When we talk about the era of experience and its impact on the business world, it’s important to understand the parameters to measure in order to find opportunities for improvement in the processes being designed.

Analyzing the numbers of this impact, we can see that, according to Harvard Business Review, customers who have had good experiences with a company are likely to spend 140% more than those who have had bad past experiences. According to the same source, if we work to improve this experience, we can reduce customer service costs by up to 33%.

Some of the questions that arise are: Where do we start? What are the key indicators to measure this experience? How can we take action on them to improve them and thus make an impact on improving the experience?

3 key indicators to measure customer experience

1 – Speed: Speed is a determining factor. In any customer service channel, how quickly the company responds and resolves the issue makes a difference and directly impacts customer decision factors.

Within customer service, there are two main processes. The first is live support, when the customer decides to call you, you answer, and they are on hold waiting. The second is deferred support, which we see when, for example, the consumer writes an email and the company takes time to respond. In either case, that contact is likely linked to a problem or complaint, and therefore, response speed is critical.

How to measure this indicator? By establishing a percentage of contacts handled within a defined time frame. For example, the company’s promise is to handle 80% of calls within the first 40 seconds or respond to 90% of WhatsApp messages within one and a half minutes of receipt. This is a way to set measurable goals to evaluate their fulfillment or not.

2 – Level of effort (Customer Effort Score or CES): CES is a metric that measures the level of effort a customer must exert to purchase a product or resolve an issue. It is related to the simplicity or complexity of processes from the design of the interaction itself. For example, if to sign up for a new service the customer has to call, then fill out a paper form and go to an office to submit it, that entire process requires a high effort from the customer compared to a digital sign-up that could be done through an app. By analyzing this metric, companies can identify improvement opportunities.

In this aspect, we can say that there are two different perspectives: that of the person facing the customer and serving them, and the collaborator who designs the processes behind the scenes. The key question that process developers must ask themselves at this point is: where do I put the effort, in the customer or in my processes?

How to measure this indicator? We can use words, levels, or colors to ask consumers about the level of effort required to resolve the issue or complete the process. These are typical surveys at the end of an interaction where users select from 1 to 5 how easy the process was for them.

3- First Contact Resolution (FCR): resolving the issue in a single contact: As the title suggests, the third key indicator is linked to whether the customer’s concern was resolved in the first contact or not. Of course, to achieve this, the collaborator handling the case must have the necessary tools to solve it beforehand. Why is this important? Non-resolution implies a second contact, and this degrades both the customer experience (who has to communicate with the company again for the same reason) and the company’s costs (which must invest more time from its collaborators in attending to that user on repeated occasions).

Out of all the contacts I receive, what percentage is resolved in the first interaction? The way to measure it is by categorizing users and keeping track of who called me, when, and for what reason. Then, during the 7 days following the first call, we check if that customer called me again for the same issue. If they did not, it is understood that they resolved their concern in the first contact.

Something important to improve customer service, which is common to these indicators, is the segmentation and personalization of the experience, essential to know our customers. In experience, we work with archetypes that define the characteristics and needs by customer groups. Companies must create these parameters to adjust their processes and consider the constant changes in consumption habits to personalize each interaction and thus improve the entire person’s experience with your brand or company. Today, we can also rely on technology to define archetypes by exploiting all the available data.

To compete in the world of experience management, the difference will increasingly favor those companies that analyze these variables to find improvement opportunities.