One of your responsibilities as a business owner is to ensure that you’re providing a good customer experience. No matter how highly you think of the service or product you offer, your top priority should be your customers’ perceptions.
This is where measuring customer experience (CX) comes in. Now, unlike other data, keeping track of CX involves both qualitative and quantitative methods. It can get overwhelming, so let us walk you through the five best ways you can turn to in this article.
What Are the 5 Best Ways to Measure Customer Experience?
When it comes to determining how the market perceives your brand, you have to consider both statistical data and actual comments from buyers and employees. Here are five ways on how you can measure customer experience.
1. Hand Out Surveys and Questionnaires
Surveys and questionnaires are reliable data-gathering tools to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data at once. You can hand these out personally to customers in-store or integrate them into your website as pop-ups or widgets.
Below are some quantitative data that you can get using this method.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction Score or CSAT is a vital customer experience metric that focuses mainly on how satisfied a customer is with your business offers, whether it is towards a product, service, or general experience with your brand.
Survey-wise, asking a straightforward question like “How satisfied are you with your experience?” can already get you the information you need. It also involves ratings for answer options, shown through Very Unsatisfied to Very Satisfied. You can also use numbers for easier tracking.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score or NPS mainly measures customer loyalty. You can also use this metric to have a clear understanding of your customer relationships. Basically, this will tell you if your current market actually likes your brand and if they’re likely to promote it to others.
For an NPS-focused question, you should consider adding “How likely are you to recommend our brand to your friends, family, or colleagues?”. Again, it’s important to add scale ratings, except that you’ll be able to get more accurate results if you use a scale of 1 to 10.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Finally, the Customer Effort Score or CES tells you how easy customers find it when it comes to interacting with your business/ By interactions, we’re referring to a specific customer goal, such as buying a product, availing of a service, resolving an issue, having their inquiries answered, or even the simple act of navigating through your website.
To measure CES, you can ask “How easy was it for you to get the help you needed?”. It can be a scale from 1 to 5, or options ranging from very easy to very difficult.
Meanwhile, here are other questions that you can add to the list based on what information you can deduce from them.
General Satisfaction
- How satisfied are you with your overall experience?
- On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate our service?
Product/Service Experience
- How satisfied are you with the quality of the product/service you received?
- Was the product/service what you expected?
- Did the product/service meet your needs?
Customer Journey and Convenience
- How easy was it to navigate our website/app?
- Was it easy to find what you were looking for?
- On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate the ease of the checkout process?
Customer Support Experience
- How would you rate the helpfulness of our customer service team?
- Were your issues resolved in a timely manner?
- Did you find our self-service options (FAQs, automated chat, etc.) helpful?
Pricing
- Do you feel you received good value for the price?
- Was our pricing transparent and easy to understand?
- Communication
- How would you rate the clarity of our communication?
- Was the information provided to you accurate and helpful?
- Speed and Efficiency
- Were the services provided in a timely manner?
- How would you rate the speed of service?
Customer Experience Management and Personalization
- Did you feel like our service was tailored to your needs?
- How well do you think we understand your individual needs?
- Areas for Improvement
- What could we do better next time?
- Is there a service or feature you would like us to offer?
- What did you like most about your experience?
- Do you have any other comments, questions, or concerns?
Demographics
- Age group
- Gender
- Location
If you want to save time in creating the questionnaires, check out these customer survey templates for data collection.
2. Monitor Analytics and Data Metrics
The second method that you can use involves using the data you already have. Look at the existing analytics and data metrics that your business has already collected by coordinating with departments like sales, marketing, and operations. Here are some of the figures you should look at.
Churn Rate
The Churn Rate will show you the number of customers who stop using your product or service after a specific period of time. So, depending on your existing data, you will see the percentage of your market who abandons your product or service after a month or after a whole year. The lower the churn rate, the better.
Measuring this metric will give you a direct insight into customer experience and will give you the opportunity to improve what is needed. This will mostly be helpful to subscription-based businesses, but non-subscription stores can still use the data to their advantage.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer Lifetime Value or CLV shows the total net profit that a business can expect from a customer, considering the lifespan of the business-customer relationship.
A higher CLV means that the customer experience that you’re providing is at an ideal level. This can give you a general overview of the buyer’s perception toward the quality of your products or services, customer loyalty, retention, engagement, and the frequency of upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Customer Retention Rate
Your company’s retention rate measures the number of customers who continue to patronize your brand over a given period of time. This has a direct correlation with customer experience as it will tell you how satisfied your customers are with your brand.
The higher the retention rate, the higher the chance that your current market is satisfied with what you have to offer. This means that they’re staying with your brand because of reasons like they’re getting high-quality products or services, you’re quick with issue resolution, or your website is responsive and user-friendly.
Website Analytics
Website analytics play a big part in the level of customer experience you’re providing. These will tell you all about how a user engages with your website and how well they are utilizing the features that come with it. Here are the metrics to keep track of.
- Bounce Rate
- Page Views
- Average Engagement Time
- Conversion Rate
- Load Time
- User Flow
If you’re not a techy person or you don’t have a web development team yet, you may find it overwhelming to figure out what each statistic tells you. For good practice, just remember to make your site easy to use and navigate, simple, responsive, and fast.
Sales Metrics
Of course, you can’t forget about sales metrics. You can’t say that your business provides a good customer experience if your product or service isn’t selling in the market. These will also let you have a clear view of your business performance. Below are the statistics to monitor:
- Average Order Value (AOV)
- Repeat Purchase Rate
- Sales Growth
- Referral Sales
- Product Returns and Refunds
- Upsell and Cross-Sell Rates
Ensuring that the figures above stay at the ideal level will help you determine the improvements that you need to make, consequently increasing customer experience.
3. Conduct Social Listening and Reviews
In today’s digital world, overlooking your online presence, specifically on social media and search engines, won’t do you good. This is most especially true if you’re aiming to provide an exceptional customer experience. Make social listening a habit through the following methods.
Check Online Reviews
Checking online reviews is one of the best ways to get a grasp on the customer experience level you’re providing. You’ll see authentic comments from people who have actually interacted with your brand, giving you the opportunity to know the current strengths and weaknesses of your business.
Some of the best sites to check include Yelp, Google Reviews, and TrustPilot. You can also just type in “*name of your business* review” on your preferred search engine.
Monitor Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube will also help you gain organic insights about your brand.
For easy monitoring, check brand mentions, hashtags, and comments on your account posts. You can also join relevant platform groups and forums for more personalized customer perceptions.
4. Analyze Customer Service Metrics
Apart from the actual quality of your product or service, you should also pay attention to customer service metrics. It has a significant impact not just on customer experience, but also on the general performance of your business. Here are the figures to keep an eye on.
First Response Time
A part of providing a good customer experience is ensuring that your customers, both potential and existing, are catered to as soon as possible. This is where the First Response Time comes in. It measures the average amount of time it takes for your customer support team to respond to a customer issue or inquiry.
The faster the First Response Time, the higher the chance for your customers to acknowledge your business efforts.
Resolution Time
Alongside the First Response Time, the Resolution Time also plays a significant role in customer experience. This metric measures the time it takes for one issue or inquiry to be resolved. Of course, the faster the resolution time is, the better it is for your image and the level of customer experience and satisfaction.
Ticket Volume
The Ticket Volume refers to the number of complaints and issues that your business gets.
In contrast to the previous two customer service metrics, the higher the number of ticket volumes, the worse it is for business. This is the same if you suddenly get a spike since there’s a chance that there’s a general and common problem in your product or service.
5. Get Employee Insights on Customer Relationship Management
Measuring customer experience doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re only going to get the data from the customers themselves. Your employees can also provide you with valuable insights since they’re the first touch point of customers. Here are some things you can do.
Conduct an Internal Survey
An internal survey is as helpful as an external survey. Your questionnaire can consist of a series of questions asking employees about their perception of how well the business is doing in terms of customer relationships. This can either be quantitative or qualitative, depending on the specific information that you want to get.
Ask About Customer Interactions
If you have no time for internal surveys because of your employees’ workload, you can simply hold a meeting or a focus group and ask them personally about their recent customer interactions. Listen to customer-related stories and ask if they recently heard a suggestion from a customer or if they can give one of their own based on the business environment.
How Can You Provide a Better Customer Experience?
In order to provide a better customer experience, you need to take consistent consistent measures and practices. You should also form a foolproof customer experience strategy based on factors like your strengths and weaknesses, customer feedback, customer expectations, and competitive advantage. Here are some of the best practices that you can do.
Understand Customer Wants and Needs
Using both data analytics and personal experiences from customer touch points, take your time to understand what your customer wants and needs.
Listen to customer feedback, no matter if it's from a buyer with greater customer satisfaction or someone who experienced poor customer experience. Afterward, implement the necessary improvements to gather more loyal customers. Forecasting customer expectations will also help with your goal.
You should also figure out the reasons why your company metrics are the way they are. Why are they increasing or decreasing? Why are they stagnant? This activity will let you measure customer satisfaction alongside customer experience.
Provide Personalized Customer Experience
When a company creates a more personalized customer journey, the market is more likely to show brand loyalty. This shows the customers that you care about giving them a positive experience whether it comes to issue resolution or actual purchases.
To do this, you can start integrating targeted offers into your marketing strategy. This kickstarts the customer journey map since you're recommending products, services, or discounts based on what the specific customer is looking for.
Note that this requires understanding a customer's history with your brand through certain metrics, such as their previous purchases and comments.
Ensure High-Quality Product or Service
Of course, you can't provide a superior customer experience if the quality of your product or service is at par. Ensure that everything you put out into the market meets high-quality standards, while also considering the customers' expectations and direct feedback.
Similarly, you should be consistent with the product or service quality. You'll end up with unhappy customers if you offer something that you're still experimenting with, resulting in an inconsistent customer experience level.
Integrate a User-Friendly Customer Experience Design
A remarkable customer experience involves having a user-friendly website. Whether your business comes with a physical store or not, your online presence will affect the entire customer journey.
That said, ensure that your site is easy to use, responsive, and intuitive. It should also be accessible to people with disabilities by integrating certain widgets, adding alt text to images, easy-to-read fonts, etc.
Provide Fast and Efficient Issue Resolution
A good performance from your customer service teams will make it easy for you to achieve a good customer experience. Invest in constant training for them to provide a fast and efficient issue resolution. They should also be kept up-to-date about customer interaction and how to deal with complex problems.
Another thing that you can do is offer support on multiple digital channels, such as phone, live chat, social media, and email to establish a more accessible customer touchpoint.
Proactively Engage With Your Customers
Customer experience encompasses addressing customer needs before they even ask for it. Activities like collecting customer feedback and analyzing existing customer experience data will help you resolve issues before your customer even contacts your customer support team.
Following up on a customer's experience after the sales process or a recent conflict is also crucial to ensure a satisfied market.
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