Do you think your business is leaving your customers satisfied? Which customer satisfaction metrics should you track?
Does your customer service accurately represent your brand? Are your interactions consistent across platforms and stages? Increased customer satisfaction means increased revenue.
Your answers to these questions could determine the amount of sales you make this year. By tracking some important metrics, you can turn happy customers into loyal ones.
Why Tracking Customer Satisfaction Metrics is Crucial
In the intricate dance of the customer journey, understanding the steps is not enough. Companies must lead with grace, predicting moves, and responding in harmony with their customer’s needs and feelings.
Here’s why keeping your finger on the pulse of customer satisfaction metrics is non-negotiable:
- Predicting Customer Behavior: By monitoring satisfaction metrics, you’re essentially gaining a crystal ball into your customer’s next moves. Are they likely to return or promote your brand? Or do they pose a churn risk? Understanding this can help shape your business strategies effectively.
- Personalized Customer Interactions: With insights from customer feedback, your team can tailor interactions to meet individual expectations. This personal touch fosters a deeper connection, turning casual buyers into loyal advocates.
- Spotting and Solving Problems Quickly: Continuous tracking allows for real-time identification of issues affecting satisfaction. It’s not just about gathering data; it’s about acting on it swiftly. Companies that quickly resolve problems enhance customer loyalty significantly.
- Enhancing Products and Services: Your offerings are not static. They’re dynamic and should evolve based on the feedback customers provide. Satisfaction metrics highlight what’s working and what’s not, guiding your future development efforts.
- Strategic Growth and Customer Retention: Satisfied customers are the bedrock of your business’s growth. By understanding and working on the elements that drive satisfaction, you’re not just retaining customers; you’re nurturing brand ambassadors who bring in more business.
Important Customer Satisfaction Metrics
Achieving Solutions
In the early stages of the customer journey, your potential customers have a problem and they’re looking for a business who can solve it.
A study conducted by the Customer Contact Council found that reducing the work customers must do to find a solution builds loyalty.
At this early stage in the game, you must know how much time it takes for a customer to find their solution from the time they found you. How many solutions are they being offered? Are you correctly identifying their problem to begin with? Depending on your industry, a survey could help you gather data regarding this stage of the journey.
Changes in Interactions
Measure differences in contact throughout the customer journey.
Was a customer raving about you with brand mentions on Twitter immediately following their purchase, but a month later had multiple customer service calls to you? What might that signify to you? Gather all customer interactions with a specific contact in one place.
You may be able to pinpoint the exact time or event that caused the shift in customer satisfaction. If you can identify the issue here, you’ll create the opportunity to fix it.
Since 70 percent of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels you’re treating them, jumping in to fix the problem may just turn their perception of your brand.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
One metric you can look at over time is your NPS. This number is a combination of customer satisfaction ratings and free-form customer feedback. The numeric satisfaction rating can be tracked across time, plus the free-form feedback eliminates the problem of asking your customers the wrong survey questions.
They tell you what they want you to know. Implement a strong survey program to gather the most effective input directly from your customers. Your survey should help you identify your customers’ expectations and how well you’re meeting them. Leverage survey results to adjust your customer service approach, identify products that perform poorly or exceptionally well, and improve your business overall.
Abandonment Rates
This metric can apply to two few things: abandoned customer service calls and items never purchased in a shopping cart. The former tends to be a stronger indicator of customer satisfaction.
The amount of time a customer waits on hold, whether they ever obtain customer service before ending the call, how many times they initiate contact, and whether their issue was resolved are all very important in determining their level of satisfaction with your business.
Ecommerce folks would also do well to track abandoned carts. Based on an average of many sources, the Baymard Institute puts cart abandonment rates at 63 percent.
Tracking this metric will let you see if you need to adjust shipping rates, checkout methods, pricing transparency, or other roadblocks to completing the sale.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
This is the most common, straight-forward rating system you’ll find. To determine your CSAT, simply ask your customers to rate their satisfaction themselves.
It can be a numeric scale or use symbols, just be sure the scale is very clear.
Your numbers can be skewed when people confuse a one-rating as representing an excellent experience and you’re tracking it as a terrible experience. You can collect these ratings at specific times, such as after a purchase or after a customer service contact.
You can also compare ratings over time using averages or from a single customer or group of similar customers (i.e. people who purchased the same item). The CSAT isn’t the most telling method of measuring customer satisfaction, but it can be used in conjunction with other methods.
Many methods of measuring and tracking customer satisfaction rely on asking your customer.
Avoid inundating your customers with lengthy surveys; most won’t answer. Use data from multiple sources, such as surveys, website analytics, social media interactions, and customer service to get a complete picture of your customer’s relationship with your business. Compare data over time to spot important trends.
Customer Satisfaction Metrics Summary
| Metric | Description | Importance |
|---|---|---|
| Achieving Solutions | Involves determining the duration customers take to find solutions after engaging with your service, assessing the range of solutions provided, and ensuring the business is accurately identifying customer issues. | Vital for building customer loyalty by reducing the effort customers must expend to resolve their issues. Conducting surveys could provide critical insights into customer experiences during these initial interactions. |
| Changes in Interactions | Focuses on monitoring the differences in customer interactions over various phases of the customer journey, such as observing the nature and frequency of communications and any shifts in customer satisfaction levels. | Essential for identifying specific events or periods that negatively impact customer satisfaction. Enables businesses to intervene effectively, as a significant portion of purchasing decisions are influenced by the customer’s perception of how they are being treated. |
| Net Promoter Score (NPS) | Constitutes a blend of quantitative customer satisfaction ratings and qualitative customer feedback, offering an avenue for continuous tracking and understanding of customer sentiments. | Implementing a robust survey system can help gather direct input from customers, aiding in refining customer service approaches, improving product offerings, and enhancing overall business performance. |
| Abandonment Rates | Relates to the frequency of uncompleted customer service interactions, such as calls or transactions, and can indicate the level of customer frustration or dissatisfaction with service aspects like waiting times or checkout processes. | Tracking this helps in recognizing pain points in customer service interactions or transaction processes, allowing for necessary adjustments in areas like shipping rates, checkout procedures, or pricing transparency to enhance completion rates. |
| Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) | A straightforward system asking customers to self-rate their satisfaction levels, utilizing either numeric scales or symbolic ratings. Clarity in the rating scale is paramount to avoid misinterpretations. | Although not the most comprehensive, when used alongside other metrics, it provides valuable insights into customer sentiments at specific touchpoints, like post-purchase or post-service interactions. Regular comparisons of these ratings help in observing trends. |
| General Strategy | Incorporates various data sources, including surveys, website analytics, social media interactions, and direct customer service feedback, to form a holistic view of the customer's experience with the business. | Encourages a more nuanced understanding of customer relationships and satisfaction over time, highlighting crucial trends and areas for improvement. Utilizing diverse data sources mitigates the risk of reliance on potentially low-response or biased feedback channels. |
Data Monitoring Photo via Shutterstock
Great to see these metrics in your list. An extra note for the reader is their own business journey to reach to these key metrics and how to refine beyond. Each company has unique resources, internal and external priorities so, hence the never ending trail of potential metrics to monitor.
These metrics provided in this article can act as a guiding light or bridge reference standard point.