Customer experience metrics made simple

Customer experience (CX) has become a competitive differentiator that can make or break your business. The CX metrics used to track, measure, and act on customer feedback are all important—but which will provide the best insight into your customers’ world?

It depends on the type of outcome you’re seeking. Do you want to build brand loyalty and reduce churn, or ease the customer burden in key areas of their journey? There’s a metric for just about any CX goal you have in mind.

While it can seem overwhelming, we’re here to help. In this guide you’ll find the most popular customer experience metrics, cataloged by purpose and use case. If you're a seasoned CX professional, this library can strengthen the connection between your efforts and results. If you’re just getting started,  this list can help you create a plan.

The three most commonly used customer experience metrics are Net Promoter Score® (NPS®), Customer Effort Score (CES), and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). Most companies use at least one of these metrics to measure their customer experience program. Ideally, you should use all three. Let’s go over each one.

NPS is a popular metric—it’s a simple, easy-to-understand survey that measures customer loyalty and advocacy. It’s also the most commonly used benchmark for CX, used by two-thirds of the Fortune 1000.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the result of asking: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”

The respondent ranks their likelihood on a scale of 0 to 10—0 being highly unlikely, and 10 being extremely likely. People who select 9 or 10 on the NPS survey are considered promoters, 7 or 8 are passives, and people who select 6 or below are detractors.

To calculate the NPS score, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters (percent promoters –  percent detractors = NPS).

You can add a comment option to your NPS survey or ask one open-ended question to give customers a chance to explain their ratings. 

NPS scores vary by industry, but generally, an NPS rating above 0 is considered good; above 50 is considered excellent; and a 75 and above is world-class.

The Net Promoter Score is often used as a relationship metric to evaluate the overall customer relationship and end-to-end experience.

It’s a great indicator of how your customers feel about the overall brand and relationship, and can be a valuable tool in improving the customer experience. But that’s only if it’s used consistently and the results are communicated throughout the company so teams can take action.

Here are some ways to put your NPS data to work:

An NPS survey can be applied at specific touchpoints in the customer journey. For example, you could use a variant of NPS (“Would you recommend us to a friend?”) after support calls to determine the effect of customer service on customer loyalty.

Related: How to use NPS surveys to create the best customer experience

The Customer Satisfaction Score is assessed by asking customers: “How would you rate your overall satisfaction?” with your company and its products, services, and interactions.

A five-point scale is most commonly used, with options very unsatisfied, unsatisfied, neutral, satisfied, and very satisfied. 

There are two ways companies can calculate CSAT: an average of 1-5 or by focusing on the 4-5 responses.

SurveyMonkey recommends using this formula: (Number of 4 and 5 responses) / (Number of total responses) x 100 = % of satisfied customers. 

While you can use CSAT as an average, it’s more useful to calculate the percentage of those customers who consider themselves satisfied—the metric is designed to identify the percentage of happy customers.

The final score is typically represented as a percentage of the maximum. For example, with a five-point scale, a CSAT rating of 80% means that the majority of customers are giving a satisfied rating (4 out of 5). Like an NPS survey, a CSAT survey gives the option for respondents to leave a comment and explain their rating.

A CSAT score of 80% is a good indicator of success, although it will vary by industry. For the latest CSAT benchmarks, check out this article. 

A CSAT study is easy to understand and implement—most people are comfortable answering the question of rating a brand on a scale of 1-5. 

However, the wording of the CSAT question is not standardized, making it difficult to compare scores between different organizations. And, a satisfied customer is a fairly low bar that may give organizations a false sense of security because it doesn’t necessarily lead to loyalty.

Like NPS, the Customer Satisfaction Score is considered a relationship metric, which means it should be used to evaluate the overall customer relationship and end-to-end experience. For this particular purpose, CSAT should be measured annually or quarterly, to assess a customer’s satisfaction with their experience over time.

Customer Satisfaction Score is a touchpoint metric. That means it’s used to capture feedback after a specific customer interaction with different parts of a company. So, instead of understanding overall customer happiness, CSAT can zero in on a single stage, touchpoint, or relationship.

Customers may have a tendency to focus on their most recent experience with a company in an NPS survey. However, the 5-point scale of CSAT can apply to specific instances, such as a customer service call or delivery experience.

Customer-centric brands use CSAT with the intention of creating specific improvements along the customer journey. Here are some examples.

By being hyper-focused on specific interactions, CSAT helps you discover gaps in your customer experience program and make improvements across the customer journey.

Related: 50 examples of great customer satisfaction survey questions

The Customer Effort Score (CES) asks the customer to score the amount of effort involved with a specific interaction. According to our research, 82% of customers say they've backed out of an online purchase due to a negative experience, such as hidden fees or difficult website navigation. Evaluating CES can pinpoint problems and help companies reduce costs and customer frustration.

A CES survey asks customers to agree or disagree with the statement: “[Company Name] made it easy for me to handle my issue.” You can also include an open-ended follow-up question that asks for feedback on the response. The respondent can choose from 7 answer choices ranging from strongly disagree (score 1) to strongly agree (score 7).

A CES is the average of all responses by adding up the total sum of responses, and dividing by the total number of survey respondents. The equation looks like: (Total sum of responses) / (Number of responses) = CES score.

An average Customer Effort Score over 5 is good. A score 5 and lower means there is room for improvement. Some theorize that you actually don’t want a perfect score, because that shows your customers aren’t putting in any effort themselves to get their questions answered. Somewhere between 5-6 is the sweet spot. If you’re averaging at a CES of 7, especially when scaling a support team, you might want to encourage more self service options. 

The Customer Effort Score has gained popularity as a metric aimed at reducing the effort in customer service or other routine interactions. If the primary value proposition of your brand is fast and easy experiences (think Amazon) then CES could work well as a brand loyalty indicator. However, for the rest of us, CES is best used in customer service or other routine experiences where low effort is the main loyalty driver.

As you may have noticed, CES is another touchpoint metric. As effortless experiences become the expected norm, this metric will help guide your strategy to create less effort for customers throughout their journey.

Successful CX programs use CES to measure how a customer feels across the journey and what actions are leading them to feel that way. Here are some examples:

Related: Why you should care about the Customer Effort Score (CES)

All customer experience metrics can give insights into customer loyalty. However, there are measurements that can predict more precise levels of customer loyalty.

Loyalty is an emotional state that is reflected in the behaviors that customers exhibit with your brand. Loyalty indicators reveal themselves when you ask: 

Let’s explore ways to track these behaviors to help predict how loyal customers feel about your brand.

Customer retention is the most straightforward way to track customer loyalty, as it measures how long your customers stay with your brand. While the concept is straightforward, there are different ways of tracking retention, so be sure to use the method that makes the most sense to your company. 

Customer churn rate and customer retention are two sides of the same coin, but they provide distinct insights into customer behavior. Churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop using your product or service over a specific period. This metric is critical in helping to identify issues and take proactive measures to improve customer experience and reduce attrition.

How to estimate customer loyalty metrics: 

So, let's say at the start of a month, there are 100 total customers. Of this group, 80 are ongoing customers, 20 are new, and 10 leave at the end of the month. 

When possible, track retention based on the individual customer journey. Retention should not be measured as a whole number (e.g., comparing the number of customers year-over-year) because that may include new customers and ignore churn.

By tracking at the individual level, you’ll be able to determine the percentage of customers who remain and the length of time they are likely to stay. For instance, if you know how many customers remain until the sixth month, you can evaluate those key touchpoints on the journey.

The retention rate is a powerful metric. Think of customer acquisition costs (CAC) that involve sales, marketing, onboarding, etc. One study reported that CAC has increased by 222% over the past eight years. 

Now compare that with the costs associated with keeping a customer. To keep that customer requires far less time and resources—and the gains are much higher. And if customers are sticking with you longer, they are telling you they are happy with the experience.

Customer experience metrics are powerful, but they only tell one part of the story. You must combine CX results with business outcomes to give context and actionable insights regarding your organization’s performance. This section explores some of the most common methods used to demonstrate that your CX results are driving business growth for your company.

Making the connection between your company’s revenue and your customer experience efforts is key to a CX program’s success—and it’s easier to demonstrate than you may think with the right baseline and consistent metrics in place.

As an example, if you track how your CX improvements are positively impacting your NPS results, you'll begin to see there is a relationship to customer loyalty, and overall customer lifetime value. 

There are also established benchmarks for certain industries, most well-known is Forrester’s Customer Experience Index. Forrester's CX Index™ shows how a 1-point improvement on the index leads to annual incremental revenue per customer. Apply this to your organization, and the results could be significant. 

Sales teams play a critical role in shaping customer expectations and perceptions as well, yet they are often disconnected from broader customer experience efforts. This is a missed opportunity to link CX to financial outcomes. A win-loss program, for example, involves post-sales research that uncovers successes and failures in the selling process. As an early and influential touchpoint, sales can provide research into the overall CX program while ensuring a consistent customer experience.

There are several ways insights from the sales process can inform your CX program. Here are some examples.

Providing excellent customer service is a pricey endeavor for companies because it requires substantial staffing, training, support systems, and management oversight to handle customer issues effectively. These expenses can increase when this part of the customer journey burdens customer services teams by way of escalations, returned products, returns processing, and more.

When customers are happy, they don’t need to call your contact center to complain or request help; they are moving through their journey with strong guidance and the right expectations. This means that a company’s service resources are optimized as they should be. 

Simply put, better customer experience often leads to reductions in the cost of customer service. Connecting CX metrics, like CES or CSAT, to costly CX expenses is a worthwhile venture—these metrics can flag where CX breakdowns are impacting costs.

When customers leave your brand for a competitor, it’s more than just the loss of their transaction—you’re losing a relationship. It reduces the Customer Lifetime Value, and it may lead to more negative WOM marketing and defections.

Knowing how many customers leave your brand in a month, a quarter, a year or more is a very important metric to track, especially for business-to-business (B2B) companies or those with subscription-based models. 

For example, if your CSAT or NPS scores begin to fall,  they may be a pre-indicator of increasing customer defection rates. Even if you are acquiring more new customers each month, this metric should be tracked as an indication of how current customers are feeling about your customer experience.

As you might have surmised, there’s no perfect set of customer experience metrics to track the complete performance of your CX program, but the list we’ve provided is a good starting point. There are also lesser-known options that may be more relevant to your business.

For instance, consider Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This metric can be especially helpful for membership or subscription models, as well as other long-term customer cycles. One way to calculate CLV is to use the Average Annual Revenue per Customer multiplied by the Average “Lifetime” of your Customer, meaning how many years they have been a customer. Your CLV equates to the dollar amount you’re left with, and can be a useful indicator of the long-term financial value derived from keeping customers satisfied and retained over time. 

Related: Increase customer lifetime value with surveys

Another popular metric within contact centers is First Contact Resolution (FCR). Knowing if your customer service agents can resolve customer issues the first time around can indicate the amount of effort your customers experience. This can be calculated on the overall level, or at an agent and product level. A typical calculation uses the total number of customer contacts resolved on the first attempt for a given period divided by the total number of customer contacts in that same time.

Tracking social media sentiment, digital behavioral analytics, and employee engagement feedback can also lead to more insights. To get an overview of how customers feel about your brand in real time, monitor your social media sentiment analytics. Their behavior on your digital properties—websites, mobile apps, and online search—can help you identify points of delight or challenges in the customer journey. Lastly, how engaged your employees feel is directly related to the experience they deliver to customers.

Feeling overwhelmed by CX metrics is understandable, so focus on a few vital metrics aligned with your top CX goals and build an actionable measurement system that fuels continuous improvements. That’s when the real fun begins—when your customer feedback-driven insights lead to real change. Stay committed by continuing to gather and apply learnings to enrich your customers’ experience. Progress only compounds when you keep the momentum going over time.

Editor's note: This guide was written in collaboration with CX expert Jeannie Walters.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.