How to Successfully Measure Customer Experience

If you are trying to grow your business or gain an edge over your competitors, ensuring your customers have the right experience with your brand is the way to go.

Excellent customer experience is vital to the success of your business. Happy customers are more likely to;

• Be loyal to your brand
• Refer friends to your brand
• Boost revenue generation for your brand. 

So, a crucial KPI to measure for success is the customer experience metrics. Measuring customer experience will show you if your customers are happy with your business or not. With this knowledge, you can improve customers' experience with your business, which in turn can increase your business revenue. 

But, before we show you how to measure customer experience, here is a detailed explanation of customer experience.

What is customer experience?

When we talk about customer experience, we are referencing the impression customers have about your business throughout their buyer's journey. It is the way they view your brand. Your customers' experience with your brand can impact the bottom line of your business. 

Customer experience can also bring more customers to your brand. For example, if a student is trying to hire a professional to write a dissertation, they will look for the best-dissertation-writing-service like Best Writers Online to help them. The title of 'best' has probably been given to this platform because of other customers' experience. 

How to measure customer experience

1) Using Net Promoter Score (NPS)

One of the most vital metrics for successfully measuring customer experience is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). It is also the most common customer experience metrics for businesses. 

The NPS tells you;

• How loyal your customers are to your business
• How likely they are to recommend you to their circle. 
• How inclined they are to repurchase from your brand. 

This metric measures your customers' loyalty by asking simple survey questions. The NPS is easy for any business to use, and customers can complete the survey fast. 

2) Customer journey analytics

Next, we have the customer journey analytics. This is an excellent customer experience measurement for looking through a customer journey. 

Using these metrics is more technical than the previous one, but we will take you through some starter steps;

• First, create a customer journey map. This map is essentially a visual representation of various stages your customer goes through when trying to achieve a particular goal with the company. 
• In your customers' journey map, answer questions about your customer's motivation, needs, and pain points. 
• Ensure that the map gives you an understanding of all the touchpoints your customers experience in their buyers' journey with your business. 

This map aims to help you gain customer journey analytic, which you can use to provide a better customer experience for your consumers. 

3) Basic customer surveys

Another essential customer experience metric is a survey. A survey is one of the most basic yet efficient ways to get into your customers' heads and understand what they think/feel. Think of it as having a conversation with your customers.

Also, while surveys are a tool for calculating NPS, surveys don't only focus on NPS. You can;

• Send out surveys throughout different parts of the buyer's journey.
• Ask your customers questions on feature requests with your surveys.
• Send out feedback forms to your customers. 
• Use surveys to gauge user experience.
• Ask questions on products/services with your survey, etc.

Asking the right questions in your survey will help you achieve your goals. Get professional writers from platforms like paper writing service reviews like Online Writers Rating to craft survey questions for your business. 

4) Measure Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Customer satisfaction is an essential part of your customers' experience. It is also a simple measurement that all businesses can do. CSAT is extremely flexible, and you can break it down into individual questions with a primary focus on a specific part of your consumers' journey. 

By simply asking your customers: 'How would /you rate your overall customer satisfaction with our product/service?' You can get your CSAT score. 

The rating scale is usually between 1(Extremely unsatisfied) to 5 (Extremely satisfied). This way of measuring customer experience can work for either single interactions or customer overall experiences. 

5) Customer churn rate

This metrics helps you measure the number of your customers who cancel a subscription or renew a subscription during an extended period. 

It tells of how dissatisfied or satisfied your customers are with whatever subscription of yours they were on. 

Now, while it is inevitable to have a 0% churn rate, if you have a high churn rate, then there is a problem you need to address. 

Follow these steps to measure churn rate;

• Designate a period you want to measure your churn rate over. 
• Within that period, count the total number of customers your business acquired. 
• Next, (still within that period) count the total number of customers your business lost. 
• Then, divide the total number of customers your business lost by the total number of customers your business gained. 
• After that, multiply the result by the decimal of 100%. This will give you your churn rate over the period. 

These metrics are extremely useful in helping businesses figure out why their customers are leaving. Because within the chosen period, you can figure out what you started doing or stopped doing that brought about the change. 

6) Customer Effort Score (CES)

Lastly, you can use the customer effort score (CES) to measure your customers' experience successfully. Your customer effort score measures the amount of effort your customers put into reaching their goals with your business. 

It could be the amount of effort they put into ordering a product on your website, returning a product, getting an issue resolved, or even getting in touch with your customer service.

For example, a while back, we came across a YouTuber who created a video on her experience getting an issue resolved from a famous homeware brand. It was evident by the video that the lady had put a lot of effort into getting the issue resolved, and the brand still hadn't fixed the problem. You could say that this brand's customer effort score is high--at least for this particular customer. 

Brands with high customer effort score will have low customer loyalty. In fact, research shows that 94% of customers who experienced low effort from a brand will repurchase from that brand. This is compared to only 4% of customers who experienced high effort from a brand and intended to repurchase. 

Wrapping up

Customer experience measurement is simple, straightforward, and essential to the success of any business. The metrics shared in this article are just some of the ways you can measure your customers' experience with your business. 

Ensure you perform each one of them, and then adjust your business based off on the result. By doing this, you can exceed your business expectation, drive business growth, and increase customer loyalty.