What are customer satisfaction metrics?

Customer satisfaction metrics are measures of evaluating how content and happy customers are with your product or with the user experience as a whole. In other words, these metrics help gauge the effectiveness of your product offering and how well it resonates with users.

Apart from measuring customer satisfaction, they also help you understand customer sentiment in depth and identify product improvement areas.

8 Important customer satisfaction metrics to measure

There are numerous ways you could measure customer satisfaction through various surveys. But the tricky bit is knowing the right questions to ask. If you don’t ask the right questions, you won’t get the right data needed for measuring satisfaction.

To help make things easier, we’ve compiled a list of eight fundamental metrics you need to collect feedback and measure customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

The customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is used to measure how satisfied customers are by asking them to rate their experience on a scale.

Tracking the customer satisfaction score is important to better understand customer sentiment. A low score serves as an effective signal that something is wrong. You can further narrow down the problem area by customizing the survey question.

For example, instead of measuring overall satisfaction, you can focus on tracking satisfaction with specific customer interactions or features. This will provide better insight into which product features and areas make customers happy or unhappy.

How to measure customer satisfaction score

• Once you create a CSAT survey and define a scale, e.g. from 1 to 5, you can use the customer satisfaction survey either via email or in-app. It is better to use in-app surveys since customers are more likely to answer accurately when the experience is fresh in their minds.
• To calculate the customer satisfaction score manually, take the number of positive responses and divide it by the total overall responses. Multiply by 100, and you’ll have a percentage score of customer satisfaction levels.

Customer effort score (CES)

The customer effort score (CES) measures how easy or difficult customers find it to interact with your business. These interactions include various touchpoints, like using your product, resolving an issue, asking a question, or requesting a new feature.

Measuring the customer effort score is useful because it helps identify friction points, which you can resolve to improve the customer experience and reduce churn.

How to measure customer effort score

• To calculate the customer effort score, divide the total “agree” responses by the total number of responses. Then multiply by 100 to get the final score. The “agree” responses are the top 3 ratings on your chosen scale, so 5, 6, and 7 if you pick a scale of 1 to 7.
• You can use CES surveys either via email or in-app. In-app surveys are better because that’s when users are the most engaged and, hence, more likely to respond.
• If you use in-app surveys, you should set up contextual triggers, such as after users perform an action/interact with a feature. This way, you can gain actionable insights into the user experience.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is another commonly used customer satisfaction metric used to measure customer loyalty and advocacy towards your product. The survey is based on a single question asking customers how likely they are to recommend your company or product on a scale of 0 to 10.

The idea behind NPS surveys is that the happier customers are with a product, the more likely they are to recommend it. This is why tracking the likelihood of recommendations serves as a good proxy for customer satisfaction levels.

Similarly, the customers most likely to recommend are also your most loyal supporters and brand advocates. This makes NPS surveys a useful tool for customer loyalty measurement as well.

How to measure net promoter score

• To calculate NPS manually, you subtract the percentage of promoters (9 or 10 ratings) from the percentage of detractors (ratings 6 or below).
• Calculating the score manually for hundreds of data points can get complicated. Instead, it is better to use a survey analytics tool to automate the customer feedback collection and score calculation. For example, Userpilot helps you measure and visualize NPS to monitor changes over time.
• With the right analytics software, you can also use response tags to further analyze qualitative data from any NPS follow-up questions.

Customer service satisfaction (CSS)

As the name implies, customer service satisfaction (CSS) is used to measure how pleased customers are with your customer service team. Out of all the customer satisfaction metrics we discuss, this one is specifically about your support team, their strong points, and problem areas.

Satisfaction in terms of customer service includes several dimensions, such as the overall quality of interactions, responsiveness, and the degree of problem resolution.

The CSS survey is useful for not only tracking customer satisfaction, but for also analyzing the performance of your customer service team.

This is beneficial because your company’s long-term success requires that you foster stronger customer relationships. And that can only happen if you monitor and improve your customer service.

How to measure customer service satisfaction

Measuring customer satisfaction through the CSS survey is straightforward. You can trigger surveys after every customer service interaction and collect customer feedback in real time.

Customer health score (CHS)

The customer health score (CHS) is a customer satisfaction metric that analyzes customer engagement to determine whether a particular customer is healthy or at-risk. In other words, CHS measures the likelihood of a customer churning.

Healthy customers are those who regularly engage with your product, thereby having unlocked stickiness, and show signs of potential growth with your company. Whereas at-risk customers are ones that are subscribed to your SaaS product or service but are showing signs of churning soon.

This score is helpful for customer success teams, as it enables them to focus on at-risk customers to try and improve their customer experience.

But preventing churn isn’t the only benefit of tracking CHS. Monitoring CHS also helps you identify power users and possible account expansion opportunities to help grow your business.

How to measure customer health score

There is no single action that customers take that defines their health score. Instead, you can use several different metrics to measure the customer health score, such as the ones below:

• Product usage.
• Product stickiness.
• Core feature engagement.
• Willingness to pay (i.e. upselling conversion rate).
• Willingness to answer surveys (i.e. survey completion rate).

Customer lifetime value (LTV)

The customer lifetime value (LTV) is a measure of the total predicted revenue a customer will bring during the course of their relationship with your business. In other words, this numeric value is the net profit you can expect from a single customer.

Measuring the lifetime value is useful because it helps you identify customers with high LTV. You can then focus on these customers by personalizing marketing efforts and allocating resources more effectively to increase LTV even more and thereby maximize profitability.

Tracking LTV also provides valuable insights for use in designing your retention strategies, as retaining existing customers costs less than acquiring new ones.

How to measure customer lifetime value

To calculate lifetime value, first find the customer value, which is the average purchase value multiplied by the purchase frequency. Once you have the customer value, multiply it with the average customer lifespan, and there you have it!

Customer retention rate (CRR)

Customer retention rate (CRR) is one of the most important customer satisfaction metrics for all SaaS businesses to track. This metric measures the total percentage of customers who continue using your product or service over a specific time period.

There are two ways to approach this: You can either track the percentage of customers who stay or the percentage of customers who leave. If you measure the latter, that counts as the customer churn rate. The two metrics (churn rate and retention rate) can be used interchangeably.

A high retention rate, or consequently a low churn rate, generally indicates good customer satisfaction. Tracking the retention rate is important because it helps you monitor customer loyalty and save money by focusing on retaining existing customers.

How to measure customer retention rate

To calculate customer retention rate, you can use retention tables, aka perform cohort retention analysis.

However, performing such complex analysis on your own is near impossible, which is why you should implement an analysis tool to automate the task. With Userpilot, for example, you can easily create cohort tables for monitoring retention analytics.

Customer reviews

Finally, the last customer satisfaction metric to monitor is customer reviews. A customer review can be any positive, negative, or even neutral opinion a customer shares about their experience with your product or service.

Tracking customer reviews is vital for various reasons. First, they provide credible customer satisfaction feedback directly from the source.

Plus, studying customer reviews also helps in identifying areas for improvement. Based on the reviews, once you make the necessary changes, you can then close the feedback loop. This lets customers know their opinions matter and you care.

How to monitor customer reviews

Monitoring customer reviews can be tricky because they’re so spread out across various sites. It isn’t enough to only examine reviews on your own website and pages. You must also regularly study reviews published on third-party sites.

To make the monitoring process easier, try using a social monitoring tool. Additionally, you can also check established review platforms, such as G2 rating for SaaS companies.

Conclusion

Ready to start tracking customer satisfaction metrics yet? These eight essential metrics reveal everything you need to know about your customers, from why they’re churning to what makes them stick with you.

Just remember that no single metric is ever going to be enough to solve all your customer satisfaction concerns. So, try using a mix of them for the maximum benefit and deeper insights into the customer experience. Good luck and happy tracking!

Want to get started tracking customer satisfaction metrics? Get a Userpilot Demo and see how you can improve the customer experience in no time.

Try Userpilot and Take Your Customer Satisfaction to the Next Level

Get a Demo

• 14 Day Trial
• No Credit Card Required