How to Measure Customer Experience: Best Practices

Top-notch customer experience is what differentiates a company from its competitors. It is also a foundation for good and lasting customer relationships and decreased churn. 

According to Microsoft, 54% of customers have a higher expectation from support and service than they did a couple of years ago. Measuring customer experience is an important step to understanding the best ways to improving the services a business provides. 

What Is Customer Experience? 

Customer experience is the entire scope of communication users have with a business. It includes online interactions, in-shop experience, and any type of communication that may come from when a customer first visits a website to when they make a purchase. It also includes any bonuses, surveys, and other types of contact that may happen during a user-brand interaction. 

Top 7 Metrics to Measure Customer Experience

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

80% of global businesses use CSAT to improve and measure customer experience. 

Customer Satisfaction is usually measured according to regular surveys, product return rate, a number of complaints, and so on. It can be measured right after the service was provided or a short while after it. 

Whatever the way a business decides to measure it, there are several ground rules for it: 

• The process should be swift. In a fast-paced world we live in today, a customer may not even remember what service they got a week after they got it. Usually, a business has up to 3 days to ask for fair feedback. 
• Surveys need to be tailored to every customer’s experience. Implementing AI into the process is one of the best ways to make sure every consumer feels special and valued.
• It is important to make sure customers know their feedback is received and appreciated. If a company ends up measuring customer experience and making changes into its customer journey because of the feedback, it needs to notify their customers, and thank them for their input. 

Customer Satisfaction score is one of the top ways to both measure customer experience and improve it. 

How to calculate Customer Satisfaction score: take the number of satisfied customers (those who rate your services 4 or 5 out of 5) and divide them by the total number of responses. 

Net Promoter

83% of customers are ready to trust a business if it was recommended by someone they know or trust, so NPS can play a pivotal role for a business, especially a growing one. 

Net Promoter score shows how many customers are ready to recommend your business after having interacted with it. Apart from being one of the most important ways of measuring customer experience, it is also the easiest one. A business can do it by simply asking “Would you recommend us to your friends and family?”. Those who answer yes are net promoters and brand ambassadors. 

To increase its Net Promoter score, a business needs to evaluate its customers’ requirements and deliver the best service possible. 

How to measure customer experience when using Net Promoter score? Easy, the more people are ready to recommend a business to their friends, family, and colleagues, the better the customer experience is. 

How to calculate Net Promoter score: subtract the number of detractors from the number of promoters. 

Customer Churn and Retention

The average number of retained customers for a business is a bit more than 20% of its entire customer base. In turn, 82% of businesses admit that retaining a customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one. 

Most of today’s customers turn after their first bad experience with a company. Customer Churn and Retention is a perfect way to measure customer experience because of how honest the data a business can receive are. When analyzed properly, Customer Churn and Retention can be put to good use when measuring customer experience and improving it. 

How to measure customer experience when using churn data? Easy — when most customers either do not come back or leave bad reviews and churn after that, the service clearly needs to be improved. 

How to calculate customer retention: start with the number of customers at the end of a reporting period (E). Subtract the number of customers you gained during a reporting period (N). Divide the result by the number of customers at the beginning of the reporting period. Multiply the results by 100. The formula for the equation is CRR = ((E-N)/S) x 100.

Average Resolution Time

To properly measure customer experience and deliver top-notch average resolution time, a business needs to know the following: 

• How experienced their customer service team is
• How big their ticket inflow is
• Whether there are any spikes in ticket inflow during the day
• Whether their CRM system can handle the inflow
• How difficult the requests are and how long it takes to resolve them

It is obvious: the smaller the resolution time is, the better it is for both customers and a brand itself. Measuring customer experience is pivotal to understand how the Average Resolution Time correlates with the Customer Satisfaction Score. 

How to calculate Average Resolution Time: divide total resolution time by the total number of resolved tickets during a reporting period. 

First Contact Resolution

70-79% of first contact resolutions is considered a benchmark for the Customer Support industry. 

Users do not want to be repeatedly contacted by businesses. They want their tickets and issues to be resolved fast — upon first contact, if possible. It is also one of the best ways to measure customer experience and to look at it through your customers’ eyes. And what do customers want to see? A company with a great reputation and fantastic customer service. Moreover, 17% of US customers are willing to pay more to purchase from a brand known for its great service. 

There are two steps to make sure first contact resolution is a standard of customer service:

• The team should be staffed with enough people
• The team should undergo regular training to have sufficient knowledge for first contact resolution

To properly measure customer experience, a business needs to have a deep understanding of whether its support team is capable of fulfilling customers’ First Contact Resolution requirements and expectations. 

How to measure First Contact Resolution: divide the number of tickets resolved upon first contact by the number of tickets received during the same time period.

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value is a total amount of pure revenue acquired by a business during the course of its relationship with a customer. This metric is essential for planning budget and improvements. It can help a business prioritize enhancements that can increase customers’ lifetime value in the long run. 

Using Customer Lifetime Value to measure customer experience is easy — the better the experience is, the longer users stay with a business, and the higher their lifetime value is. 

Together with Average Handle Time and the Repeat Call Rate, Customer Lifetime Value is one of the best ways to measure customer experience. 

How to measure Customer Lifetime Value: multiply customers’ average purchase value by an average purchase frequency, and by average customer lifespan. 

Customer Journey Analysis

As cliché as that may sound, to properly measure customer experience, a business needs to understand what exactly its customers go through when they decide to buy from it or interact with it. To properly understand the ins and outs of customer journey, a business needs to answer the following questions: 

• How easy is it for customers to find a business in the first place? 
• Is the purchasing process understandable? 
• How easy is it for a customer to reach a support team? 
• What is the First Contact Resolution rate? 
• How many customers churn after the first contact or purchase? 
• How many customers become a brand’s promoters and recommend it to their friends? 

Constant analysis of customer journey and changes made in accordance with customers’ expectations will ensure every customer is satisfied and becomes a business’ advocate. 

Why Should a Business Measure Customer Experience? 

To Make Its Team More Customer-Centric

Customer-centric businesses are 60% more profitable than companies that do not focus on their consumers. Focusing on their users and consumers and making sure every step of their customer journey is pleasant and provides them with exactly what they need is one of the best approaches a business can take. This, of course, is impossible without measuring customer experience and meticulously following all customer experience metrics. 

Customer Centricity — The SupportYourApp Approach

For the SupportYourApp team, nothing is more important than the success of our clients’ customers. Our customer support professionals always make sure to satisfy every user, answer every question, and resolve every ticket. 

There are several things that help us achieve that: 

• Security — SupportYourApp is PCI DSS, HIPAA, CCPA, and GDPR-compliant. We are also ISO certified. We have always adhered to the highest cybersecurity standards the industry has posed. The habit of setting every process in a secure manner makes sure we can process large amounts of data without fearing that they may be compromised. Our team also undergoes regular security training and always stays on top of the industry trends and standards. 
• An in-house built CRM system — for more than a decade, a team of SupportYourApp has been developing and perfecting our in-house built CRM system — QCRM. It allows us to provide every customer with omnichannel support and ensure our communication is always timely and of high quality. Apart from the CRM system itself, QCRM also includes: 
  • QUIDGET — an online chat that can be embedded into our clients’ websites and provides support teams with quick and seamless customer communication. 
  • QUOSTON — a set of Machine Learning and Deep Learning tools that can sort customer communication by sentiment, predict possible answers, and even automate some actions. As a result, support teams start having more time to resolve actual queries faster and with no mistakes. 
• Non-stop development — our team never stops learning. We are always happy to implement new approaches and communication tools into our everyday processes to make every customer as satisfied as possible. Non-stop learning helps us to always provide the best Support-as-a-Service services to our clients and their users, no matter the global circumstances. 

Measuring Customer Experience Helps Increase the Service Level

How can a business understand it needs to tweak its services? What changes need to be prioritized? What direction does a company need to develop in to keep on providing the best service? 

These questions are almost impossible to answer if a business skips the ‘Measure customer experience’ step in its research. It, first and foremost, allows a customer service team to see what their users really think about them and what steps they need to take to truly make their customer relations remarkable. 

Service Level — The SupportYourApp Approach

Our team always makes sure every customer gets the best support possible. There are several approaches that we utilize to make sure our every response is up to the highest industry requirements: 

• We always call customers by their first names to provide the ultimate personalization
• We keep our communication with one another and with our clients open. This helps us to be on the same page and streamline our communication.
• We are staying on top of the industry trends and implementing the latest technologies and AI- and ML-powered solutions. 
• To properly measure customer experience and maintain the service level consistently high, we monitor QA and make sure there are no rough edges. 

Our teams also follow customers’ reviews on the App Store and Google Play Market platform up. This allows us to resolve minor issues on the spot without making customers come to our support teams for help. We utilize a proactive approach when it comes to surveys and reviews. This allows us to make changes on the go, which makes our services dynamic and adaptable. 

To Hear Customers’ Voices and Opinions 

42% of businesses never survey their customers’ opinions. Only 12% of customers believe a business when it says ‘customers come first’. 

To grow, businesses need to understand the direction they have to move in. That is impossible if they do not know what their customers expect of them in the future and what changes they want to see to make their customer experience better. 

Customers’ Voices — The SupportYourApp Approach

When it comes to customer feedback, SupportYourApp always welcomes it. After all, it is one of the best ways to measure customer experience and ensure their success. 

Upon request, we can collect and categorize all customer feedback about our clients’ products and services and then present possible solutions for customers’ tickets. Our Service Delivery Managers and Team Leaders work closely together to make sure every solution we offer our clients is not only possible to implement, but will also have a direct influence on customer satisfaction and journey. 

Having been in the customer support and service industry for more than a decade, we know and can anticipate what customers want and how they will behave as the market changes and moves. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we would suggest our clients adjust their services and our approach to communication, so that every customer not only got the answers they needed, but also the attention they sought. This ensured that even during the toughest moments in the supply chain disruptions, everyone stayed informed on the status of their orders. As a result, the Customer Satisfaction KPI did not decrease, even despite the difficult situation. 

Measuring Customer Experience Is the Key to Success

To properly measure customer experience is to give it a lot of time. The process requires deep analysis of customers’ wants and needs. It should also include the analysis of what they may anticipate in the future and what approach a business needs to adopt to make every customer not only becomes a returning one, but turns into a true advocate of a brand. 

While the process may seem tangled, paying it the attention it requires is worth its while, as measuring customer experience will help every company connect with its customer base and increase its revenue. Looking to hire a professional Support-as-a-Service provider to help you measure customer experience and increase your Customer Satisfaction Score? Message us at [email protected], and our team of professionals will get back to you as soon as possible.

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