5 Metrics to Track That Affect Customer Satisfaction

Think your business is leaving your customers satisfied? Does your customer service accurately represent your brand? Are your interactions consistent across platforms and stages? Increased customer satisfaction means increased revenue. Your answers to these questions could determine the amount of sales you make this year. By tracking some important metrics, you can turn happy customers into loyal ones.

Important Customer Satisfaction Metrics

Achieving Solutions

In the early stages of the customer journey, your potential customers have a problem and they’re looking for a business who can solve it. A study conducted by the Customer Contact Council found that reducing the work customers must do to find a solution builds loyalty. At this early stage in the game, you must know how much time it takes for a customer to find their solution from the time they found you. How many solutions are they being offered? Are you correctly identifying their problem to begin with? Depending on your industry, a survey could help you gather data regarding this stage of the journey.

Changes in Interactions

Measure differences in contact throughout the customer journey. Was a customer raving about you with brand mentions on Twitter immediately following their purchase, but a month later had multiple customer service calls to you? What might that signify to you? Gather all customer interactions with a specific contact in one place. You may be able to pinpoint the exact time or event that caused the shift in customer satisfaction. If you can identify the issue here, you’ll create the opportunity to fix it. Since 70 percent of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels you’re treating them, jumping in to fix the problem may just turn their perception of your brand.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

One metric you can look at over time is your NPS. This number is a combination of customer satisfaction ratings and free-form customer feedback. The numeric satisfaction rating can be tracked across time, plus the free-form feedback eliminates the problem of asking your customers the wrong survey questions. They tell you what they want you to know. Implement a strong survey program to gather the most effective input directly from your customers. Your survey should help you identify your customers’ expectations and how well you’re meeting them. Leverage survey results to adjust your customer service approach, identify products that perform poorly or exceptionally well, and improve your business overall.

Abandonment Rates

This metric can apply to two few things: abandoned customer service calls and items never purchased in a shopping cart. The former tends to be a stronger indicator of customer satisfaction. The amount of time a customer waits on hold, whether they ever obtain customer service before ending the call, how many times they initiate contact, and whether their issue was resolved are all very important in determining their level of satisfaction with your business.

Ecommerce folks would also do well to track abandoned carts. Based on an average of many sources, the Baymard Institute puts cart abandonment rates at 63 percent. Tracking this metric will let you see if you need to adjust shipping rates, checkout methods, pricing transparency, or other roadblocks to completing the sale.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

This is the most common, straight-forward rating system you’ll find. To determine your CSAT, simply ask your customers to rate their satisfaction themselves. It can be a numeric scale or use symbols, just be sure the scale is very clear. Your numbers can be skewed when people confuse a one-rating as representing an excellent experience and you’re tracking it as a terrible experience. You can collect these ratings at specific times, such as after a purchase or after a customer service contact. You can also compare ratings over time using averages or from a single customer or group of similar customers (i.e. people who purchased the same item). The CSAT isn’t the most telling method of measuring customer satisfaction, but it can be used in conjunction with other methods.

Many methods of measuring and tracking customer satisfaction rely on asking your customer. Avoid inundating your customers with lengthy surveys; most won’t answer. Use data from multiple sources, such as surveys, website analytics, social media interactions, and customer service to get a complete picture of your customer’s relationship with your business. Compare data over time to spot important trends.

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This article, "5 Metrics to Track That Affect Customer Satisfaction" was first published on Small Business Trends