How To Measure Customer Experience

Imagine there are two companies with a similar product and similar pricing. One has an amazing reputation for customer service and the other does not. Which of the two do you go with? A majority of consumers not only prefer the company that delivers a great customer experience, but they are often willing to pay more for a product or service to get it.

What is customer experience?

Customer experience is the impression customers have of an entire brand through all aspects of the customer’s journey. This impacts their view of the brand overall and influences the company’s bottom line, including revenue.

The customer journey doesn’t just begin once they sign a contract, it starts the moment a prospect hears about the company or researches options online.

How do you measure customer experience?

There are insights everywhere for measuring customer experience. Bringing these together can provide a complete picture. At ECI, we focus on five key areas:

1. Retention
   It all starts with customer retention which tells you how “sticky” your solution is. Gross Retention measures how much customer spend you retain during a measurement period. Net Retention layers in increased spending from existing clients. Successful companies will regularly perform churn analysis to understand the reasons why they lose customers and actively engage in company-wide efforts to reduce churn.
   
2. Adoption
   How much are your products being used? The answer to this question can be an early indicator in predicting churn or a customer's propensity to grow. Companies often measure not just active users and time spent in the application, but things like features utilized. In addition to this usage data, other metrics (such as volume of support tickets, engagement with self-service training materials, webinar attendance, etc.) can provide insight into engagement.
   
3. Time-to-value
   Time-to-value (TTV) may be the most overlooked metric when it comes to measuring Customer Experience. TTV is measured beginning the moment a customer signs a contract or purchases a product to when they are not just live, but actively realizing value from the solution they purchased. Reducing Time-to-value benefits the customer and the business, resulting in improved ROI and retention.
   
4. Customer satisfaction
   This one seems like a no-brainer measurement to include but let’s dig into customer satisfaction a bit more. Think about the customer journey as a series of touchpoints with a customer, ranging from the initial sale through onboarding, support, growth, and renewal. By capturing feedback at each phase, you can discover what works well, and what creates friction, and iteratively drive improvements throughout the entire journey. These improvements can encompass anything from how you quote solutions and capture product feedback to handoffs between teams and how customers with questions engage you,
   
   A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) can be measured transactionally using a variety of methods, such as a Customer Effort Score, and is often paired with a periodic overall relationship level measure such as a Net Promoter Score. Measuring CSAT is just the start – the key is what you learn from the feedback and what closed-loop processes are implemented to ensure customers know they are heard.
   
5. Trend analysis
   Trends can also provide valuable insights into the customer journey. The top 10 support tickets by product, region, user type, and tenure provide unique insights for product managers and services and support teams to improve user experience and customer enablement. Trend analysis can also help you understand when a customer runs into Issue X, they are most likely also going to face Issue Y soon, or when a customer purchases Product A for Use Case 1, they are most likely to progress to Product D soon.
   
   Using these insights to proactively guide customers through their journey and anticipate their needs can build trust and reduce friction in the customer journey.

The goal of a great customer experience is to keep customers for life. By not just measuring these areas, but also learning from them and a commitment to continuous improvements, you can make customers feel as though they can never replace the support or comfort you give them with any other competitor.