Improving customer experience should be a key priority for any sensible business owner. Why? Because satisfied customers become return customers and tell their loved ones about you in the process!
All told, it’s a crucial way to avoid the fate that a whopping 45% of new businesses experience within 5 years: failure. Do it right and you’ll develop a thriving customer base that drives consistent revenue and provides a foundation for snowballing success.
But first, you have to tackle the problem of measuring customer experience! Alas, this particular task can be easier said than done. Unless that is, you have a high-quality tool or proven methodology to help…
Want to discover the best ones for the job? You’re in the right place. Check out this guide to the top tools and metrics designed to measure customer experience in 2021.
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1. Surveys
The most common tool for measuring offline and online customer experience (CX) is the good old-fashioned survey. Simple and easy to interpret, surveys literally ask customers how they felt about a certain interaction with your company! For example, you might seek their feedback on the checkout process, their experience of returning a product, and/or even their overall impression of the business.
You can then compile the responses, score them, and use the answers to reveal various insights into the customer experience. It’s important to point out that the validity of results is positively correlated with the quality of the question(s) and the number of responses. In other words, it’s hard to draw conclusions when you’ve asked a weak or confusing question that very few customers responded to.
2. HubSpot Customer Feedback
Wondering how to send those surveys out in the first place? Try the HubSpot Customer Feedback tool, which is designed for this specific purpose. You can quickly create surveys on various CX topics of your choosing and then distribute them to your contacts/customers!
Better still, the results are tracked and compiled into a central dashboard to help you interpret them. You can then proceed accordingly- comparing feedback, calculating average scores, and seeing what you’re doing well and what needs improvement. Throw in the ability to send automatic marketing emails to people based on their responses and you’re onto a winner.
3. Google Analytics
Love or hate it, Google Analytics (GA) is a powerful tool that can tell you a lot about how users and customers engage with your website. Pay close attention to metrics such as bounce rate and dwell time. High bounce rates and/or minimal time spent on your pages indicate unhappy people!
Maybe the site takes too long to load, is tricky to navigate, or the general design looks and feels outdated. These reasons often compel users (and potential customers) to click back and look elsewhere for a solution to their problem. And anyone who does make a purchase may have hated the experience so much they vow never to use it again!
It’s true that these GA metrics reveal more about the user experience of a website than customer experience though. After all, not everybody who visits your site will buy something from it! Nevertheless, it’s still fair to assume that it has an impact.
4. CRM Tools
As any digital experience company and they’ll tell you the same thing:
Customer relationships management tools (CRMs) are major weapons in your arsenal when it comes to measuring (and improving) the customer experience. There are masses of CRM software tools to choose from nowadays, yet they all help you track, optimize, and personalize the experience customers have with your business.
The CRM helps you record client questions, see what they’ve purchased in the past, and look at how many times they’ve bought something. If you’re seeing plenty of repeat purchases and enthusiastic comments, it’s a clear sign you’re doing something right in terms of the customer experience.
5. Simple Spreadsheets
Don’t want to invest in a CRM for help measuring customer experience? Try simple spreadsheets instead! It’ll involve much more manual work and time-consuming data entry, but there’s no doubt how effective spreadsheets can be for this purpose.
For example, you could use them to track customer retention. Defined as the percentage of repeat customers in a given time period, it’s a crucial metric in the realm of CX. The higher the percentage, the better.
You’ll need a record of:
- How many customers you had at the start of a time period (A)
- How many customers you had by the end of it (B)
- How many new customers you attracted between those dates (C)
To measure your retention rate, you’d subtract C from B, divide the answer by A, and then multiply by 100. Higher percentages indicate quality customer experience.
However, that’s just one example of how spreadsheets can prove useful here! With the right data, you can use them to calculate everything from customer churn to customer effort- two more key factors that shed light on the CX.
6. Acquire
Acquire offers a full-service customer engagement tool that includes a powerful feature called “Acquire Analytics”. You can use it to gain myriad insights into your business’ CX (and actively improve it at the same time). For instance, not only can you access custom reports to see core metrics of experience, but you can also create customer profiles that facilitate personalized interactions with them.
Oh, and you can see customer service problems as and when they occur! Keep track of emails and chats on the dashboard, responding in real-time to issues or complaints. This provides an accurate sense of how pleased customers are with their experience and allows you to resolve their issues ASAP too.
Try These Tools for Measuring Customer Experience
The sky-high rate of business failure means owners have to do everything in their power to stand out from the competition, make sales, and cultivate a positive brand identity. And that’s where measuring customer experience comes into play! One of many factors that contribute to business success, you’ll learn exactly what you can do to increase customer satisfaction and keep them coming back for more.
With any luck, the tools and ideas in this article will help in that regard. To learn more about this crucial topic, search ‘customer experience’ on the website now.
