Top 10 customer experience metrics to grow your business

1) customer satisfaction surveys
I am sure you have seen these a thousand times. They can be as simple as a row of stars to click from 1 to 5, to as complex as a multipart form that you fill out and submit. The simple star rating can be used as a quick judge for a large number of people to give you a reasonably accurate feeling of how things are going. You might not know exactly what they are satisfied with, as you would with a multipart form, but more people will take the split second to click a star than they would to fill out a form. You can select what is best for your organization.

2) the customer effort score
the customer effort score is a little bit more complex than the customer satisfaction survey. What this is, is generally a single item metric that can show how much effort the customer has to put out to do something. That something can be anything from getting an issue resolved, to finding an answer on your site or even ordering a product. The easier the customer has it and the less effort they put out to make it happen, the better chance you have of keeping them happy. You can also use the quick five-star method, or a 1 to 10 rating, for such things as “how easy was the product ordering process for you”.

3) a rise in sales
let’s be honest, it all comes down to making money. One of the best ways to find out if you are keeping your customers happy is checking if the sales increase after you have implemented some customer support technique. If you have made ordering easier, and the sales go up, and you have done no other marketing on the site, then you know that effort was a success.

4) promoter score
sometimes called the net promoter score or (NPS), this score reflects how much they like your product or service, and refer it to others. This can be either through putting a link to you on their social media or clicking that tell a friend button. The more your customers like you and want to promote your brand, the more successful you will be.

5) tracking social
this is similar to reputation management, where you track any mentions of your company or your product and service online. If people are talking about you in a positive way, you are doing well. If people are talking about you in a negative way, they are doing it unsolicited and you better listen to what they say. Either way, it’s a good chance to interact with your customer, which other potential customers will see and will give you points.

6) cart abandonment rate
you might not realize it, but when you play something in your shopping cart, any site that’s trying to improve themselves will know what you put in your cart. It shows interest in that item. If they don’t buy it and abandon the cart, then you need to know why. This would be similar to somebody in a store picking up an item and taking it to the cash register, with money in their hand, and that the last-minute turning around and putting it back and leaving the store. You need to know why so you can encourage them to complete the transaction next time. A good technique for this as well is to send them a reminder in their email for the items in their cart at a later date.

7) customer site engagement
this metric is found by tracking how long people stay on your site and where they go. There are many different kinds of software that you can install that will give you this metric. There are some pieces of software that will show you where they move their mouse, and very often they move their mouse to wear their reading and what they are interested in. This can let you know what you might need to change on your side and what you definitely want to keep. The longer they explore and look around your site, the more chance it is they will use your product or service. JCPenney, a retail chain you have probably heard of, used to spend a fortune in advertising just to get people through the door. It wasn’t important for you to buy anything at that time, it was to just get you inside. Because once you’re inside and familiar with the store, when you wanted something at a later date you are more likely to go back to that store than one you haven’t been to.

8) customer lifetime value
over time you will learn the value of what a customer is. And what we mean by that how much that customer is worth over your lifetime engagement with them. Your customer lifespan might be a one time, one year, or 10 years, depending on your type of business or service. So how much you make from that average customer over that period of time becomes their lifetime value. This lets you plan ahead and understand what resources you need to grow.

9) customer retention
this is one of the most important metrics you can have. This means once you have a customer, do they come back and buy from you again. Your goal when you get a customer is to make them a lifetime customer, that keeps coming back for repeat purchase. You have probably run into customer retention departments
when you try and cancel a cell phone or similar service. They will transfer you to that department and that department will try and find a way to keep you as a customer. Whether it be a slightly lower price or a different service. It’s important to keep your customers any way possible.

10) churn
churn rate is very similar to customer retention but is almost the opposite. You track how many customers have stopped doing business with you. . If you have a high percentage of customers that buy from you once and do not buy from you again, then you might have an issue that you need to fix. To give you a simple example again using a brick-and-mortar business, if you have a restaurant and people only ever eat there one time and never come back, do you think there’s a problem? You find your churn rate by dividing how many customers you lose in a timeframe by how many customers are new in that timeframe.

These 10 metrics are important for all businesses. Some of them are logical and common sense, but very often businesses get so busy they forget to do them. If you have a business, think about it, you know the exact number of customers that you have lost? Or the exact number of customers that are new this month? When was the last time you looked for your company on social media and answered questions? These are not complex reports, but they can be very eye-opening and make a tremendous difference to your business.