Skip to main content

No matter what business you are in, understanding, and working with customer satisfaction metrics is imperative if you want to make sure you are meeting your user’s wants and needs.

If the customer’s journey is not something you are assessing regularly, I strongly suggest it’s time to start. You need to know the key metrics, who in your company can use them, in what context they should be used, and develop a clear understanding of the language surrounding the metrics. To be clear, you can’t expect to improve customer satisfaction without using metrics.

What Are Customer Satisfaction Metrics?

Customer satisfaction metrics are what we use to measure our success with our customers.

Analyzing customer satisfaction metrics comes from looking at customer experience metrics, agent performance, and efficiency metrics along with team performance. All of these make up the data that you can use to measure where your customer satisfaction score sits and then move forward to work on improving the relationship.

Why Are Customer Satisfaction Metrics Important?

We use this data to learn about our customers’ experiences so we can make them better and improve our relationship with loyal customers who want to buy or use our services and products.

Knowing how to measure customer satisfaction with metrics and then put that data to use is crucial in any business.

Customer Satisfaction Standard vs. Metric

The customer satisfaction score standard is set out under a set of documents listed under ISO 10000. These standards outline ways to improve and work on customer service skills to attain satisfaction levels at a certain proficiency and ability in the marketplace. 

The difference between customer satisfaction standards and metrics is that the customer satisfaction standard is the “how to do it” and the metric is the “how did you do it”? 

One sets the goals (that’s “standards”) and the other is used for measuring customer satisfaction to see how close you are to achieving those goals (that’s “metrics”).

Standards set a level of customer service that should be met. They give suggestions and outlines on how to monitor and improve the customer journey.

Customer Service Metric vs Standard Example

Here’s an example of a customer service standard from Trader Joe’s, a company known for great customer service:

Every customer will have fun shopping at a Trader Joe’s store.

In Trader Joe’s example, some metrics they might use to measure fulfillment of that standard would be:

  • How many stickers for kids did we hand out this month?
  • How many shoppers participated in our in-store scavenger hunt?
  • How many shoppers said their experience shopping with us was fun in customer surveys?

You need to be able to measure those accomplishments—both your progress towards meeting your standards and your fulfillment of them. This is done with CX metrics.

Assessing how well a program or idea is working by using survey software or customer feedback allows you to adjust as needed and then reassess again to see if those changes were helpful. Both standards and metrics are helpful but are more useful when they work better together. They give you both goals and support with a way to measure if those things are working.

In Which Scenarios Are Customer Satisfaction Metrics Used?

There are very few people in a company who gain insight from customer satisfaction metrics. 

A customer service manager and their team use them to gauge if their processes are working to enhance CX. Production and quality assurance teams can assess if the product is offering a good customer experience. Management can see how their company team is working as a whole. Each individual takes something away from the metrics that gauge their customer’s satisfaction.

If a company monitors customer satisfaction levels with a survey and asks how their customer experience was when they called or went online or to social media for product support, you can trace how each contact point did with feedback. 

With that information, you can then improve from knowing the satisfaction score supplied by the customer. Customer satisfaction is part of everyone’s job because if customers are not satisfied, you’ll lose them and their business.

Your customer service and IT people may do the work when it comes to using customer service metrics but almost every person on staff benefits to some degree.

Related read: Best Customer Satisfaction Software

Customer Satisfaction Metrics Important Terms

Average First Response Rate or Time

This is the average time it takes the customer service team to make their first connection with a customer once they have gotten their request.

Average Handle Time

This is the average amount of time it takes the customer service team to resolve an issue for a customer.

Get the latest from the brightest minds in CX, UX, and design thinking.

Get the latest from the brightest minds in CX, UX, and design thinking.

  • No spam, just quality content. Your inbox is safe with us. For more details, review our Privacy Policy. We're protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Average Replay Time

The amount of time for the customer support team to reply to a customer. This includes all communication, not simply the first contact.See also

Channels

These are the ways customers can reach the customer success or support team. You may use customer success software to better cover all touchpoints at once.

Churn Rate 

This is the number of customers you lose over a particular period of time. Customer churn is a very important metric for forecasting business growth and for understanding your bottom line. 

Because customer retention is critical, we often use other measurements such as CES and CSAT scores (explained below) to predict customer churn. 

Customer Effort Score (CES)

This is a score that measures how much effort a customer has to make in order to interact with your product or service.  High effort can indicate that the customer interactions around your product or service are cumbersome, making the customer less likely to recommend, less likely to buy, or more likely to churn.

Businesses usually calculate this through surveys (such as a follow-up customer satisfaction survey sent after contacting customer support). It's usually a single question, such as "How Easy Was It For You To _______ ?". Respondents can choose an option from a simple difficulty range or choose from a range of emojis that make it simple to quickly indicate their level of effort. 

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The CSAT score is important in assessing or measuring your customer’s happiness and brand loyalty as it applies to your company. 

Businesses often calculate this score based on CSAT surveys which are used to collect information about how happy a customer or user is with your product. 

Examples of questions on a CSAT survey include:

  • How happy are you with your purchase?
  • How would you rate your satisfaction with customer support?
  • How happy are you with the user onboarding experience?

Most often, respondents are given a simple range of options to select from—for example, a range from "Unsatisfied" to "Very Satisfied".

Feedback

This is the customer’s opinion on their experience that they have with your company and their thoughts on how you might improve.

First Contact Resolution Rate (FCRR)

This customer service metric is used to measure how often a customer support team can resolve a case in one response.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

This is a goal that is driven by data that measures the performance and objectives of a customer service agent or the whole team.

Lifetime Value (LTV)

This is the measurement or prediction of the profit gained from a customer during their lifecycle. This is not to be confused with customer loyalty—lifetime value is usually a discrete numerical value assigned to a customer, whereas customer loyalty is an aspect better measure by looking at measurements from a NPS or CSAT.

Metric

A customer intelligence measurement used to track and analyze the status and results of a particular process or activity.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score shows how probable it is that your customers will recommend your company’s product or service to their friends, family, or associates. Business usually calculate this by sending our NPS surveys at various points in the customer lifecycle. 

This is generally a simple calculation that asks a question. A very common NPS question is: "How likely are you to recommend X product/service?" 

Respondents answer on a 1-10 scale:

  • 0-6 are categorized as Detractors. They are not very happy customers.
  • 7-8 are categorized as Passive. They are pretty impartial.
  • 9-10 are categorized as Promoters. They are likely satisfied customers who might even promote your brand naturally through word of mouth.

Resolution Rate

The percentage of issues resolved by a customer service team based on the tickets received.

Survey

This is used to gather data about the customer experience to see how happy they were with the support they got when working on an issue and how it was resolved. 

Within customer experience surveys, CX professionals are concerned with aspects of their surveys such as the response rate (you're aiming for a high response rate), response time, and drop-off points which can provide valuable information for making your surveys simpler and more enjoyable to fill out.

Final Thoughts

Understanding customer satisfaction metrics as data can make your job easier whether you are in sales, management, or customer service. Getting a grasp on customer wants and needs helps your business build long term client relationships. Analyzing metrics gives you that ability. Using key metrics and sites with other information and CX insights such as The CX Lead Newsletter builds your knowledge base and increases customer satisfaction as you use data to improve how your business works with its customers.

Related Read: 4 Types Of Customer Data You Should Be Using

By Finn Bartram

Finn is the editor of The CX Lead. He's passionate about helping businesses gain a competitive advantage by creating exemplary customer experiences.