1. September 10, 2020
Customer Experience Measurement: How to Gain CX
Insight & Reach the Aha!
process.st/customer-experience-measurement
Thom James Carter
September 10, 2020
Customer Success, Processes, Support
This is a guest post by Alyse Falk. Alyse is a freelance writer, and she handles stories
about the latest developments in the field of technology. Passionate about AI, Alyse has
extensive experience writing articles and essays on data-driven analytics, cloud
computing, cybersecurity, machine learning, and IoT devices.
Customer feedback is integral to understanding how to deliver a consistently good
customer experience. By gathering feedback, you stop guessing about what your customers
do and don’t like and, instead, gain direct action items for how to improve customer
experience in the future.
Improving customer experience (otherwise known as CX) comes with many benefits.
Perhaps the largest of all is that your customers will get better service quality, leading to
increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.
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2. Besides improved customer experiences, you will also get significant financial benefits. In
fact, 73 percent of companies with above-average customer experience perform better
financially than their competitors with a lower level of CX!
However, getting good customer feedback and reaching that ‘Aha!’ moment so you can
improve customer experience can be tricky.
That’s why, in this guest post, I’ll be telling you everything you need to know about
customer experience measurement, how to do it, and how Process Steet can help.
Read through these sections for everything you need to know:
Or, if you wanted to start compiling customer feedback straight away, here’s Process
Street’s Customer Feedback Checklist Template.
Click here to get the Customer Feedback Checklist Template!
Let’s jump right in.
What is customer experience measurement (and why measure
CX)?
(Source)
Customer experience measurement is the practice of measuring customer experience at all
points of the customer journey. Measuring customer experience allows companies to tailor
their campaigns in a more customer-centric and personalized way. Customer experience
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3. can be measured using different methods and metrics, such as CSAT, NPS, and CES, to
name just a few.
Before discussing the CX metrics further, it is important to first cover the basics.
Let me tell you why you need to measure CX.
Measuring CX is not just an additional option in your customer strategy. Rather, it is a
must for any company that works with clients.
Here are some of the key benefits of employing CX measurement into your strategy:
It gives you a better perspective of the product-market fit, customer satisfaction, and
expectations.
Helps to improve service quality.
Allows you to validate your assumptions and properly assess the effectiveness of your
CX strategy. ✅
Helps to improve customer engagement, advocacy, and increase loyalty.
Helps to set goals and enables future improvements.
Most importantly, measuring CX will help you make your customers more satisfied with
your business. It is hard to disagree with 90 percent of CEOs who believe that customers
have the biggest impact on the company’s strategies.
What to do before measuring customer experience
(Source)
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4. It is crucial to learn more about your target audience, map the customer journey, and
assess your problem areas before measuring CX. Discovering all of the above will help you
better utilize the results of CX measurement along the entire customer journey.
Here’s what you need to do first.
Before measuring customer experience #1: Get to know your target
audience
You must know your customers before conducting any kind of customer experience
measurements. Understanding your target audience gives you a competitive advantage.
Also, it helps in creating more personalized and targeted email marketing campaigns and
promotions.
To measure customer experience, it is pivotal to understand their expectations and needs
in terms of what makes them satisfied with your products and/or services. Create a
timeline of the customer journey and point out their needs and expectations at each
touchpoint along the journey.
Before measuring customer experience #2: Map the customer journey and
identify the touchpoints
Once you have discovered the insights about your target audience, it is time to analyze the
customer journey. Did you know that companies that use customer journey maps lower
their cost of service by 15-20 percent?
To help you lower costs too, use Process Street‘s Customer Journey Map Template.
Click here to get the Customer Journey Map Template!
It is important to map the entire customer journey concerning the customer perspective.
Identify the key points when customers interact with your brand and form their opinions.
Think of each touchpoint as an opportunity to improve customer experiences.
Before measuring customer experience #3: Assess your problem areas
and work on them systematically
Now, as you have learned more about customers and identified the touchpoints along the
customer journey, you have to evaluate your current CX strategy. To do this, work on
identifying the key problem areas, and assess each of the problems and start working on
them systematically.
With that covered, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of customer experience metrics.
The key customer experience metrics (and which ones to choose)
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5. (Source)
Let’s first figure out how to choose the right CX metrics.
What is important to note is that there is no universal metric that will work for every
business in every industry. That is why it is so important to choose metrics that make sense
for your business.
Here are some aspects you should consider when choosing customer experience metrics:
Relevance to your business: Make sure that you measure the things that are
relevant to your business and make sense for the customers.
Understanding how to utilize feedback before surveying customers: Make
sure you can draw actionable insights from the data you are collecting. Do not
overload your customers with loads of questions. All the questions you use in surveys
must be clear to the customers and serve a particular purpose.
Speaking of surveys, once you’ve sent yours out, use Process Street’s Customer Feedback
Survey Process to expertly manage your responses to the survey results.
Click here to get the Customer Feedback Survey Process!
The key customer experience metrics, explained
It is time to start measuring the customer experience. This can be done with metrics such
as the following…
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
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6. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is the average satisfaction score used for measuring the
level of customer satisfaction with specific products or services. The CSAT score is one of
the easiest and most essential CX metrics you can track. It will help you identify which
products resonate better with your audience.
How to measure the CSAT score?
Conducting surveys is the primary way of measuring CSAT. If you have no experience
creating online surveys, there are different online survey tools you can use to gather CX
data.
When creating a survey, include a question that will help you measure customer
satisfaction. Here is an example of a question you can add to the questionnaire to collect
CSAT data:
On a scale from 1 (extremely unsatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied), how would you rate
your overall satisfaction with the [product name]?
Then, use this formula to calculate CSAT:
CSAT = (All positive responses ÷ the total number of responses) × 100
Net promoter score
Net promoter score (NPS) is a crucial metric if you want to measure customer loyalty. NPS
is an index that measures the willingness of the customers to recommend your product to
their family, friends, and colleagues.
The quality of customer experiences has a direct impact on the net promoter score. Did
you know that loyal customers are five times more likely to purchase again and four times
more likely to recommend a company to a friend? Better service means more loyal
customers who refer their family and friends to your company.
How to measure NPS?
You can use surveys to collect NPS data as well. Here is an example of a question you can
add to the questionnaire:
On a scale from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely), how likely are you to
recommend [product or business name] to a family member, friend, or colleague?
Net promoter scores range from -100 to 100. To calculate NPS, divide your customers into
three categories based on their responses:
9-10 – Promoters (loyal and satisfied)
7-8 – Passives (unenthusiastic and satisfied)
0-6 – Detractors (unenthusiastic and unsatisfied)
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7. After you have collected responses, remove all of the neutral responses (passives), and use
the following formula to calculate NPS:
NPS = (Percent of Promoters – Percent of Detractors) × 100
Customer effort score (CES)
Many companies aim to make customer interactions with their brand as easy and effortless
as possible. Customer effort score (CES) is a metric used to measure the effort made by
your customers to accomplish a particular task. For example, CES can help you measure
the effort customers have put into finding a particular product on your website.
How to measure CES?
You can collect CES data by conducting post-purchase surveys. It is useful to use email as a
medium for all of the CX questionnaires.
Use the following question to collect CES:
On a scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree), how much do you
agree with the following statement? [Your company name] made it easy for me to find a
product I was looking for.
Use this formula to calculate CES:
CES = Percent of Strongly Agree – Percent of Strongly Disagree
First response time and average handling time
First response time (FRT) is the average amount of time it takes for the support team to
respond to customer queries. Average handling time (AHT) is the average amount of time
taken to solve these queries. AHT includes time spent interacting with customers via email,
phone calls, website, or chat from start to finish.
It is crucial to measure and keep track of the response time and handling time. Surveys
show that 68 percent of customers cite service representatives as the key to a positive
service experience. This proves that quick responses and handling times positively affect
customer satisfaction!
How to measure FRT?
Use this formula to calculate the average FRT:
FRT = Sum of all time taken to reply to first contacts ÷ Total number of operations
How to measure AHT?
Use this formula to calculate AHT:
AHT = Total time of operations ÷ Total number of operations
Customer lifetime value (CLV)
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8. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric used to indicate the total revenue you can
potentially expect from a single customer. Measuring CLV will help you identify significant
customer segments of high value to your business. You can use the data to adjust your CX
strategy and tailor more personalized and targeted campaigns.
How to measure CLV?
Use this formula to calculate CLV:
CLV = (Average number of transactions / month × Average order value × Average gross
margin × Average customer lifespan in months) ÷ Number of clients for the period
Churn rate
Churn rate is the percentage of customers who either cancel their subscription (for
subscription-based businesses) or do not make a repeat purchase (for transaction-based
businesses). To put it simply, the churn rate helps you identify how many customers leave
you. Calculating the churn rate is crucial for understanding customer experiences.
How to measure the churn rate?
This formula will help you calculate the customer churn rate:
Churn rate = (Customers who left ÷ (Customers at the beginning of the period + New
customers acquired during the period)) × 100
Customer retention rate
Customer retention rate is the percentage of customers your company retained during a
given period. Measuring customer retention rate is as important as measuring churn rate.
For some businesses, like software companies, improving customer retention rate is vital
as it directly affects profitability.
How to measure the customer retention rate?
Use this formula to calculate customer retention rate:
Customer retention rate = ((Number of customers at the end of the period – Number of
new customers during the period) ÷ Number of customers at the start of the period) × 100
To help you with reducing churn in the first place, there’s Process Street’s Churn
Prevention Checklist.
Click here to get the Churn Prevention Checklist!
Building a CX measurement scorecard
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9. (Source)
It is particularly useful to create a customer experience measurement scorecard. This is
because the scorecard will help you identify the key touchpoints on the customer journey
and improve them strategically.
Link all of the metrics you have decided to use into a single measurement system along the
entire customer journey, and establish leading and lagging indicators for each section of
your scorecard. Then, set specific goals for each of the metrics you are tracking. Ideally,
your scorecard should include objectives, measures, targets, and key performance
indicators.
You’ll want to find a way to measure and collect insights on customer experience regularly.
Collect qualitative insights, like customer interviews and feedback, to make sense of the
numbers. This will help you figure out the why behind the metrics. Also, seeking out
feedback positively affects the way customers perceive your brand. In fact, 77 percent of
customers view companies more favorably if they collect and apply customer feedback.
Make sure to set specific targets for each of the CX metrics. Use an appropriate data
collection methodology and keep improving your methods.
What’s also undoubtedly useful when undergoing customer experience measurement – or
anything else related to measuring, providing, and fulfilling a stellar customer experience
– is state-of-the-art BPM software, such as Process Street.
Use Process Street to help with radically improving customer
experience!
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10. Process Street is superpowered checklists.
If you document workflows, business processes, and integral procedures as templates, you
and the rest of your team can launch an infinite number of checklists from those templates.
The checklists will take you step-by-step through your important processes and recurring
tasks, ensuring human error never creeps in and the best job possible is always carried out.
For a visual introduction, check out the video below.
In terms of how Process Street can be utilized for all-things customer experience, the
possibilities are limitless.
For instance, you can create a template that guides users through the entire process of
customer experience measurement. Or, you can use the separate templates that I’ve
already embedded in this post to help you and your team through every step of the way!
Suffice to say, Process Street has you covered. Especially as there are more nifty, pre-made
customer experience-related templates for you to make use of, including processes for
customer feedback, onboarding, and training your customer-focused teams.
All you need to do to grab the templates is sign up for a free trial, add them to your
account, and edit them to your own needs.
Click here to get the Asking Customers for Feedback Checklist Template!
Click here to get the Customer Service Training Checklist Template!
Click here to get the High Touch Customer Onboarding for SaaS Companies Checklist
Template!
What makes all these checklist templates superpowered – and any that you create, too – is
Process Street’s workflow automation features.
These include (but aren’t limited to):
To dive deeper into these features, watch the following webinar.
There you have it.
Hopefully, with this post, I’ve taught you how to go about customer experience
measurement properly, and how you can bolster all your customer experience-related
processes for the better with Process Street’s business process management software.
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