The first step in improving the customer experience and managing its many components is to benchmark the aspects of the customer experience that matter most. A great way to start doing this is with these three standardized customer experience metrics for measuring customer sentiment: CES, CSAT, and NPS.
CSAT stands for ”customer satisfaction” in English, which shows how satisfied customers are with a company's products, services, or support, while both CES and NPS measure customer loyalty—just in slightly different ways. NPS measures loyalty through the likelihood of recommending the company to others, and CES measures loyalty by looking at how the customer experienced ease of contact with the company—which indicates repurchases and recurring contact with the company.
CES – Customer Effort Score
CES measures how easy customers perceive it is to be a customer with us. An example of a question is ”How easy was it for you to get the help you needed today?”.
By asking questions based on the experience of simplicity, you also create insights into how the customer experiences your services and what you need to do to gain loyal and returning customers for your business. Customer loyalty increases when the customer experiences the easiest and smoothest possible contact and process.
Understanding the customer's perspective on the experience is relevant, as simplicity in particular has proven to be a strong indicator of how likely the customer is to return. The response can also provide indications of how much the customer will spend with your business in the future and in which areas.
Another advantage of CES is that the metric can identify clear areas for development. The measure can thus be used in a very concrete way to examine which processes or parts of the company's product offering can be made smoother for the customer and thereby increase customer loyalty.
CSAT – Customer Satisfaction
CSAT is about the extent to which the customer's expectations have been met in their contact with your company, and measuring customer satisfaction has long been one of the most proven concepts when it comes to creating customer insights.
Measuring and actively working with your customers” satisfaction demonstrates a commitment to your customers and to your inclination to constantly develop and improve the customer journey. CSAT is usually measured via a five-point scale, where the outcomes range from ”Very dissatisfied” to ”Very satisfied".
Questions regarding the customer experience can be asked in anything from general terms such as ”How satisfied are you with us as a company?” to more specific questions linked to the product, service, execution, treatment, etc. A tip is to tailor the questions based on different parts of the customer journey, i.e., based on the type of contact the customer has had with your brand. This makes the feedback clearer for you and your employees, and you will know what you are doing well and what needs improvement.
NPS – Net Promoter Score
NPS is a simple way to find out how loyal your customers are to your company by asking a single question related to how likely the customer is to recommend your company to a colleague or friend. The goal of NPS is to find out if customers like your company enough to tell their friends or colleagues about it, depending on the target audience your business addresses.
The question can be phrased in a few different ways, for example: ”On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our business to a friend or colleague?” or ”Would you recommend [our company] to a colleague or friend?”
To gain clearer insights into the reason behind the customer's rating, you are welcome to provide space for additional comments and concrete examples via a free-text field – but ultimately, it is the recommendation itself that constitutes the NPS result.
The NPS question is answered on a scale from 0–10, where 0 means not at all likely and 10 means extremely likely. Depending on how customers respond, they are divided into three categories:
0–6 = ”Critics” or “Detractors”
7–8 = ”Passiva” or “Passives”
9–10 = ”Ambassadors” or “Promoters”
The formula for an NPS score is: NPS = Promoters (%) – Detractors (%)
The result is calculated by taking the percentage of promoters, i.e., everyone who answered 9–10, minus the percentage of detractors, i.e., everyone who answered 0–6. NPS can yield a result between -100 and 100, where closer to 100 means more promoters and is a better rating for the company.
What is a good average value or NPS benchmark can vary between different industries and target audiences, but generally speaking, a value above 0 should be strived for, and results around 30 and above are very good. Results around 50 are excellent and over 70 is exceptional.
Please feel free to review what is reasonable to aim for in your business and get in touch if you would like our recommendations!