The 11 Most Important Customer Success KPIs: A Guide

How to Build Customer Loyalty through Customer Service

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Philip Mandelbaum
04/15/2022

A man with short hair and glasses sits behind two computer screens, speaking on the phone, providing customer service

You know which digital marketing metrics to track. But what about customer experience, or CX? Customer success requires consistent, authentic, transparent, empathic and personalized communications from initial outreach through the final, everlasting stage of the customer lifecycle. This is how you develop loyalty and build an army of brand evangelists. So, which customer success KPIs should we prioritize?

11 Mission-Critical Customer Experience Metrics for Optimal Customer Success

Unlike digital marketing KPIs, the measurable values that marketing teams use to track campaign and marketing team performance, CX metrics track the effectiveness of your customer experience strategy and tactics. While specific campaigns may require an enhanced focus on particular customer service KPIs, the following should be used for all campaigns (and your overall CX team reviews).

closeup of a doctor holding a red stethoscope, symbolizing the customer health score

1. Customer Health Score

The customer health score is used to determine whether or not a customer will remain loyal over time. In contrast to most other customer experience metrics, the customer health score requires strategic legwork and is developed from a collection of the other CX KPIs most important to your unique business. Among the most commonly included metrics are:

Product/Service usage period
Product type (free/paid, license level, etc.)
Number of interactions with the support team
Money spent with your brand
Social media posts about your brand
Referrals to your brand
Willingness to answer customer experience surveys

Based on the metrics that make the most sense for you, develop a grading system for your customers; then, for easier segmentation and personalization, divide them into four categories:

High-value
Healthy
Unhealthy
At-risk

2. Customer Satisfaction Score

The customer satisfaction score, or CSAT, demonstrates each customer’s level of satisfaction; analyzed in totality, your customer satisfaction scores can tell you whether you’re truly offering customer-centric experiences — and, if not, what needs to be changed. Usually measured on a five-point scale, from very dissatisfied to very satisfied, you can use the CSAT to gather feedback during any stage of the customer lifecycle. All you have to do is establish criteria for your scoring, establish the metric that equates to a positive score, and include customer survey forms in your digital marketing and CX communications. Then, to determine your organization-level percentage score, multiply your pre-established positive score by 100. For instance, if you have 50 positive scores from a total of 100, your CSAT is 50% ((50/100) x 100 = 50%).

3. Net Promoter Score

Often coupled with the CSAT, the net promoter score, or NPS, measures the likelihood a customer will recommend you to others — and, ideally, become an influencer for your brand. To determine your NPS, develop a survey with a single question or multiple questions geared toward promoting and sharing, on a scale from 0 to 10, from “not likely at all” to “very likely.” Customers who provide (average) scores between 0 and 6 are considered detractors; passive customers typically score between 7 and 8; and your promoters will give you a 9 or 10. Then, to calculate your NPS, simply subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. And for more detailed, nuanced, qualitative feedback, ask an open-ended question, as well. All of this information can be automatically added to your customer profiles in your CRM or CDP.

A group of kids shows great effort in playing tug of war in a large, green-grassed field

4. Customer Effort Score

As it sounds, the customer effort score, or CES, measures the amount of effort your customers have to expend to execute specific actions, like completing an online form, finding a product or resolving a technical issue. To determine your average customer effort score, you’ll again need to create a survey; this time it should ask customers to rate the level of effort required to complete an activity or series of activities. The results will tell you whether you really designed for UX, and what you should change to improve the user experience.

5. Customer Service Satisfaction Score

The customer service satisfaction score measures customer satisfaction specifically with your post-sales customer service. As is customary in CX best practices, ask your customers for feedback after every interaction, using a standardized rating system and consistent questioning so you can identify trends over time.

6. Customer Retention Cost

Investing in new customers is between 500% and 2500% more expensive than retaining existing ones. Of course, retaining customers costs money too. And to ensure your marketing and CX strategies are producing positive ROI, you need to measure the cost of your customer retention efforts. To calculate your customer retention cost, or CRC, add all of the expenses incurred in keeping (and obtaining!) customers and divide that figure by the number of customers in your database. If your CRC is higher than your MRR, or monthly recurring revenue, it’s time to make some changes.

7. Monthly Recurring Revenue and Expansion MRR

Also a sales metric and ideal for SaaS and subscription-based businesses, your MRR tells you how much your customers are spending with you each and every month. Expansion MRR identifies how much your customers are spending outside of recurring subscriptions or payments. To measure your total monthly recurring revenue, multiply your number of monthly customers by their average monthly spend; for expansion MRR, add all additional revenue and multiply that figure by your total number of customers.

in the background in focus, a small glass bowl overflowing with squares of butter, symbolizing customer churn; in the foreground, out of focus is the remaining stick of butter, sitting on the wrapper

8. Churn Rate and MRR Churn

The churn rate is the rate at which your customers stop subscribing or shopping with your brand over a specific time period. Low churn rate, obviously, reveals customer satisfaction; high churn rates mean there’s something wrong with the product or service, your marketing of that product or service, or the amount of effort required to subscribe to or purchase that product or service. To calculate your churn rate:

Set your analysis period (e.g., a month, a quarter, six months, or a year)
Subtract the number of customers you had at the beginning of the time period from the number you had at the end
Divide this figure by the number of customers you had at the beginning

For instance, if you had 100 customers on day one and 75 on day 30, your churn rate is -25% ((75/100) x 100 = -.25 = -25%).

Your MRR churn, meanwhile, tells you the amount of monthly recurring revenue gained or lost as a result of your customer churn.

9. Average Resolution Time

Ninety-six percent of your customers will leave you behind for bad customer service, and 92% will also call you out on your BS (bad service). That’s why, for years, CX ‘experts’ almost exclusively advised companies to find resolution as fast as possible. Today, we know speed isn’t everything — and CX professionals should be granted the time and resources necessary to truly resolve the issue and meet or exceed the customer or prospect’s expectations. Nevertheless, average resolution time remains one of the more important customer service KPIs, as it informs business leaders how effective their CX team and CX reps are in resolving issues quickly.

10. First Contact Resolution Rate

Even more important than the average resolution time is the first contact resolution rate, or the rate at which your CX professionals are able to resolve an issue during the first interaction. The more often this is achieved, the less overworked your team will be — and the more satisfied your customers will be as well. To measure your first contact resolution rate, divide the number of tickets closed after one interaction by the entire number of tickets received.

11. Customer Lifetime Value

Perhaps the most important of all the customer success KPIs, the customer lifetime value can be used to measure whether your digital marketing and CX strategies are working overall; it can also be used to identify, segment and personalize experiences for your highest-value customers.

To determine your average CLV:

Calculate your average purchase value
Multiply your average purchase value by how often a purchase is made
Multiply this figure by your average customer lifespan

For example, if your average purchase is $100, made twice a year for 3 years, your CLV is $600 ($100 x 3 x 2 = $600).

To use this measurement to improve your marketing to high-value customers, create a list of the customers with a CLV exceeding your average.

symbolizing customer lifetime value, a closeup of nine one-hundred-dollar bills spread out like playing cards in a person's hands, held over their legs in a pseudo crossed-legged position on the floor

OK, Now What?

Now that you know the CX KPIs you should use to track your performance, you need to establish how you are going to perform the ongoing monitoring and analysis.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools designed to automate, streamline and enhance the customer experience and customer support you provide.

The Top Nine Customer Support Platforms

Interested in other digital marketing tools? Here are the top 65.

Want to learn more about converting customer feedback into free promotion? Need help developing a customer review strategy? Download our free, exclusive Guide to Managing the Customer Complaint.

Also responsible for digital marketing? Find out which marketing KPIs you should track for optimal CX across the entire customer journey.

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