Customer Experience Analytics: Definition, Metrics, Customer Journey

Customer experience analytics is a perfect way for businesses to improve their service and attract more customers. Tracking CX analytics allows businesses to retain 89% of customers who would leave a business for a competition after just one bad experience. That is almost the entire customer base!

What are the most important customer experience analytics, how to track them to make customers happy and what to do with them once the information is gathered?

What Are Customer Experience Analytics?

Customer experience data analytics are the numerical expression of the quality of customer experience and customer journey. This might seem easy — just track every customer-related number on the board, right? Wrong! 

Viewing customers as a list of numbers might be damning. The tricky part is to know what numbers to look at, how to make the right conclusions and how to implement the right changes based on them. This is a true art of customer experience analytics.

Before diving into the process of analytics, we need to understand what is customer journey and how customer experience is formed. 

What Is a Customer Journey? 

Customer journey contains five stages:

• Awareness-Consideration

Customers become aware of the brand as soon as they see an advertisement or form a need for a product. They then might do research on the company, the ads of which they saw, the product and even search for a better offer.

A personalized advertisement will make all the difference in the world at this point. 79% of customers say they are more likely to respond to a personalized offer. Moreover, 63% of customers say they are annoyed by old and generic ads. The advertisement must also be clear and carry the brand’s message in a way that would be instantly understood by any potential customer.

At this stage, it is important to provide your customers with an omnichannel experience and make their journey as convenient as possible. 9 out of 10 customers want to see an omnichannel approach and seamless transfer between channels of communication. Make omnichannel a basis of this stage and the customers are sure to make the choice in favor of your brand. 

• Purchase-Retention

Whether the customer will make a purchase and whether they will return to you is based on several factors:

1. The look and usability of the website;
2. The simplicity of the purchasing and ordering process;
3. Payment methods;
4. The speed and quality of delivery;
5. The quality of the product itself.

If any of them is not up to standard, customer experience analytics will show it. The issues with the website, the order form and the payment will be seen through the bounce rate. The number of complaints will show problems with delivery and quality of product. A lot of late orders will indicate a problem within the supply chain.

Eliminating any issue in the shortest time will have a direct effect on your purchase rate. Once again customer experience analytics save the day!

• Advocacy

78% of customers say a quality of service and support directly influences their choice of brand. For example, customer support provides added value to any business improving the numbers shown in customer experience analytics. This influences the advocacy rate further expanding your customer base. 

CX Analytics — What to Track?

There are several customer experience analytics every company needs to put on board to understand if their customers get everything out of their journey: 

• Customer interaction

🗝️ Key questions to answer: 

• How do customers interact with your brand?
• Are all channels of customer communication covered by the team?
• How long does a customer have to wait for a response?
• Do you track all digital experience analytics necessary? 

Any datum you need might be found within the way your customers interact with your brand and team.

• Customer website activity

🗝️ Key questions to answer: 

• What pages generate the most traffic?
• Where do users leave my website/What pages prompt the most bounce rate?
• How does my website’s speed affect my UX?
• Do I use SEO correctly?
• How does a mobile version of my website perform?

A website is a tricky question — 80% of businesses think it provides superb customer service while only 8% of customers agree with this statement. There is an enormous gap between what customers and businesses perceive as a good customer experience. As a result, businesses lose a big chunk of customer base because they track wrong customer experience analytics. 

• Net Promoter Score

🗝️ Key questions to answer:

• How likely are my customers to advise my business to their friends and family?
• Is my customer service good enough to be advised?
• How can I check my NPS?

NPS is a whole different methodology that allows businesses to gain understanding of their customer satisfaction level. If the customers leave negative feedback, it gives vendors the opportunity to learn what their customers really think about their services and products and improve them based on negative reviews. 

NPS, just like any other customer experience metric will not make sense if tracked only occasionally. It needs to be tracked and analyzed on a regular basis. Changes are to be implemented after every analysis. This in the only way to achieve results and improve customer experience based on the analytics.

• Customer return rate

🗝️ Key question to answer: 

• Is customer experience good enough for customers to come back?

An average e-commerce businesses aims 80% of its budget to acquiring new customers rather than to retaining existing ones. Those making repeat purchases could be of mare value. Those who made 1 purchase from you are 27% more likely to buy for the second time. After the second purchase, they are 54% more likely to return again. Repeat customers are also 9 times more likely to convert than any first-time customer. 

There is no point in underestimating the value of a return customer. It is better to do everything to ensure that most of your customer base turns loyal and makes repeat purchases. 

How to Improve Customer Experience Data Analytics? 

Every marketing department strives to do everything they can to improve customer experience analytics along with the customer journey. This way they make sure their customer experience is at the highest level every step of the way. To improve customer experience analytics is to ensure the following:

1. Set your goals straight

Aimless tracking of every number will yield no result and show no useful information. Simply knowing your website’s bounce rate would provide you with little to no information. 

Knowing why you track customer experience analytics and how to use them on practice on the other hand will be a game changer for any business. Having something to aim for will add more tasks to your business agenda. But it will also straighten out the outlook you have in your business and its future. 

2. Adapt to changes in customer behavior

Customer expectations analytics is a perfect tool to track changes in customer behavior and preferences. This can help you develop new strategies and perfect customer experience to the point where they would not want to leave you. 

Being prepared for the changes in customer behavior will help you stay calm when customer experience analytics change. Adapt to the seasonal behavior and the realities of the market and changes in customer experience analytics will never surprise you. 

3. Never stop analyzing digital experience analytics

While constant tracking and gathering of the statistics is useful, it is crucial to never stop analyzing the customer experience analytics and make the right conclusions out of them. All changes are to be data-driven rather than by-the-feeling. Make sure to implement only correct and timely changes based on the most recent customer experience analytics and your customer satisfaction will climb higher. 

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