Customer Experience (CX) is not a tangible item which can be weighed like a bunch of bananas. It’s a business practice, a set of principles and should be part of an organisations strategic planning.
So how do we measure CX effectively?
There are five key steps to successfully measuring customer experience which I’ve written about below:
Step One: Choose a method
There are four common metrics used to measure CX:
Net promoter score (NPS)
Customers are asked how likely they are to recommend your company to a friend. Surveys are sent to your customers asking this question. Responses are separated into detractors (0-6), passives (7-8) and promoters (9-10).
With the survey results, you subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. This will give you an NPS score ranging from -100 to 100. A score above 50 represents an above-average result as it shows your company has more promoters than detractors.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
Customers are asked how satisfied they are with a product, service or the overall experience with your company. They are given four response choices:
- Very unsatisfied
- Unsatisfied
- Neutral
- Satisfied
- Very satisfied
Next, calculate how many customers are satisfied by adding the total number of satisfied customers together (response 4 & 5). Then, divide the satisfied customers by the total amount of survey responses you have. Finally, multiply the number by 100 to calculate your CSAT score in the form of a percentage.
A tailored percentage
You may want to measure a specific area of CX such as inbound phone calls or sales meetings. To do this, ask customers how satisfied they are with the specific part of the customer journey that you want to analyse. You can use a simplified questionnaire by providing customers with one question and two response options. Here is an example:
How satisfied were you with the sales meeting you attended?
- I was satisfied with the service
- I was unsatisfied with the service
To calculate the percentage of satisfied verses unsatisfied customers, simply calculate the overall percentage of each response using this formula:
- (Total satisfied responses/ total responses) x 100 = percentage of satisfied customers
- (Total unsatisfied responses/ total responses) x 100 = percentage of unsatisfied customers
Qualitative data
CX scores are priceless and will help to paint a picture of how your company is performing in terms of customer satisfaction. To compliment this, gathering written feedback can provide context behind the numbers.
Every customer survey should provide a space for respondents to explain their rating. Here is an example of the wording you can use to glean qualitative data:
“Can you please tell us why you have given this score?”
Willing customers will let you know what went well and what could have been done better.
Step 2: Method
Now it’s time to choose a method to gather responses from your customers. Here are three popular and effective ways to gather feedback:
- Email surveys
- Text surveys
- Telephone surveys (after a customer service call)
Step 3: Frequency
Step three involves choosing how often you will send out your surveys to your customers. Here are a few options to consider:
- After every customer purchase
- After every customer service call
- Once a month to regular customers
- After a big project with a client
Step 4: Software
Once you’ve established how you will measure CX and the method, it’s time to get practical. What system will you use to gather the feedback you need? Smaller companies, sole traders and consultants should opt for low-cost software such as Google forms. Larger companies should opt for customer experience management (CXM) software.
Step 5: Analyse the data
For larger companies, CXM software can provide an analysis of data and recommendations to improve CX. However, it’s still important for big organisations to look at the results for themselves. Smaller companies without CXM software should create a system of analysis. Here are some methods you can adopt to achieve this:
- Compare NPS or CSAT scores on a monthly basis
- Identify common trends in written feedback on a monthly basis
- Create customer satisfaction quarterly reports which hold all of the quarterly feedback data
- Use spreadsheets to record monthly, quarterly and annual satisfaction scores
What Next?
Once you start to gather data about customer satisfaction you can make plans and introduce initiatives to improve the overall customer experience. Focus on a few improvements a quarter always putting the customer’s needs first.
Customer feedback is a goldmine of data that can be used to shape the forward motion of an organisation. Use these five steps to create a CX measurement strategy and get ready for a wealth of invaluable insights.