Are you on the hunt to find the best Customer Satisfaction Metrics but failing to conclude? If yes, you are not alone; many businesses face the same problem. However, the problem lies in your thinking that you should have one metric for customer satisfaction measurement. But the reality is different, which you'll see in this blog. So, let's discover top customer satisfaction metrics in this blog. First, let's understand what CX and customer satisfaction are.
Understanding Customer Experience
CX stands for customer experience, which is the customer's experience that builds during various interactions with the brand. Hence, it can be good or bad based on how the interaction went. For instance, if a customer reaches out to your customer care number and describes a problem, the executive handles it greatly and provides an appropriate solution to the customer.
Now, it is called a transaction, and the customer experience will be positive or good for this particular transaction. But why does it matter, or what happens if you don't care about the customer's experience? Let's answer these questions with some stats:
The companies focusing on CX have declared an increase of around 80% in revenue.
Around 52% of all customers do business with a brand due to just one bad experience and switch to competitors.
While the first stat tells us about the benefits of focusing on CX, the other clearly states the concerns of not doing so. That's why 90% of businesses have made CX their primary focus.
So, for these reasons, CX matters a lot, and measuring it is crucial. But how can you measure it? One way is to measure customer satisfaction, which is directly related to customer experience. So, let's have a look at customer satisfaction now!
Understanding Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is also very easy to understand because its name explains it. Customers' satisfaction with a brand's product, service, or customer service is known as customer satisfaction. The more satisfied the customer is, the better it is for the brand. It can also be explained as the difference between what you offered the customer and what initial expectations were from your product, service, or customer service. If your product exceeds expectations, then it will lead to good customer satisfaction and vice versa.
How to Measure Customer Satisfaction?
When it comes to measuring customer satisfaction, multiple methods should be considered. While the best way is to directly ask the customer about it, it's not possible in every scenario, right?
So, a better approach is to use surveys. Many surveys can measure customer satisfaction, but CSAT, NPS, and CES are the most popular. These surveys use a rating scale to get customer input, and the scores are then found with the help of dedicated formulas. To understand them better, let's get into the details of these metrics.
Best Customer Satisfaction Metrics
Three metrics are most commonly used for measuring customer satisfaction: NPS, CSAT, and CES. Here's how they work:
Net Promoter Score
The first metric in the list is NPS, a score between -100 and 100, and was found based on its survey results. It is so popular because of its simplicity and ease of use. To find NPS, customers are asked a question, to which they have to choose a rating from a given scale of 0 to 10. For example, "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product to others?" is an NPS question.
Once the survey results come in, they are segregated into promoters, detractors, and passives. Here's what they mean:
- Promoters: rate you 9-10 and are likely to promote your brand.
- Passives: rate you 7-8 and are neutral about your brand.
- Detractors: rate you 0-6 and are likely to leave the brand.
After the segregation, here's the formulation used to find the score: % of promoters - % of detractors.
Customer Satisfaction Score
CSAT is also one of the popular customer satisfaction metrics, similar to NPS, but with a structural difference in the survey format. It mostly has a direct question about customer satisfaction, like "How would you rate your satisfaction with our product?". Now, the customer will choose the answer from a rating scale of 1-5 or 1-10. The positive responses (i.e., 4 and 5) are divided by total responses and multiplied by 100 to find the score. It gives us a percentage between 0-100, known as the CSAT score.
Customer Efforts Score
Next on the list of customer satisfaction metrics is CES, which focuses on the counterpart of a customer's satisfaction: the effort they have to make. The more effort is needed to interact with the brand, the less satisfaction will be.
You can send a CES survey on multiple occasions, such as when a customer is done interacting with a customer executive, at the time of product delivery, etc. The survey also had a simple question: "How easy was it to interact with the customer service executive?" The customer can choose from "Very Easy," "Not Easy," "Hard," or "Very Hard."
Which Customer Satisfaction Metric Is Better?
| Metric | Purpose | Advantages | Disadvantages | Best Use Case |
| Net Promoter Score (NPS) | Measures customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend. | Provides a clear view of customer loyalty; easy to benchmark against
industry standards. | Does not provide detailed feedback on why customers are dissatisfied. | Understanding overall loyalty and growth potential. |
| Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) | Measures immediate satisfaction with a product or service. | Simple to understand and implement; provides quick feedback on specific
interactions. | Limited to a single interaction and may not reflect overall loyalty. | Measuring satisfaction post-interaction or transaction. |
| Customer Effort Score (CES) | Measures ease of interaction with a company or service. | Helps identify friction points in customer journeys; directly linked to
customer retention. | May not capture the full spectrum of customer experience beyond ease. | Assessing and improving specific touchpoints in the customer journey. |
These three are the top customer satisfaction metrics that you can use. And all three are important to your business' success. While one tells you about the customers' loyalty, the other declares their satisfaction. So, you must use all three of them to gain a clear understanding of your customers.
