Identify the Customer Satisfaction Metrics That Matter

Improve CX by measuring what your customers care about most

Analyst perspective

Understand and measure the true drivers of satisfaction to enable the delivery of real customer value.

Healthy customer relationships are paramount to long-term growth. When customers are satisfied, they remain loyal, spend more, and promote your company to others in their network. The key to high satisfaction is understanding and measuring the true drivers of satisfaction to enable the delivery of real customer value.

Most companies believe they know who their satisfied customers are and what keeps them satisfied, and 76% of B2B buyers expect that providers understand their unique needs (Salesforce, 2020). However, B2B companies struggle to improve their satisfaction scores. This disconnect between customer expectations and provider experience indicates that businesses are not effectively measuring and monitoring satisfaction and therefore are not making meaningful enhancements to their service, offerings, and overall experience.

By focusing on the underlying drivers of customer satisfaction, organizations develop a truly accurate picture of what is driving deep satisfaction and loyalty, ensuring that their company will achieve sustainable growth and stay competitive in a highly competitive market.

Emily Wright
Senior Research Analyst, Marketing Advisory
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive summary

Info-Tech Insight
All companies measure satisfaction in some way, but many lack understanding of what's truly driving customers to stay or leave. By understanding the true drivers of satisfaction, solution providers can measure and monitor satisfaction more effectively, pull actionable insights and feedback, and make changes to products and services that customers really care about.

Healthy customer relationships are vital for long-term success and growth

Measuring customer satisfaction is critical to understanding the overall health of your customer relationships and driving growth. Through effective customer satisfaction measurement, organizations can:

"Measuring customer satisfaction is vital for growth in any organization; it provides insights into what works and offers opportunities for optimization. Customer satisfaction is essential for improving loyalty rate, reducing costs and retaining your customers."

– Ken Brisco, NICE, 2019

Poor customer satisfaction measurement is costly

Virtually all companies measure customer satisfaction, but few truly do it well. All too often, customer satisfaction measurement consists of a set of vanity metrics that do not result in actionable insight for product/service improvement. Improper measurement can result in numerous consequences:

Direct and indirect costs
Being unaware of true drivers of satisfaction that are never remedied costs your business directly through customer churn, service costs, etc.

Tarnished brand
Not resolving issues drives dissatisfaction, and dissatisfied customers share their negative experiences, which can damage brand image and reputation.

Waste limited resources
Putting limited resources toward vanity programs and/or fixes that have little to no bearing on core satisfaction drivers wastes time and money.

Info-Tech Insight:
Most companies struggle to understand what's truly driving customers to stay or leave. By understanding the true satisfaction drivers, tech providers can measure and monitor satisfaction more effectively, avoiding the numerous harmful consequences that result from average customer satisfaction measurement.

"When customer dissatisfaction goes unnoticed, it can slowly kill a company. Because of the intangible nature of customer dissatisfaction, managers regularly underestimate the magnitude of customer dissatisfaction and its impact on the bottom line."

– Lakshmiu Tatikonda, "The Hidden Costs of Customer Dissatisfaction," 2013

Do your CSAT metrics need improvement?

Getting an accurate picture of customer satisfaction (CSAT) is no easy task. Struggling with any of the following means you are ready to review your CSAT metrics:

• Not knowing who your most satisfied customers are.
• Lacking early detection for declining satisfaction; tendency to be either reactive or unaware of dissatisfaction as it's occurring.
• Inability to fix the problem and wasting money on the wrong areas, like vanity metrics that don't bring value to customers.
• Spending money and other resources on fixes based on a gut feeling without quantifying the real root cause drivers and investing in their improvement.
• Metrics lack context; unclear what drives satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
• Difficulty tying satisfaction back to financial results.

What's most important to your customers cannot be derived from vanity metrics

Understanding which aspects of your offering and experience drive your customers to be satisfied is critical.

Relationships, company capabilities, and product features are all important, but how much does each matter to your customers? Are you measuring these aspects effectively?

Our research shows that while vendor capabilities and product features correlate significantly to buyer satisfaction, it's the relationship attributes – what we call the "Emotional Footprint" – that often correlate more strongly.

Info-Tech Insight:
Positive experiences and strong relationships drive satisfaction more than features and cost. The experience customers have with your product and brand is what will differentiate you from competitors, and ultimately, it's what will power business growth.

Do you know what qualities of your product and experience you should be measuring?

Many companies are not measuring the most important factors driving satisfaction among their customers.

It's imperative that companies looking to improve customer satisfaction focus on understanding the qualities that their customers care about the most.

Market leaders can drive meaningful improvements as described by customers.

Info-Tech Insight:
Our research shows that these drivers vary by category and industry. Spend time understanding the top satisfaction drivers for your product/category to improve CSAT measurement.

Benefits of effective CSAT measurement

Our research provides customer success leaders with the following key benefits:

• Ability to know who is satisfied, dissatisfied, and why.
• Confidence in how to understand or uncover the factors behind customer satisfaction; understand and identify factors driving satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
• Ability to develop a clear plan for improving customer satisfaction.
• Knowledge of how to establish a repeatable process for measurement and monitoring of customer satisfaction that allows for proactivity when declines in satisfaction are detected.
• Understanding of what metrics to use, how to measure them, and where to find the right information/data.
• Knowledge of where money, time, and other resources are needed most to drive tangible customer value.

"81% of organizations cite CX as a competitive differentiator. The top factor driving digital transformation is improving CX [–] with companies reporting benefits associated with improving CX including:

• Increased customer loyalty (92% of companies)
• An uplift in revenue (84% of companies)
• Cost savings (79% of companies)."

Who benefits from improving the measurement and monitoring of customer satisfaction?

This research is designed for:

• Customer advocacy leaders, customer success leaders, or marketers who are:
• Responsible for understanding how to benchmark, measure, and understand customer satisfaction to improve satisfaction, NPS, and ROI.
• Looking to take a more proactive and structured approach to customer satisfaction measurement and monitoring.
• Looking for a more effective and accurate way to measure and understand how to improve customer satisfaction around products and services.

This research will help you:

• Understand the factors driving satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
• Identify which metrics and KPIs are important to measure to effectively monitor customer satisfaction.
• Know where time, money, and resources are needed the most to improve or maintain satisfaction levels.
• Develop recommendations to improve customer satisfaction where scores are low.
• Approach executives and team members with a strong case for measuring the most important metrics.

This research will also assist:

• Customer success leaders, marketing and sales directors and managers, product marketing managers, and advocacy managers/coordinators who are responsible for:
• Product improvements and enhancements
• Customer service and onboarding
• Customer advocacy programs
• Referral/VoC programs

This research will help them:

• Coordinate and align on customer experience efforts and actions.
• Gather and make use of customer feedback to improve products, solutions, and services provided.
• Provide an amazing customer experience throughout the entirety of the customer journey.

Info-Tech's methodology for CSAT metric identification

	1. Identify the most important CSAT drivers	2. Communicate new CSAT metrics and performance
Phase Steps	Identify business goals and priorities. Analyze CSAT data. Assess metrics and determine the top CSAT metrics. Develop measurement plan.	Assess current performance against identified metrics. Recommend actions to improve satisfaction scores. Present to executives. Manage and communicate progress.
Phase Outcomes	Documented goals and priorities impacted by CSAT Completed CSAT metric assessment Documented top satisfaction drivers and associated metrics Completed measurement plan	KPI dashboard Documented performance against new metrics Customer satisfaction improvement recommendations Customer satisfaction metric presentation decks

Insight summary

Measuring vanity metrics only gets you so far
All companies measure satisfaction in some way, but many lack understanding of what's truly driving customers to stay or leave. By understanding the most important drivers of satisfaction, companies can measure satisfaction more effectively, pull actionable insights and feedback, and make changes to products and services that customers really care about and that will keep them coming back to you to have their needs met.

Positive experiences drive satisfaction more than features and cost
The experience customers have with your product and brand is what will differentiate your brand from competitors and, ultimately, power business growth. According to our analysis of software buyer review data,* the biggest drivers of satisfaction and likeliness to recommend are the positive experiences customers have with vendors and their products. Customers want to feel that:

1. Their productivity and performance are enhanced, and the vendor is helping them innovate and grow as a company.
2. Their vendor inspires them and helps them to continually improve.
3. They can rely on the vendor and the product they purchased.
4. They are respected by the vendor.
5. They trust that the vendor will be on their side and save them time.

*8 million data points across all software categories

Satisfaction drivers vary by category: understand what's uniquely important in your market
Our research shows that satisfaction drivers vary across categories and industries. Spend time understanding the top satisfaction drivers for your product/category to improve CSAT measurement.

Educate the organization around customer experience excellence
You can't manage what you can't measure. Start reporting these metrics to the rest of the organization to help drive improvements outside the scope of customer success. Use these metrics and insights to help get everyone onboard and make improvements.

Consistently communicate the why behind your new CSAT metrics
Broad awareness and understanding of your most important satisfaction drivers and related metrics is imperative to maintaining high CSAT levels. Regular communication makes metrics "sticky," orients teams around drivers for growth, and encourages people to make changes customers find valuable.

Use metrics that align to top satisfaction drivers
This will give you a more accurate and complete view of CSAT than standard satisfaction metrics alone.

Blueprint deliverables

Customer Satisfaction Metrics Library
Use this library as a reference for metric selection, assessment, and definition.

Executive Presentation Template
Use this presentation to present your findings and recommendations to executives.

Performance Update Template
Use this presentation to discuss and manage CSAT improvement progress with team members.

Key deliverable

Metric Diagnostic

This worksheet will help you determine your top satisfaction drivers, assess metrics, and develop KPIs and a plan for measurement.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Workshop Overview

For more information:
workshops@infotech.com | 1-888-670-8889

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Phases & Steps

Identify the CSAT Metrics That Matter

Identify the CSAT Metrics That Matter

Phase 1
Identify the Most Important Customer Satisfaction Drivers

Phase 2
Communicate New CSAT Metrics and Performance

Identify the CSAT Metrics That Matter

Phase 1
Identify the Most Important Customer Satisfaction Drivers

Outcome

• Documented goals and priorities impacted by CSAT
• Completed CSAT metric assessment
• Documented top satisfaction drivers and associated metrics
• Completed measurement plan