In today's competitive landscape, the distinction between brands and their rivals, along with revenue growth, relies heavily on delivering outstanding customer experiences (CX). As organizations strive to elevate their CX performance, contact centers are facing mounting pressure to meet growing consumer expectations, allowing minimal room for mistakes. In fact, most consumers state they'll only tolerate two bad experiences before switching to a rival brand.
Forward-thinking companies are diligently monitoring metrics that gauge their CX, substantiating the successes and return on investments resulting from their endeavors. Presented here are some premier CX metrics, accompanied by real-life examples of their application.
Net Promoter Scores (NPS)
Consider NPS the crown jewel among CX metrics, given its unmatched capacity to distill customer loyalty and brand advocacy into a single, actionable metric. NPS assesses the probability of customers recommending your business on a scale of 0 to 10, based on a single question: "How likely is it that you would recommend this to a friend or colleague?"
Ideally, every customer would award your business a score of 9 or 10. Customers within this range are labeled "promoters," and represent a company’s most loyal customers. This is the score to enhance over time.
Using a straightforward question, brands can accurately measure and oversee customer loyalty promptly. Most customers willing to provide feedback prefer a direct approach. This is where the simplicity of NPS shines. Due to its uncomplicated nature, companies can track customer loyalty swiftly using NPS compared to traditional surveys.
By leveraging predictive NPS and real-time dashboard deployment, Idaho Central Credit Union increased its NPS by 19% - reaching an overall score of 92%. As a result, they exceeded their annual goal of 80-90% and increased their total NPS promoters by 104,000.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
CSAT gauges the satisfaction level customers experience with recent purchases or brand interactions. This metric enables companies to evaluate their advancements in specific areas and identify potential areas for enhancement, as it focuses on assessing individual events rather than the entire customer experience.
In today's landscape, many companies employ conversational analytics tools to detect sentiments within contact center conversations, ensuring more precise and less intrusive CSAT measurements. For example, Radial utilized sentiment analysis to identify negative interactions and sentiment training opportunities to help agents shift away from “powerless-to-help” language—verbiage that indicated they could not or would not help customers. As a result, they significantly improved training programs and increased net customer satisfaction by 2.17 percent.
First Contact Resolution (FCR)
Repeat callers can be a key indicator of subpar customer experiences. Such interactions swiftly erode brand loyalty, driving customers towards competitors. The less effort customers need to invest in resolving their issues, the more positive their experience. This is where FCR comes into play. This metric identifies how many interactions were successfully resolved in a single exchange, a pivotal factor in customer loyalty.
Delta Dental of Minnesota wanted to understand why certain interactions resulted in negative member experiences and high effort by both members and agents. In this way, they could strengthen customer loyalty and employee engagement by increasing FCR while decreasing the “defect” rate.
By implementing a new analytics-powered dashboard, the company achieved a 20% improvement in FCR and a 40% reduction in customer/agent effort. As a result, leaders anticipate material savings based on reducing repeat calls and meeting customer metric targets.
Average Handling Time (AHT) and Average Speed of Answer (AST)
Customers anticipate swift responses to their queries. Prolonged handling times or sluggish replies frustrate customers and ultimately harm a brand's reputation and bottom line. AHT and AST are internal metrics, not derived from customer feedback, that gauge how quickly contacts are answered, and issues are resolved.
Lower AHT or AST signifies an improved experience – how do companies achieve this? The initial step involves identifying root causes of extended calls using advanced speech analytics, which capture the entire customer journey from start to finish.
AAA Northeast was experiencing an issue with lower quality scores and longer resolution times. By utilizing analytics-driven solutions, they achieved a remarkable reduction in AHT, with a 14-second decrease across all calls and an impressive 53-second decrease specifically for emergency calls.
Addressing the Blind Spots in Your Customer Experience
Monitoring CX metrics provides brands with an all-encompassing understanding of customer interactions. Leading-edge contact center technologies now empower businesses to evaluate CX metrics for each interaction, resolving issues before they impact the bottom line.
By aligning your contact center and CX metrics as closely as possible with real-time data, your brand gains a clear and precise view of your customers' present sentiments. Measuring CX in real-time provides valuable insights into customers' true preferences, enabling informed decisions to enhance their overall experience.
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Jennifer Docken joined Calabrio’s product marketing team as the QM Product Marketing Manager in 2021. As an experienced B2B marketer she brings with her 10+ years of marketing experience across multiple industries. She is innovated minded with a strong drive to understand customer constraints and how to break down barriers. She strives to better understand the pressures put on the modern Contact Center and how to drive customer satisfaction and agent engagement.
