5 Underrated Customer Metrics CS Executives Should Prioritize

Metrics are the treasure maps, guiding CS Managers and leaders to perform with ninja-like efficiency, turning the organization into a customer-centric powerhouse. As technology evolves, so too does our approach to measurement. Now is not the time to "rest" but rather to investigate, organize, and introduce new metrics that will help us gain a clearer understanding of our situation and scale.

Let's slice through the mundane and dive into the top 5 CS metrics that will morph your team from data-dreading warriors into customer-centric ninjas.

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Why Customer Success Metrics Are Your Secret Weapon

Gone are the days when customer relationships were just a nice-to-have. They're now the backbone of explosive growth. Think of metrics not as the enemy but as your ally in the quest for domination. If you're not tracking the right metrics, or tracking them right, you're essentially bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Thanks to AI, we've now got the equivalent of metric-gathering drones. We'll unpack that tech treasure chest in another tale.

To put it simply, CS metrics are meant to drive. Not just for your customers but for your organization. 

"Real Customer-centricity means that all your processes and delivery is predicated on knowing what the Customer wants out of the interaction. The value to the Customer drives everything. Instead of just caring about the Customer, take the care to design systems and workflows with the Customer at the center.” - Wynne Brown, VP of Sales at RocketReach.

The Top 5 Metrics for Crafting a Customer-Centric Kingdom

Customer Effort Score (CES)

This metric measures the ease with which customers can get their issues resolved or tasks completed when interacting with your company. 

“Instead of getting customers to say, 'You exceeded my expectations,' we really ought to be trying to get customers to say, 'You made that easy.’” - Matthew Dixon, The Effortless Experience

How To Measure: Post-interaction surveys are the best way to measure your Customer Effort Score. Ask customers to rate the ease of their experience on a scale (e.g., from "Very Easy" to "Very Difficult").

Potential Challenges: Reducing effort requires understanding the specific pain points in the customer journey and addressing them. This usually involves cross-departmental coordination and changes to internal processes or systems.

Three things to ensure consistent improvement:

1. Streamline Processes: Simplify customer interactions and processes wherever possible. This requires consistent evaluation of of internal processes. 
2. Empower Your Team: Give your Customer Success Managers and other customer-facing employees the tools and authority to solve problems efficiently.
3. Continuous Feedback Loop: Regularly collect and act on CES feedback to identify and address new customer pain points. 

How a customer interface can help: A B2B customer interface can significantly reduce customer effort as it is a one-stop-shop for all customer communications. By making information easily accessible, simplifying tasks, and providing quick and effective problem-solving tools customer can easily progress with your product.

Customer Relationship Strength

Quality customer relationships are the foundation of any successful business. This metric gauges the quality of these vital relationships. It gives you a holistic view of customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

How To Measure: Regular customer feedback surveys and Net Promoter Score (NPS) are great ways to consistently gauge your customer relationships. Also ensure that you’re tracking customer engagement metrics like frequency of interactions, usage patterns of your product or service, and participation in community or feedback forums.

Potential Challenges: Building deeper relationships requires personalized engagement strategies, which can take up a lot of internal resources. Also, accurately capturing the sentiment and satisfaction of a large customer base with a diverse set of needs brings its own set of challenges.

Three things to ensure consistent improvement:

1. Personalized Communication: Tailor interactions based on customer behavior and feedback. Having a dedicated Customer Success team makes this much easier for any organization. 
2. Proactive Support: Anticipate customer needs and address them before they become issues.
3. Engagement Opportunities: Create meaningful ways for customers to interact with your brand, such as user groups, forums, or feedback sessions. If you don’t have some type of customer community, this would be a great initiative to start building. 

How a customer interface can help: A well-designed customer interface can facilitate easier access to support, personalized content, and opportunities for feedback. This will improve the overall customer experience and strengthen customer relationships.

First Contact Resolution (FCR)

FCR measures the percentage of customer inquiries or issues resolved upon first contact with your company, without the need for follow-up. This can go hand-in-hand with your Customer Effort Score as key customer engagement metrics. Your FCR can impact your overall CES. 

How To Measure: By tracking customer interactions across all channels and identifying cases that were resolved in a single interaction versus those requiring additional contacts. Any CRM tool or Customer Success software platform can help with this. 

Potential Challenges: Improving FCR involves improving both the knowledge and accessibility of customer support teams or any team that is on the frontlines of customer inquiries. It’s also important to ensure that your customer service channels are integrated and accurate information is readily available 24/7. 

Three things to ensure consistent improvement:

1. Comprehensive Training: Ensure customer support teams have in-depth product knowledge and problem-solving skills.
2. Integrated Customer Data: Use a quality CRM system to provide support reps with all the needed customer data and information. 
3. Feedback and Coaching: Regularly review service interactions for quality and provide targeted coaching to improve customer outcomes.

How a customer interface can help: A customer interface that provides self-service options, comprehensive FAQs, and easy access to live support can increase the chances of resolving issues on the first contact.

Customer Journey Time

Creating a customer journey map is one of the best processes you can build to gauge most (if not all) your Customer Success metrics. It can also be an effective guide for your CSMs as they manage the customer lifecycle. Customer Journey Time tracks the total time a customer spends completing a specific milestone within their journey or achieving a goal with your product or service.

How To Measure: By mapping out key milestones of the customer journey and using analytics tools to track the time from start to completion for each milestone.

Potential Challenges: Reducing journey time often requires streamlining processes, improving cross-functional collaboration, and consistently optimizing the customer experience. Tools like Totango offer a more streamlined process of building out effective customer journey maps and mapping out key milestones. 

Three things to ensure consistent improvement:

1. Journey Mapping: Regularly update journey map milestones to identify and remove bottlenecks.
2. Customer Feedback: Use insights from customer feedback to pinpoint areas for improvement.
3. Iterative Design: Apply principles that prioritize a seamless design to refine customer interfaces and processes.

How a customer interface can help: By designing customer interfaces that are intuitive and facilitate quick completion of tasks, you can significantly reduce customer journey time.

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Cross-Channel Consistency

This metric assesses how consistent the customer experience is across all channels and touchpoints. This includes web, mobile, social media, and in-person interactions.

How To Measure: By gathering customer feedback on their experiences across different channels. Also, through conducting internal audits of service quality and messaging consistency.

Potential Challenges: Achieving cross-channel consistency requires a unified strategy across all departments and channels, consistent training for staff, and quality technology infrastructure.

Three things to ensure consistent improvement:

1. Unified Customer View: Implement technology solutions that provide a 360-degree view of the customer across all touchpoints.
2. Brand Guidelines: Develop and encourage clear brand and service guidelines across all channels.
3. Regular Training: Ensure your CSMs and all other customer-facing employees are trained in these guidelines and in delivering a consistent customer experience.

How a customer interface can help: A consistent design language and user experience across all digital interfaces can improve cross-channel consistency, making it easier for customers to interact with your brand regardless of the channel.

Bringing It All Together

"There’s no magic or dark art to customer success. It’s a matter of focus on just three things: Relationships, Value, Engagement.” - Jay Nathan, Head of Growth at Churnkey

Focusing on Customer Success metrics will help any CSM team become more invaluable to their customers and their organization. When you bring data into a customer call or into a board meeting, you are positioning yourself as a valuable and knowledgeable asset to the relationship. 

These 5 metrics will help your team become more customer-focused and, in turn, will transform your company into a more customer-centric organization.