How would you rate the support you received
How would you rate the support you received
A guide to customer satisfaction surveys (+25 questions to ask)
Customer feedback is crucial to growing and improving your business. Asking the right customer satisfaction survey questions will provide key insights into what’s working and what isn’t so you can enhance the customer experience and increase retention.
By Stella Inabo, Contributing Writer
Published April 2, 2020
Last updated July 14, 2022
Your business has only so many chances to get it right. Fifty percent of customers will stop doing business with a company after just one bad experience, and over 80 percent will move to a competitor after multiple negative experiences.
To minimize poor customer experiences and boost retention, you must request feedback and listen to your buyers. But where do you start?
One of the most effective ways to get feedback is through customer satisfaction surveys. However, sending a random set of customer satisfaction survey questions every now and then won’t help you improve your CX. To obtain meaningful feedback, create surveys with a goal in mind and carefully craft questions that help you collect relevant data.
What are customer satisfaction surveys?
A customer satisfaction survey is a list of questions used to measure what consumers think about a business and its products or services. The primary purpose of customer satisfaction surveys is to gather customer feedback about anything from the ease of using a product to the quality of service provided by customer support agents.
Customer satisfaction survey responses reveal opportunities for growth and areas where the company is lagging behind. By acting on this input and addressing the weak spots, support leaders can offer better customer experiences—leading to greater customer acquisition and retention.
3 types of customer satisfaction surveys
There isn’t only one way to find out how your customers feel. Different types of feedback surveys drill down into specific metrics such as overall satisfaction, effort, and loyalty.
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score
Customer satisfaction score surveys indicate how happy customers are with a particular interaction or experience with your brand.
Say a customer just spoke to a support agent, and you want to find out if they got the help they needed. Your CSAT survey can ask, “How satisfied were you with the support you received?” Your customer can rank their experience on a scale of 1 to 5 or choose from options ranging from “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied.”
To measure your CSAT score, divide the sum of all positive responses (responses from 4–5 or 7–10, depending on the scale) by the total number of responses collected. Then, multiply the result by 100. The percentage represents your satisfied customers.
Net Promoter Scoreв„ (NPS)
Net Promoter Score (NPSВ®) surveys measure how likely a customer is to recommend your product or service to someone else. NPS surveys are usually measured on a scale of 1 to 10. The score is a strong indicator of customer loyalty and overall customer sentiment of your brand.
To determine your NPS, compare the percentage of detractors (respondents who answer 0–6) to that of promoters (respondents who answer 9–10) to see where your company stands.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer Effort Score (CES) gauges how much effort a customer must exert to complete a task, use your product, or get an issue resolved. It shows how easy (or difficult) buyers find interactions with your brand, so the metric is helpful for recognizing how close your customers are to churning. CES surveys typically feature a rating scale of 1–5, where 1 means “strongly disagree” and 5 means “strongly agree.”
Collect CES scores by sending out surveys that ask customers to rate their most recent support experience. To calculate your CES, divide the sum of all Customer Effort Scores by the total number of respondents.
Top 3 benefits of customer satisfaction surveys
Surveys enable you to understand customer expectations and see where your business is falling short and where it’s excelling. Based on these insights, you can form a plan on how to improve your support experience and strengthen customer relationships.
Surveys help you build better products
Surveys are the product team’s secret weapon. Customer feedback tells you if your buyers love (or hate) what you’ve created—you don’t have to guess or test a million times.
Say your company offers a project management tool for startups. On calls, customers complain that they keep missing deadlines because they can’t distinguish between messages and assignments in your software. You act on that feedback by rolling out a new feature that lets users distinguish between messages sent from colleagues and tasks that have been assigned to them.
An online survey can help you determine if customers find this new feature helpful. Their feedback will reveal any pain points and possible solutions, so you can improve the product to suit their needs.
Surveys reveal strengths and weaknesses
Brands can use surveys to learn where they’re getting it right or wrong.
There’s a strong chance your business is doing better than the competition in some areas. But what about the missed opportunities? These gaps may be blind spots for you but not for your customer base. Through surveys, customers can identify holes in the buyer’s journey and suggest possible solutions.
Surveys improve customer relationships
Surveys make customers feel heard. When you ask consumers for their opinion, you’re showing them you care about their ideas and want to make improvements. In turn, your customers are more likely to trust your brand—especially when you act on their feedback—and maybe even recommend it to their friends and family.
5 types of customer satisfaction survey questions
Instead of waiting for customers to complain, regularly ask them about their interactions with your brand so you can proactively catch issues and maintain their loyalty.
Customer satisfaction survey questions come in a variety of formats:
Nominal scale questions
Nominal questions categorize answers into two or more variables. The options do not overlap and are usually qualitative in nature, so you can’t use numbers to define your answers.
Let’s say you want to include other languages on your website so your readers across the world can access information easily. You could ask:
What languages do you speak?
Nominal scale responses are easy to collect and measure, but the questions sometimes restrict the way customers can express themselves.
Ordinal scale questions
Ordinal questions measure customer feelings or opinions using a set of ordered responses. They are arranged in a specific manner so that each response is greater or less than the other. For example, your doctor could ask you to rate your pain from a 1 (not so painful) to a 10 (extremely painful).
You might ask your customers if they feel “satisfied” or “not satisfied” with your support or if they’re “very likely” or “very unlikely” to recommend your product to a friend or colleague.
Likert scale questions
A Likert scale is a type of ordinal scale question that uses a five- or seven-point rating scale to gauge customer sentiment. Usually, Likert scale questions ask respondents to agree or disagree with statements. They provide more information than binary “yes/no” questions and are regarded as a more reliable way to measure customer satisfaction.
Say you want to find out how well a self-service option, such as your knowledge base, is performing with your customers. You might frame your prompt as:
The knowledge base articles are helpful and informative.
Semantic differential questions
Semantic differential questions ask customers to rate an interaction, product, or brand by selecting a specific variation of an adjective.
Say you want to ask respondents about the quality of their interaction with a support agent. Your question and answer options might be:
“How would you rate the support you received?”
With semantic differential questions, customers can choose responses that closely align with their feelings instead of simply agreeing or disagreeing with a statement.
Open-ended questions
Open-ended questions allow customers to express themselves freely outside the confines of yes/no and point-scale answers, giving brands more context around responses. These questions are usually accompanied by a text box.
An example of an open-ended question is: “If someone asked you to describe our product, what would you say to them?”
Consider asking an open-ended question at the end of your survey so customers have the opportunity to elaborate on their answers or point out issues you may be missing.
25 customer satisfaction survey question examples
There isn’t a single customer survey that will give you all the insights you need to improve your CX. Instead, tailor survey questions to different department needs and customer touchpoints. Use the following list of customer satisfaction survey examples to ask the right questions for different use cases.
Demographic questions
Questions that assess your customer demographics can help marketing and sales segment customers into buyer personas. Responses could lead to extremely valuable insights that influence revenue and support strategies. Demographic questions can validate existing data while revealing new patterns.
Example survey questions include:
Product usage questions
Questions about the ways customers use your product or service allow your company to better understand the customer experience. Ask buyers what they like and don’t like about your offering so you know what areas need improvement to keep your audience loyal.
Example survey questions include:
Quantitative customer feedback questions
Qualitative responses are important, but numbers are easier to measure. You can validate, confirm, or disprove problems and make decisions based on data.
Example survey questions include:
Follow-up questions
Follow-up questions make sure you’ve covered all your bases. Ask customers how they feel about recent interactions with your business. You can send follow-up questions after a buyer has finalized a purchase or contacted customer support.
Example survey questions include:
Open-ended and long-form questions
An open-ended question gives customers room to voice experiences and opinions in more detail. Detailed responses can help you build better products, provide ideas for your knowledge base, and pinpoint areas of improvement.
Example survey questions include:
Best practices for creating customer survey questions
Creating a customer satisfaction questionnaire requires more than listing questions. You have to be mindful of inherent biases, survey timing, and other key factors that can impact responses. Use these tips to guide you as you build your survey.
Begin every survey with a goal in mind
For feedback to be actionable, surveys should have an obvious and clear objective. So, before sending out a survey, ask yourself: “What do we need to know that we don’t know?” This will help you identify your goals.
Surveys should have an obvious and clear objective.
Say you recently rolled out a new prospecting feature for your sales CRM that speeds up the process of collecting information. You’re not sure what prevents customers from using the new feature, and you want to find out how you might increase engagement. With this goal in mind, you can ask customers questions specifically about the feature.
Keep survey questions simple and short
If your customers have to read your survey questions several times before they can understand the queries, you risk not receiving any responses at all. Along with question complexity, your survey length also affects response rates. A SurveyMonkey study shows that the longer a survey is, the less likely customers are to complete it.
The longer a survey is, the less likely customers are to complete it.
Write a small number of straightforward questions to encourage responses from customers. Instead of phrasing a statement as, “Navigating and sourcing articles in the knowledge base was easy,” try phrasing it as, “It was easy to find helpful knowledge base articles.”
Use open-ended questions to get more details
Include one to two open-ended questions at the end of your survey to let your customers express themselves and to make sure there aren’t any problems you’re missing. For example, after asking the customer to rate your product, you could prompt them to provide more details by stating, “In your own words, tell us about your experience with our product.”
While open-ended questions are your best friend, you should limit your usage of them so customers don’t have to spend too much time writing responses.
Choose the right time to send surveys
The best time to send a satisfaction survey is when an experience is still fresh in the customer’s mind. A CES survey sent closely after the customer has interacted with a support agent is more likely to earn you accurate responses because that customer will still remember what happened and how they felt about the experience.
Customers need to have formed an opinion about their experience before you reach out to them.
But you must also be careful not to send surveys too early. Customers need to have formed an opinion about their experience before you reach out to them.
Send out surveys at significant milestones and touchpoints during the customer journey. For example, when a new client finishes the onboarding process, send an in-app survey to ask about their experience.
Turn survey responses into action
You’ve sent your first survey, and the results are in. Start by responding to your customers quickly and reassuring them that their concerns will be addressed.
Analyze the results for trends to see what customers want, and forward common issues to appropriate departments so they can come up with solutions. Acting on feedback shows your customers that you care about their experience and want to make improvements for the future—and that’ll keep them coming back.
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How to create customer satisfaction survey questions to master your market [with examples]
Happy, successful customers are the lifeblood of any business. They’re what transforms your growth from a funnel into a flywheel. You can create happy customers, but to do it you have to truly understand them and how they think about you.
So how do you know what they’re thinking? You have to ask!
Last updated
My name is Michael Redbord, and I helped build HubSpot’s support and service teams, working with customers for over eight years. Today, I’m the General Manager of HubSpot’s newest product line, Service Hub, which helps our customers grow through exceptional service.
At HubSpot, we use feedback to understand our customers and what the market demands. This approach has driven dramatic changes over the years—taking us from a small marketing app to the more complete front-office software suite we are today.
Today, I’m sharing the most important things I’ve learned about customer satisfaction surveys, so you can take some of my learnings and use them to adopt a practice of customer feedback at your business and grow better by mastering your market. I cover:
What is a customer satisfaction survey?
A customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire designed to help businesses understand what their customers think about their products or services, their brand, and their customer support. Customer satisfaction surveys allow companies to improve products strategically, optimize user experience, and deliver exactly what the market demands.
At HubSpot, we use customer satisfaction surveys to understand the micro-level experiences of individual users and address their concerns, but we always return to macro-level questions like “Where is the market going,” “How is our product on the cutting edge,” and “Where do we need to improve?” as well.
4 types of customer satisfaction surveys
There are several ways to understand if your customers are happy, loyal, and satisfied with your product or service, and each can help you learn something about your users’ experience. Here are four of the most effective surveys you can use to understand your customers.
1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction surveys usually contain a simple question with a binary response (e.g., yes/no, happy face/sad face). They ask things like “Did our product do what you wanted it to do?”
These scores are usually high (in the 98%+ range), so a sudden spike in negative scores tells you there’s an issue that needs immediate attention.
2. Net Promoter Score (NPS®)
A Net Promoter Score survey asks customers to rate how likely they are to recommend your company/product to a friend or colleague on a scale of 0-10. You then compare your percentage of detractors (0-6 answers) to that of promoters (9-10 answers) to see where your company stands—the more promoters you have, the more you can infer people are satisfied with you.
We’ve done the hard work for you and pre-built a CSAT & NPS survey.
💡 An NPS software tool like Hotjar can help you learn more about your customers’ needs
3. Customer Effort Score (CES)
The Customer Effort Score measures how much effort it takes for customers to either use your product or fix a problem through customer support.
At HubSpot, we send a CES survey after we close each support ticket. A CES question will ask “How easy was it to solve your problem?,” and customers are typically given a 5-point scale with options like ‘very difficult’, ‘somewhat difficult’, ‘about as easy as I expected’, ‘somewhat easy’, ‘very easy’.
4. Milestone surveys
Milestone surveys are questionnaires sent out at key moments in the customer journey to help understand the user experience better. A milestone can either be time-based (e.g., sending a survey 60-days after signup) or experience-based (e.g., sending after onboarding is complete).
Creating your customer satisfaction survey: 6 types of question
There are different ways to ask customer satisfaction survey questions, and each has advantages and disadvantages. Here are six types of questions you can ask.
Multiple-choice questions
In multiple-choice questions, there is a limited number of answers a respondent can give. The results are easy to tabulate, and you’re more likely to get a response from a user because these kinds of questions require less effort to answer than open-ended ones (where users need to type in their answers).
Multiple-choice questions include rating scale questions, binary scale questions, nominal questions, Likert scale questions, and semantic differential questions, which are all explained below.
Rating scale questions (also called ordinal questions)
Rating scale questions offer a range of multiple-choice answers that map onto a numeric scale, such as rating customer support on a scale of 1-5 or stating the likelihood of recommending a product on a scale of 0 to 10 (NPS question).
How likely are you to recommend [product name] to a friend or colleague? (0-10)
Binary scale questions
Binary scale questions limit respondents to one of two possible answers, such as ‘yes/no’, or ‘thumbs up/thumbs down’. They work well to limit the ambiguity that comes with subjective responses to rating scale questions (because one person’s 4-star experience is another person’s 5-star experience).
Did customer support help you find the solution you were looking for today? (yes/no)
Nominal questions
Nominal questions identify different categories of answers. The answers don’t overlap (unless you include an ‘all of the above’ option), and you can’t apply a numerical value to them. Example
Which of the following bests describes you? “I am ______”
A current customer of [Company Name]
Not a customer, but considering becoming one
Not a customer and don’t plan to become one anytime soon
Likert scale questions
The Likert scale is a 5- or 7- point scale used to evaluate how customers feel about something. The bottom number (always a ‘1’) represents one extreme view, while the highest number (e.g., a ‘5’ on a 5-point scale) represents the opposite extreme view. The middle number (e.g., a ‘3’ on a 5-point scale) indicates a more moderate view.
To what extent do you agree with the following statement:
[Product name]’s onboarding process was simple, straightforward, and painless.
Semantic differential questions
Semantic differential questions are similar to Likert scale questions in that they both use a 5- or 7-point scale. What makes semantic differential scale questions unique is that they are more descriptive and ask the respondent to choose the option that best represents their opinion or attitude on a given subject instead of asking them to simply agree or disagree.
How helpful do you find our video tutorials?
Open-ended questions
An open-ended customer satisfaction survey question gives respondents the freedom to write whatever they’d like. These questions are great for gathering new ideas and identifying issues and opportunities you never knew existed. The data is a bit more challenging to process, but there are plenty of techniques to make analyzing open-ended questions easier.
‘Was there anything in your checkout process we could improve? If so, what?’
11 (specific) customer survey questions to ask
Question 1: How would you rate the support you received?
Question type: Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
CSAT surveys usually ask respondents to pick from two options, and scores tend to be high (98%+) so a sudden drop can alert you to problems.
Question 2: How happy are you with [product name]? (1-5)
If they answer 1-3, ask ‘Sorry to hear that! How could we improve?’
If they answer 4-5, ask ‘What do you love about [product name]?’
Question type: milestone survey
Send out milestone surveys at key points in the customer lifecycle, such as mid-way through their onboarding, after several months as a customer, after one year as a customer, etc.
Question 3: How likely are you to recommend [product name] to a friend or colleague? (0-10)
How likely are you to recommend [product name] to a friend or colleague? (0-10)
Question type: NPS survey question
Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys are best used after customers have had a chance to experience your brand and form an opinion. At HubSpot, we wait 90 days after onboarding to send our first NPS survey.
Question 4: How easy did we make it to solve your problem?
Question type: Customer Effort Score (CES)
At HubSpot, we ask a CES question every time we close a support ticket. It helps us understand not just the customer’s experience with the ticket itself, but with the whole support experience.
Questions 5 to 11: more customer satisfaction survey questions
Here are seven additional questions that work well for customer satisfaction surveys, taken from Hotjar’s list of survey questions for different industries.
How could we improve your experience with [Company Name]?
Do you have anything else to add? Please be 100% honest; we love feedback!
Please describe yourself in 1-2 sentences. For example, «I am a 35-year old data analyst who lives in San Mateo, California.”
What should we do to ‘WOW’ you?
How would you feel if you couldn’t use [Product Name] anymore?
What would persuade you to use [Product Name> more often?
What, if anything, almost stopped you from purchasing from us?
How to create and distribute a customer satisfaction survey
Getting started with customer satisfaction surveys can be hard, but here are some steps to make things a bit easier.
Step 1: start with our pre-built templates
Our in-house experts have created CSAT survey templates that’s all set up and ready to go. Get access here.
If you’re new to collecting feedback, you don’t need to set up all of these surveys at once. You can (and should) start small, testing out a few survey questions and seeing what kind of response they get. Over time, you will have opportunities to refine your technique.
Step 2: decide what to measure, how to measure, and who to survey
What to measure: refer back to the list of the different types of customer satisfaction surveys (NPS, CSAT, CES, etc.) and decide which of these metrics will be your focus.
How to measure: you have a number of options for sending surveys. You can…
Use an on-page survey that pops up in a window at the bottom of the screen
Send an email with the survey attached
Install a feedback widget where users can leave comments on any page
Who to survey: do you want to study new customers? Long-time customers? Renewals? Non-renewals? Those who recently completed a customer service call? The more intentional you can be about choosing your surveys audience(s), the better.
📝 Editor’s note: at HubSpot, the team built their own tools to collect customer feedback. You can either build your own like they did, or you can use online software like Hotjar’s Survey tool (for on-page or email surveys) or Feedback widget (that lets users comment on each page).
Step 3: pick an ideal time to distribute your survey
When it comes to sending online surveys to your customers, you will need to figure out what timing makes the most sense for your business.
For customer support surveys, we like sending them 20 minutes after every interaction. This helps us address any issues with the support itself, and the short delay gives customers a chance to figure out if the solution actually worked.
You can also send surveys at different stages of the customer lifecycle, such as:
midway through onboarding
every six months
when you lose a deal (to figure out why)
during renewal, or
when a customer decides to cancel.
Again, make sure your timing is ideal. For example, sending an NPS survey too early could result in bad data since your customers haven’t had a chance to fully evaluate your product yet.
After a customer’s initial purchase
It’s great to learn what customers think of you just after they’ve made the decision to buy. As we pointed out in a different post, you can learn a great deal from those buyers who almost failed to convert.
Step 4: evaluate your data once you’ve got a large enough sample size
Use a sample size calculator to determine how many responses you need to have statistically significant data (i.e., a representative sample of your customer base).
Get inspired by these 7 customer satisfaction survey examples
Nothing beats real-world examples, so here are a few from Hotjar and HubSpot.
1. Point-of-conversion survey (Hotjar example)
Who: new customers
When: within seconds of purchase
Where: on-page survey
Hotjar’s point-of-conversion survey appears seconds after a user signs up for the paid plan. Here’s what it looks like:
A point-of-conversion survey helps shed light on any negative experiences that could have prevented the customer from making their purchase. Ideally, you can use these responses to address possible pain points and improve the user experience for future users.
2. Customer effort survey for customer support (HubSpot example)
Who: customers who have requested support
When: 20 minutes after closing a support ticket
Where: HubSpot’s Support Inbox
At HubSpot, we send a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey 20 minutes after closing a support ticket. This delay gives customers a chance to figure out whether their problem was really solved.
You’ll notice that we give them the option to reopen the ticket, which addresses the micro-level experience of the individual user. Next, we ask them to rate the effectiveness of the customer support agent, and then we ask the user how much effort they had to apply to get their problem solved.
Asking these two questions side-by-side helps us distinguish between the customer’s evaluation of the support agent (which could point to a training issue) and their experience with the problem itself (which could point to a product issue).
3. Retention survey (Hotjar)
Who: customers who have chosen to downgrade
When: immediately before a customer downgrades
Where: Hotjar dashboard
Hotjar uses a retention survey to figure out why a customer downgraded from a paid plan.
These surveys are a great way to identify and address product or service issues that affect customer retention.
4. Retention survey (HubSpot)
Who: customers who have chosen to cancel
When: immediately after a customer cancels
Where: on-page survey
Here’s how we do our retention survey at HubSpot:
5. Mid-onboarding CSAT survey (HubSpot)
Who: customers in the middle of onboarding
When: half-way into the onboarding process
At HubSpot, we use a simple CSAT survey to make sure we’re handling the onboarding process well.
The red and yellow faces trigger contact from customer support (micro-level focus), and any issues that come up will be explored at a broader level (macro-level focus).
6. Customer effort survey for product use (Hotjar)
Who: new customers
When: two weeks after signup, when the customer has started using key features
Where: on-page survey
You can use a CES survey to evaluate how difficult it is to use your product. Here’s how Hotjar does it:
Notice that both negative and positive responses lead to open-ended questions that help Hotjar improve the user experience.
7. Net Promoter Score (HubSpot)
Who: both new and repeat customers
When: once customers have had a chance to use the product and form an opinion
Where: on-page survey
NPS measures how likely your customers are to recommend you to a friend or colleague. Here’s how we do it at HubSpot:
The results are in: 6 follow-up steps for your customer satisfaction survey
Now that you have all the information from your surveys, what do you do with it?
Step 1: thank respondents
This is a critical step that helps ensure customers will continue to provide feedback. Customers are more likely to give feedback if they know you’re paying attention and value their efforts.
Step 2: close the feedback loop
Follow up with any customers who left negative responses. This is the start of the micro-level focus, where you start working to address individual concerns.
Step 3: read and analyze comments
This is the most important step, and it provides an opportunity to address customer satisfaction on an individual (micro-level) as well as on a larger scale (macro-level).
Step 4: address the micro-level issues
At HubSpot, we have a Slack channel called ‘NPS Alerts’, where we upload the results from every single NPS survey we receive (score + comments). More than half the company is on that channel, and when an issue is highlighted, we work together to solve it. Once it’s fixed, someone will reach out to the customer and CC anyone else who wants to join the conversation.
Step 5: put out any fires (i.e., pull the Andon Cord)
There’s a concept in Japanese car production (Lean Manufacturing) called the ‘Andon Cord‘. If things aren’t working correctly in a factory setting, people could get hurt. With that in mind, any employee working in one of those factories can pull this cord, called the Andon Cord, which stops the entire line of production.
Now, at a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company, no one is in any physical danger—but when our feedback shows that something is really wrong, we can ‘pull the Andon Cord’ to stop everything and try to figure out what’s going on.
Step 6: address the macro-level issues
When we look at data at HubSpot, we start by ruthlessly segmenting (i.e. dividing users into groups). Say we want to improve the experience for marketing executives on a given product. We start by only looking at their feedback and we go through an exercise to understand, itemize, and rank those comments in order. This allows us to really get into the heads of a particular segment of our users, and we believe it helps us get traction that we couldn’t get if we chose not to segment.
Final word of advice: by following these steps, you will be able to build a solid foundation for understanding your customers, addressing their needs and concerns on an individual or micro-level, and improving their overall experience on a larger scale. Of course, you might not see an immediate increase in your scores when you start making improvements, but if you collect solid data and trust in the process, your scores will improve over time—and your satisfied customers will ultimately drive your success.
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15 Customer Service Metrics & Why They Matter
Quality management 14 MIN READ Jan 15, 2019
Tracking the right customer service metrics is the key to providing quality customer-facing interactions. If you know how your team is doing, you know what needs to be changed and what should be praised.
We’ve compiled 15 key metrics and KPIs to give you an overview of the choices you have when improving the quality of your customer support. Pick the metrics that matter the most to your company and team.
Infographic: 15 Customer Service Metrics You Should be Nailing
Video: Customer Service Metrics That Actually Matter
In the following video, we’ll focus on the metrics that actually matter and help you ensure that the quality of your customer support is top-notch.
15 Customer Service Metrics & Why They Matter
There are 4 customer service metrics that give great insight into how well your agents are handling their tasks. Make sure you combine quantitative and qualitative metrics and look at your quality from two perspectives: the customers’ and your own.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) is a metric often used to measure how satisfied your customers are with your support, or the service or product that your company provides. According to Qualtrics, CSAT is usually measured by using variations of the question:
“How would you rate the support you received?”
Respondents give an answer that is something between “Good, I’m satisfied” and “Bad, I’m unsatisfied”. The results can be averaged out to give a Composite Customer Satisfaction Score, usually expressed as a percentage: 100% being total customer satisfaction, 0% total customer dissatisfaction.
If you’re curious about average CSATs in your industry and region, Zendesk has some great benchmark studies that may be beneficial.
Measuring and reporting customer satisfaction with CSAT
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
While CSAT is a transactional quality metric asked after a specific interaction, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a more holistic metric designed to measure the customers’ overall experience with your company.
NPS asks the question:
“On a scale of zero to 10 how likely are you would recommend us (our company) to a friend or colleague?”
Customers who answer 9 or 10 are considered Promoters and are your best brand advocates, 6 and lower are Detractors and are likely to churn.
NPS is traditionally used as a metric for product or marketing teams. As support should be considered as a part of your company’s product, it can make an impact on NPS as well. It’s a great way to align all teams towards a common goal: the customer.
How to calculate Net Promoter Score and report your NPS
Internal Quality Score (IQS)
Internal Quality Score (IQS) is the third most important customer service metric that you should track. While CSAT and NPS present your customers’ point of view, IQS rates your customer conversations from your own perspective. This can be done as self-reviews, manager reviews, or peer-reviews.
The values that are important to your support organization and the qualities of a successful support interaction should be defined in your rating categories (e.g. solution, tone, product knowledge). These make up the aggregate internal quality score.
Tools like Klaus help you conduct peer reviews and calculate IQS for you.
The quality of your support interactions affects almost all relevant KPIs and metrics. By analyzing your interactions, you find gaps in your knowledge. This serves as the basis for improvement in all areas.
Customer service quality assurance scorecard on Klaus and Internal Quality Score (IQS) reports
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Your company’s Customer Effort Score reflects the amount of work your customers have to put in to get a resolution to their inquiry. Much like CSAT, it is measured by asking customers to rate whether they agree with a statement like:
“Your company made it easy for me to handle my issue.”
Start by segmenting your customer base or specific product areas to see if they are consistently ranked as a high effort by your customers. Once you’ve recognized the most challenging parts of your customer experience, focus on improving those areas.
Support should come effortlessly and be enjoyable. A customer shouldn’t be pulling teeth to get their problems resolved—and if they do, it probably indicates a larger issue with your product, tooling, or the way you do support.
Customer Effort Score survey and an example of a CES report focusing on specific product areas
Time metrics
Time plays an important role in your customer support interactions. Sometimes customers’ dissatisfaction comes from having to wait for too long, not from having a complex issue. Here are the 2 most important time-related metrics to track.
Time to First Response
First Response Time (FRT), also known as Time to First Response, is the metric that indicates how long your customers have to wait before they get a response to their inquiry.
Time to First Response = total time until an agent takes on a case / total number of tickets
Some leaders believe that customer reps should not reply to a ticket before they have an answer to their client’s problem. But that is often not the case. “… it’s indisputable — a speedy first reply results in higher customer satisfaction.” Anton de Young, Zendesk blog
If you’re looking to set some benchmarks or goals for your own team, check out the infographic above. It contains some good stats about FRT.
First Response time and how to report it
Average Handle Time
Average Handle Time (AHT) is the amount of time that it takes from opening a ticket, chat, or phone conversation to hitting Send or hanging up the phone. To calculate AHT, add up the total amount of time spent on resolving conversations and divide it by the total number of conversations.
AHT = total time spent on resolving conversations / total number of conversations
AHT is directly related to other ticket-based metrics such as replies per conversation, ticket volume, and CSAT. One productivity metric that is strongly impacted by handle time is the number of contacts that an agent can handle in a month – the lower the average handle time, the more contacts an agent can work through.
How Average Handle Time affects Cost per Ticket according to HDI
Volume metrics
The previously described time-related metrics are closely tied to how many tickets you receive. There are 6 important customer service metrics that you should keep an eye on to make sure your team can handle the load.
Conversation Volume
This is the main metric when it comes to knowing the pulse of a support team. Conversation volume includes everything from the tickets in your inbox to conversations in social media, phone, and chat support.
Conversation volume = tickets in inbox + social media + phone calls + chat
Tracking conversation volume over a long period of time, e.g. years, can give you incredible insight into your support team trends. You’ll find your busiest periods and understand when you need to hire more staff.
Conversation volume by customer service channel
Resolution rate
The resolution rate tells you the percentage of total conversation volume that your team has resolved. In other words, it helps you understand how well are you tackling your incoming tickets.
Resolution rate = (solved tickets / total number of tickets)
Ideally, the resolution rate should remain the same as your company grows. If you see your resolution rate go down, it means you are not handling tickets as fast as you used to. This might hint you to consider hiring more customer support agents.
Reporting Ticket Resolution Rate
Open cases
Knowing how many tickets are currently open and how long they’ve been open for, is a great metric for analyzing your backlog. Current open conversations reflect the number of customers who are currently waiting for a response.
Open cases = Total number of cases – resolved cases
It’s a great indicator for managers if the whole queue response times are getting out of hand. Having more open tickets than normally will likely result in a prolonged average wait time. For team leads, keeping an eye on current open conversations in different queues can help them prioritize their agents’ work.
Breaking open cases down by agent and response time
Replies per Conversation/Replies per Ticket
Replies Per Conversation (RPC) is the average number of answers that it takes to resolve an issue for your customer. In certain cases, this can give you valuable insight into how your team is doing.
Replies Per Conversation = total number or replies / number of tickets
If you see the number of RPC climb up, or if it’s high from the get-go, it may mean that your employees are not paying as close attention to the customers’ problems as they could be.
RPC can also go up when customers prefer to reopen past conversations instead of creating new ones. This inflates the total number of replies when, in fact, you are looking at multiple conversations attached to the same ticket.
Tracking Replies per Conversation/Ticket
First Contact Resolution rate
Across all forms of contact, First Contact Resolution (FCR) rate means solving the customer’s issue in full with your first response. They do not have to ask any more questions. Customers love getting their questions solved quickly.
FCR Rate = number of cases resolved on first contact / total number of FCR-eligible cases
Not all tickets are FCR-eligible. For example, sometimes customers make mistakes in their inquiries and it just isn’t possible for you to fix their problems on the first go. Non-FCR-eligible tickets can be tagged manually or with a service like Idiomatic.
How First Contact Resolution Rate correlates with Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), according to MetricNet
Escalation Rate
In an ideal world, you resolve all your tickets with a single response. However, every now and then you probably face cases that need more interaction. Escalation Rate tells you how many tickets were not solved by first-line support agents and were escalated to seniors/managers.
Escalation Rate = Tickets that escalated from first line / total number of tickets
Aim to keep Escalation Rate as close to 0 as possible. If you see your Escalation Rate go up, you should dive into those escalated tickets with qualitative metrics like Internal Quality Score. This will help you understand if the quality of your customer service has gone down or perhaps there are issues within the products that need to be solved.
Looking into ticket Escalation Rate by product area
Business metrics
Customer support is a core part of your company and it has a significant impact on your business results. That’s why we’ll give you 2 business metrics to analyze from the perspective of your customer support, and a financial metric that’s often neglected.
Churn Rate
Churn Rate tells you how many customers you’ve lost relative to the new customers you’ve gained in a specific period of time. For companies who offer subscriptions, it’s an essential metric to track, as you want to keep your customers with you forever.
Churn Rate = Lost customers / remaining customers, including new customers
Keeping the churn rate as low as possible is a company-wide effort. Customer service has an important role in making sure that customers don’t leave due to a lack of information or help.
Tracking customer churn rate over time
Retention Rate
The Retention Rate is the opposite of the Churn Rate. Retention Rate refers to the number of clients who have remained your customers over a specific period of time.
Retention Rate = Number of customer at the end of the period / number of customers at the beginning
Retention Rate is a great metric that gives you insight into how your new customer service efforts are paying off. For example, if you’ve published a thorough Knowledge Base, compare your current Retention Rate with that of the pre-Knowledge-Base period to see any changes in customer loyalty.
Tracking customer retention rate over time
Cost Per Conversation
Cost Per Conversation (CPC) is the total cost of operating your team, divided by the total number of conversations that you have across your support platforms. Costs include salaries, health insurance, and other benefits, equipment, and everything else that you need to have the support team running.
CPC = total team operating costs / total number of conversations
You can calculate CPC across the span of a year, a month, or any other period. Count for only the time that your agents are dedicated to customer interactions. That’s an important aspect of your team members spend some of their time on responsibilities other than support.
Comparing Cost Per Conversation across customer service channels
Choose your customer service metrics wisely
Don’t let the mire of available metrics get your team bogged down in the details. Get an overall picture of how your team is doing and what areas need to be improved. Then pick the customer service metrics that go with them.
Recognize that, when measuring team performance, quantitative data is not always king and sometimes qualitative data – in the shape of peer review or Internal Quality Score – can be just as important for growing your customer service.