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What types of metrics measure customer satisfaction?

Gathering customer feedback is a crucial element of running a successful business, but none of it will help without an effective way to measure it. That’s why a series of customer satisfaction metrics have been developed, and each one offers a unique benefit to businesses. Insightful feedback from your customers gives you the chance to improve your business and grow your customer base because the information is coming directly from the source. 

What is a customer satisfaction metric?

Customer satisfaction metrics measure how happy your customers are with your business, whether specifically about a product or service, or more generally about the overall customer experience. Not only do metrics help you to measure the customers’ level of satisfaction at the time it also gives you a marker to refer to later when measuring your progress. Once you’ve made improvements to your processes in response to a customer’s feedback, you can then look at the growth that happens in direct correlation to the changes you’ve made. Measuring progress towards a goal is the only way to know how successful your action points are, or if you need to reassess. Once you have an idea of what’s working, you can optimize it even more and cut back on anything that’s not performing.  

Types of customer satisfaction metrics

If you're looking to measure your customer satisfaction then a good start is to understand the most popular, and commonly-used calculations. Next, we'll go through each of the main scoring systems, and outline some of the pros and cons of each. These are supported by many customer feedback software services online.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a one-question survey that indicates how likely customers are to refer your brand to someone else. Using a numerical scale, usually 1-10, to rank their answer, they can quantify how satisfied they are and whether that translates to being a voluntary promoter of the business. You can include the numerical ranking as well as ask for a brief explanation for their score which gives you insight into the customer’s experience. 

How to calculate your NPS score

  • Promoters - scores of 9 or 10
  • Passives - scores of 7 or 8
  • Detractors - score of 6 or below

NPS score = Total percentage of promoters -– Total percentage of detractors. 

For a few reasons, NPS is not the most effective customer satisfaction metric. Firstly, it hinges entirely on one question which leaves customers underrepresented and businesses missing key indicators. Secondly, the NPS score doesn’t expire, meaning a score from years ago still stands, even when it no longer represents the customer experience accurately. Thirdly, the NPS only measures intended promotion and not any real referrals which means your NPS is a false representation of performance. At Review Tui, we don’t use an NPS because we believe there are far more effective metrics available for measuring customer satisfaction. You can find other metrics that collect data from more specific aspects of your customer experience, which delivers more meaningful results.   

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

A CSAT measures how satisfied the customer is with specific aspects of the customer experience, from a certain product to a particular customer service interaction. Unlike NPS, you can use a CSAT survey to ask multiple different questions to gauge a full impression of the customer’s experience. 

The answer is usually ranked on a scale from 1-5 or 1-10 which often looks like this:

  1. Very unsatisfied
  2. Unsatisfied
  3. Neutral
  4. Satisfied
  5. Very satisfied

A CSAT is an effective way to narrow in on the customer experience and discover exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are. Your customers will have the opportunity to give in-depth feedback, and you’ll be able to use the information to make relevant changes. With the right CSAT strategy, you can track the data you collect in a survey to an individual touchpoint and give yourself a solid understanding of your customer experience. For example, with Review Tui you can use campaigns to enable analytics and monitoring of your CSAT data and collate it all into one place. 

Customer Effort Score (CES)

CES measures the amount of effort it takes for a customer to interact with your business and how user-friendly your products and services are. This is an important metric because it allows you to find any sticking points your customers are facing and anything that might be turning prospective customers away. 

The question tends to refer to a customer’s specific purchase or interaction with a brand and is usually ranked on a scale from 1-5 or 1-10 like this:

  1. Very easy
  2. Easy
  3. Neutral
  4. Difficult
  5. Very difficult

Similarly to a CSAT, you can use Review Tui campaigns to gather the CES results to an individual touchpoint and uncover the trends of customer experience. 

Customer Health Score

A customer health score combines all historical data you have about a customer to make an overall summary of their satisfaction with your brand. The results of a customer health score are displayed as a colour score, from green to red. 

  • Green means the customer is content,
  • Yellow means there’s room for improvement, 
  • Red means they’re close to leaving your business. 

Your customer service team can use these colours to recognise when a customer needs their close attention or where an action can be taken to improve that customer’s health score. 

Abandonment rate 

Tracking your abandonment rate is an effective way of recognising when your business is falling short. When customers leave your business, for whatever reason, you can identify patterns that suggest why customers are unhappy with your service. 

To put it simply, an abandonment rate is a percentage of customers who ended their relationship with a brand before a change or complaint was resolved. If you have a high abandonment rate, you’re likely failing to resolve issues for your customers or taking too long to meet their needs. Tracking your abandonment rate allows you to see where these shortcomings exist and then make relevant improvements before they become more of a problem. 

Why do metrics matter? 

Using the right metrics for your customer satisfaction strategy makes a huge difference to your overall success. For example, using an NPS will give far more limited results than a CSAT or CES survey which tend to be more thorough and strategic. Using the right metric will allow you to make informed improvements, and act promptly on trends in your customer’s experience.  

Review Tui metrics

Review Tui is designed to make customer feedback a straightforward and valuable process by providing a simple, effective and integrated platform. This includes improving customer satisfaction surveys and following them up with the best possible metrics to keep track of them. 

For access to the platform when it launches, sign up to Review Tui and keep up to date with all there is to know about the customer feedback process. 

Download our free customer feedback strategy guide