the resolution timing by the total number of cases solved in a specific period of time. It’s important to mention this metric should include every customer interaction like phone calls, email, chat, social media or anything else between these interactions until the issue is truly resolved.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
This metric is used to measure the ease of service or product experience in an organization. The most common way to do this is by sending the customers some type of automated survey post experience interaction with them. For example, racking a statement on a scale predetermined based on the service or product they just received.
CES is calculated by your customers rating the questions you ask them from 1–5. This metric can help to determine the effort needed to your customers to complete a task like finding a product they’re looking for.
Recap
- User science will help you to understand why your users behave the way they do, and also validate the assumptions with data revealing new opportunities.
- The best customer experience happens when your product or service exceeds your customer expectations.
- Be strategic when asking for feedback, in some cases it’s also interesting to ask for their feedback some minutes after they had an interaction with your product.
- When a customer is trying to solve an issue or find an information the ideal number of interactions until they find what they need is the fewer the better, always.
- A lot of times the best thing is to manage the expectations of your customers sharing truthful and clear messages while trying to give them the best experience ever.
Additional Reading
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