The key to any company’s success is customer service. Granted, you do need to provide good products or services; but the cherry on top, the big kahuna, what keeps customers coming back for more is their customer experience.
Therefore, it’s crucial to pay attention to trends so that you can identify what’s working and what needs to be improved. This is where analytics comes in. But what does that even mean? What are customer experience analytics? How do you analyze them?
And is there anything in particular you should be looking for? Well, well, well, my lovely readers. Grab a cup of coffee and pay attention.
Customer experience (that’s CX for the cool kids) analytics refers to data collected from the people who keep food on your table — your customers (Ok. Your employees do that too, but for this blog’s purpose, we’re focusing on customers).
Types of information collected can include:
This data is highly valuable, as it helps you better understand your customers. You can then use this information to make business decisions that improve the customer experience.
After all, happy customers translate to generating more profits. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
There are many advantages to gathering and studying customer experience analytics. Taken together, they will enable you to make better business decisions.
One of the best ways to provide a good customer experience is to ensure everything you do is consumer-centric. CX analytics help you find out whether a customer’s journey is a smooth one, and it can use algorithms to help predict customer behavior.
You don’t know what you don’t know. Analytics may reflect blind spots such as long customer service hold times, or a high bounce rate on specific parts of your website. You can then address each of them specifically.
The most effective way to make decisions is to do so based on data. The insights provided by CX analytics will make it easy to devise next strategies to improve your customer experience.
Customer experience software can send surveys to your customers so that they can tell you firsthand about their own experiences. These can be in the form of a scale from 1 to 5, or from a happy face to a frown, or give customers a place to type their feedback.
Machines are great, but getting answers directly from the source will let you know what’s working and what needs improvement.
Running a business requires juggling multiple tasks. CX analytics provides quantitative data to let you see exactly how certain obstacles affect your business objectives. Once you have this data, you are equipped to prioritize what needs to get done first to pave the way for everything else.
While CX analytics tools are helpful, not all of them are created equal. There are certain factors you want to keep in mind when choosing the right solution for your business.
Unless you have extensive knowledge in coding (or a team of developers who can assist you), it’s good to purchase software that provides turnkey solutions. This will make it easier for you and your entire team.
No business works in a vacuum. So look for platforms that integrate with the tools you’re already using — such as your customer relationship management (CRM) and ecommerce systems. This way you can streamline processes, avoid duplicate efforts, or prevent something from falling through the cracks.
The same way businesses are different from each other, so should analytics dashboards. They are meant to specifically support your buyer persona, so tailor them to what would benefit them the most.
Leads, prospects, and customers are all at different stages in their buyer’s journey. Therefore, you want to address their needs differently. A good CX software will allow you to segment your contacts so that you can customize their experience.
Depending on your target market, customers may prefer to receive communications via email, text, or social media. And even within this last one, there’s a significant gap between the Facebook and the TikTok crowds.
Make sure to look for a CX platform that allows you to send customer surveys through the channels preferred by your market. It would also be helpful to customize your survey template to align with your brand.
There are a myriad of customer service analytics. Which ones you should pay attention to depends on your industry and type of business. However, some factors that are important across the board include:
These types of analytics reflect how people find each page, user behavior on each page, and where they go next. Are they following your desired flow? Filling out forms on landing pages? Returning to read more blogs? Abandoning their carts? Knowing the answers to these questions will assist with optimizing your website.
This is the percentage of customers who have stayed with you throughout a specific period of time. You want to cater to this group of people as much as possible, since the cost of retaining existing customers is substantially lower than the cost of acquiring new ones.
How often do you like to call a customer service rep before your issues are resolved? The same way you have things to do and places to be, your customers want fast and efficient resolutions.
Measuring the FCR within your own company will help you gauge how effective your customer service reps are, and whether they require additional training or a larger team.
Following FCR, you want to be conscious of how long it takes to resolve customer service tickets. Do this by selecting a time period and dividing by the total of tickets resolved during this timeframe. If you find a pattern of long resolution times, it’s time to address it ASAP.
Offer several options for customers to contact you — phone, email, text, live chat, social media, website form. Then track what gets used the most. This will help you identify where you should focus your customer service efforts.
The net promoter score measures how likely a customer is to stay with you and refer you to their friends, colleagues, and family.
Ratings range from zero to 10, with those giving you a 9 or a 10 falling into the promoters category. Detractors are those giving you a rating that’s closer to 0, and you’ll want to follow up with them to find out how to improve their experience.
If you want customers to be happy, you have to make things as easy as possible for them. To find out if you’re doing this right, ask them.
Whenever you’re done offering your goods or services, provide them with a survey to rate how much they agree with XYZ statements (e.g. cleanliness of store, ease to find what they’re looking for, knowledge and friendliness of staff). The higher they rate you, the more likely it is they will continue doing business with you.
Once you have gathered all relevant data, it’s time to analyze it to measure it against your business goals.
A significant portion of your customers will have their first point of contact with your business by visiting your website. Therefore, it behooves you to understand whether they find it intuitive, user friendly, and helpful. Study heatmaps of each page to find out what needs to be optimized.
While websites measure initial exposure, customer surveys measure customer satisfaction. You’ll learn whether you are meeting their needs, exceeding their expectations, or falling short. This is crucial to know, since one bad experience can be enough to make them switch brands.
Data is only useful if you do something about it. Take an honest look at your analytics and act on them. High bounce rates, long wait times, multiple contacts before resolution — addressing these factors can make or break your business.
As you can see, there are many components that come into play when designing the best customer experience. However, understanding what drives customer satisfaction will help you design more effective business strategies — and ultimately increase your profits.