Beyond Jargon: How to explain the important CX Metrics to your boss.

What does CX and EE have to do with ROI when it comes down to your NPS and CSAT scores? …. If you’ve followed that sentence, well done, but I’ve a bigger question for you - would the most junior member on your team follow it?
How about your manager?
One more question: Would your team know which metrics are important? 

There are over 20 different data and customer experience metrics to consider when it comes to building out a full picture of your customer base. It can be overwhelming when you’re designing your CX Survey and mapping out which metrics to use, let alone explaining some of them to your team or your manager for that matter. 

To give you a little nudge in the right direction, we’ve compiled a list of a few CX metrics that should really matter to your team and invite you to use this as a springboard to discussions around creating the perfect Customer Experience Survey.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Your Customer Effort Score indicates how hard it was for your client to achieve their goal when interacting with you. That goal can be anything from a purchase on your website or filling out and completing an insurance claim, to talking to your contact center. 

The harder an action is to complete, the higher the likeliness of experiencing friction points (and dissatisfaction)  and so your CES score can help you hone in on areas of improvement in your process or offering. Ask for ratings and delve deeper with a follow-up question asking why your customer has given you this rating to really hone in on areas of improvement. 

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This metric is straightforward and gives you a clear indicator of how well or badly your product or service is doing by answering the most important question: Would you recommend us to your friends and family? 

Again, it’s important to take NPS with context, so follow up this question with one asking for clarity. Along with your CES score, your NPS is a great opportunity to see what areas of service your customers are encountering friction and what you can do to make their interactions easier. NPS on its own will give you a gauge of loyalty, but when used in conjunction with driver metrics (such as CES or CSAT) will allow you to garner a deeper understanding of your customers

First Contact Resolution (FCR)

If you’re in the business of offering a product or service that requires support, this is an important one for you. Your FCR indicates how many customers have had questions or problems resolved with the first contact of your support centers. 

First Contact Resolution gives you insight into how well your staff are equipped to solve problems, indicates areas for training and improvement and helps identify areas of oversight in policy or instructions. 

A simple question to measure FCR is “Did you receive the help you needed today?” or “Was your contact center agent able to solve your problem today”? 

This metric is often tracked on an operational level, using repeat calls and the like to understand FCR. When matching such operational data to customer feedback one gains a deeper understanding of whether a lack of repeat calls is in actual fact first-call resolution, or perhaps something more insidious like a customer giving up or switching to an alternate channel to try to get a resolution to their query.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

We’ve ranked this score last on our top 6 because it’s often considered the be and end all of CX.  While CSAT speaks directly to overall satisfaction, it’s important to know that your Customer Satisfaction Score usually happens directly after an interaction with your product or service and is really relevant to that interaction at that time. 

For instance, you would ask your customer to rate their contact center agent after filing an insurance claim, or how satisfied they were with the service they received after having their car serviced. 

It’s important to compare apples with apples on a CSAT, ensure your questions are clear and that you are gaining insight into all areas of the interaction from the start of the process to the end result as well as the agent or staff’s performance during this interaction.

Remember, knowing what these terms mean is half the battle. The real challenge is using your customer survey to gain a deeper understanding of what your customers love or hate,  and how you use those insights to create value not only for your customers but the staff who serve them. 

If you’re still unsure about what questions to ask to gain the right insights, why not reach out to us? We’ve been helping our clients build out their CX journeys for over 15 years and partner with both Avaya and Genesys to make your survey delivery smooth and pain-free.