Customer Satisfaction Metrics That Will Tell You The Truth

Johannes KarjulaJohannes Karjula
Last edited: February 18th, 2025

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kpis in customer experience to know

In my 15 years as an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that you can’t run a successful business without meeting your customers’ expectations. To know what your customers expect of you, you need to ask them face-to-face and with surveys.

Measuring customer satisfaction and customer experience is the key to success for all businesses across industries.

I’ve helped hundreds of companies measure customer experience for the first time, and the thought process is always the same:

  • Business leaders are nervous, skeptical, and sometimes over-confident
  • When customer feedback comes flying in, the owners are either super happy or embarrassed
  • Customer sentiment is looked at closely
  • Customer journey is re-evaluated based on the feedback

Next, I’ll go over which KPIs companies should track regarding customer experience and how these numbers will help reduce customer churn and improve the customer retention rate.

Customer Experience Metrics in Short:

  • Use Net Promoter Score surveys to measure overall customer loyalty
  • Add Customer Effort Score CES to the end of chat interactions
  • Use CSAT and star rating forms to measure short-term happiness
  • Organic growth follows good customer experience
  • Total revenue and sales increase when you have satisfied customers

KPIs in Customer Experience

Potential new customers want to know what others think about you. Your happy, loyal customers are your best salespeople.

It’s impossible to create a successful business if existing customer aren’t happy.

Think of it this way: If there’s a hole at the bottom of your bucket, it’s never going to be full, no matter how fast you pour water in it. The only way to get the bucket to stay full is to fix the hole.

The bucket is your customer journey, and the hole is a bad customer experience (CX). By having a great customer experience, you’re influencing customer lifetime value (CLV) and lowering customer acquisition costs.

CX Metrics to Track

  1. Net Promoter Score
  2. Customer satisfaction
  3. Average resolution time
  4. Customer Effort Score CES
  5. Customer sentiment
  6. Customer referral rate
  7. Overall state of customer voice (open feedback, online reviews, discussion forums, support tickets, direct feedback, …)
  8. Customer acquisition cost
  9. Churn rates
  10. Customer lifetime value

I know this sounds like a lot, but I’ll hold your hand through setting up the processes, if needed!

All of these customer experience metrics are absolutely necessary to master.

Real-Life Example: Customer Insights at the Heart of Growth

The business owner of renovation company Hohdepinnoitus says:

– Without Trustmary, we would be missing the backbone for validating that we’re doing great work. It plays a surprisingly big role in our activities at the moment. I can say with all my heart that it is a good tool. We get immediate feedback on what we do. Whether it’s failures or successes, getting immediate feedback on everything allows us to react to it. It’s essential for improving our operations, says Eronen.

Read the full story of how Hohdepinnoitus grows by knowing its customers.

screenshot from trustmary's reporting dashboard

Case Example: More Sales with Social Proof

📍 Company: Pohjoisen Auto (three locations: Ranua, Rovaniemi, Oulu)
📍 Industry: Selling used cars and small machines, maintenance services
📍 Challenge: No customer feedback and doubts if customers would give it
📍 Solution: Uses Trustmary to collect reviews and put them on the website.

📍 Results: Response rate close to 100%, hundreds of reviews on the website

Thanks to measuring it’s customer experience and adding testimonials and reviews from happy customers to its website, Pohjoisen auto got more sales in January than ever before.

– We have had our best January ever in terms of sales. The industry in general is not doing so well, but our business is booming. We have a really positive feeling internally now, thanks to the feedback from our customers, which also influences our sales, says CEO Ville Hanhisuanto.

Pohjoisen Auto tulokset Trustmarylla

Read the full case on how to get more sales with social proof.

Customer Experience Metrics Explained

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score NPS stands for Net Promoter Score, and it tells you if your customers will recommend your website, brand, service, or product to their friends and family members.

It’s very easy to set up, and the information it provides can help you improve your offer and attract more customers.

What does Net Promoter Score tell me?

NPS tells you if your customers are likely to recommend your offer to other people directly. You can ask your customers if they would recommend you by setting up a simple 1 to 10 rating. If your customers are voting lower than you expected, you can ask them for more details through emails and online surveys.

NPS can also help you to remind your customers to promote your products and services to their friends. Since this simple rating system won’t tell you exactly what your customers think, you will at least get a better insight into how they view your website.

How do I use it?

Include a simple 1 to 10 rating at the end of the checkout process asking your customers whether or not they will be willing to recommend your offer to other people.

nps survey creator

There are three general categories of vote scores:

Promoters – People who leave a 9 or a 10 are most likely to recommend your offer to others.

Passives – Those who score your site with a 7 or an 8 are satisfied with the offer, but they wouldn’t recommend it to friends and family members. Most of these people are not regular customers and would switch to another company with a better offer.

Detractors – People who vote with a 6 or below simply don’t like your brand and wouldn’t recommend it to others. In fact, they will probably tell people not to buy what you are selling.

Use NPS to predict customer churn. Unhappy customers are more likely to leave you than happy customers.

Customer Satisfaction CSAT

Customer satisfaction reflects how happy customers are with a product, service, or experience. It’s typically measured through surveys and ratings, helping businesses understand strengths and areas for improvement to enhance retention.

measure customer satisfaction with star rating, nps or csat

CSAT is a customer satisfaction metric that tells you your overall customer satisfaction. The answers you get are very straightforward and straightforward to set up. The only thing you should keep in mind that these stats won’t be pinpoint precise.

What does CSAT tell me?

CSAT surveys can tell you if your customers are generally satisfied with your offer and website. The problem is that you won’t get accurate details on what impacted their final rating. You can find out if they are satisfied or not, but you won’t know why they voted as they did.

How to use CSAT surveys?

You can set up a simple 1 to 5 rating system about the overall customer experience. The results will tell you if your customers appreciate your offer or if they think that it’s not that great. If you run an international website, you can use emojis or star ratings to make sure that everyone can rate your offer.

Average Resolution Time

This metric tracks how long it takes for customer issues to be resolved. A lower resolution time indicates efficient support, leading to better customer experiences and improved satisfaction.

Customer Effort Score CES

CES stands for Customer Effort Score, and it’s a method that allows you to see how much effort your customers have to make to do what they want. In other words, it tells you whether or not your website and offers are organised in a way that makes it easy for customers to complete a transaction or a purchase.

Or to interact with you or your staff.

What does Customer Effort Score tell me?

Most CES methods require the use of a short questionnaire. Instead of rating your website or the user experience directly, your customers answer rate your offers with statements such as “Finding what I wanted was very easy” or “The customer service helped me make the right choice.”

Customers value a direct approach more than an over-the-top design that might make finding what they need more complicated.

Most users are far more likely to remember a smooth experience that turned out to be easier to complete than what was expected. Having a beautiful website with tons of options may give you that wow factor, but if finding what they need takes too long for your customers, you will lose many of them before they make a purchase.

The key is to enable your customers to make a purchase as easily as possible. That way, they can come to your website, make a purchase in seconds, and everyone is happy. CES can help you identify the areas that can be made simpler to improve navigation and conversion rates.

How do I use CES to Improve Customer Satisfaction Process?

There are a few different methods you can use to collect customer satisfaction metrics. Here’s a quick overview of the most popular methods and the benefits they provide.

  1. Email surveys – You can send out surveys to your customer’s email addresses to gain valuable information. Emails provide you with the means to ask everything you need, but they have a low response rate. If you opt for this option, you can use survey tools to set up the perfect survey for your needs.
  2. Live chat rating – is also a useful method for finding out what your customers think about your website. The best thing about this method is that your customers can simply rate your platform after a customer contacts your support team. This method is useful only for rating the support team, as you won’t be able to get more details on other website features.
  3. In-app surveys – If you have your own app, you can include a few pop-ups to see what your customers think about it. Ask accurate single customer feedback questions about the features you’re not sure of, and your customers will provide you with useful information.
  4. Social Media – Is by far the most powerful method of getting to know your customer’s needs. All popular social media will give you access to user reviews and comments that can tell you more about your offer than any survey. Address all negative comments as soon as possible, and your customers will appreciate that.

Customer Sentiment

Customer sentiment analysis evaluates emotions behind customer feedback, reviews, and interactions.

It helps businesses understand whether customers feel positive, neutral, or negative about their brand and make necessary improvements.

Customer Referral Rate

This measures how often existing customers refer new customers to a business.

A high referral rate usually indicates strong customer satisfaction and trust, making it a valuable metric for organic growth.

You should also pay attention to your review rate. That measures how many people are willing to leave a review or a testimonial after leaving open feedback.

Trustmary’s users typically have a 32% review rate.

Overall State of Customer Voice

Customer voice includes all feedback channels like online reviews, surveys, social media discussions, and support tickets. Analyzing this data helps businesses understand customer needs, pain points, and trends to enhance overall experience.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC represents the cost of gaining a new customer, factoring in marketing, sales, and other expenses. Keeping CAC low while maintaining quality leads is key to sustainable business growth.

Remember that bucket reference that I made before?

If your bucket is broken, your CAC will be higher and higher over time. By fixing the bucket (=customer experience), your customers are more likely to buy from you again.

This lowers the CAC in the long run.

Churn Rates

Churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop using a service over a given period.

A high churn rate signals dissatisfaction and retention issues, making it crucial to address underlying problems.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV estimates the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer over their entire relationship.

Increasing CLV involves improving retention, customer experience, and engagement strategies.

Try Customer Satisfaction Metric Tools

Customer satisfaction metrics can help you understand what your customers think about your website, product, service, and offer.

However, they won’t do you any good if you don’t take any action. Collecting and understanding your customer’s thoughts and embracing constructive criticism is just the first step towards improving your offer.

Understanding what your customers think about your business will help you make the right moves in the future and improve the efficiency of your organisation.

Achieving this will increase the overall customer satisfaction over time, and help you drive more value to your website.


About the author
Johannes Karjula
Johannes Karjula

Johannes Karjula is the CEO and founder of Trustmary, and a multipreneur with various other projects. He knows how to build successful businesses and create a top-notch customer experience.



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