I run a SaaS startup — what CX Metrics should I be focusing on?
What CX metrics should my SaaS startup be focused on? We get this question all the time. When running a fast growing startup, it’s important to be hyper focused on the metrics that matter (“Measure what Matters”) and removing the noisy metrics. In this article, we’ll discuss the three most important metrics for your startup to focus on and why.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
CSAT is the pinnacle metrics of CX — it is the true canary in the coal mine and can be used to help identify and address issues across product and sales before they become out of hand. The scoring system is very simple — you pose the question to your customers/users, “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the goods and services you received?” The customer/user has 5 options:
- Very Unsatisfied
- Unsatisfied
- Neutral
- Satisfied
- Very Satisfied
The responses are typically shown in a graph format — Displayr has a great resource on how to visually display your results to your stakeholders.
Average Resolution Time (ART)
ART, sometimes referred to as Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR), is an important metric for startups because it shows generally how positive the customer experience was, but also helps product teams stack rank and prioritize bug fixes, etc. The way you calculate ART is simple — just take the total duration for cases and divide by the number of total cases in a given period. ART is different for every business depending on the type of cases or tickets you receive and the channels you receive tickets and cases through. The key is to benchmark it against your internal metrics to make sure you’re incrementally improving and it’s not negatively impacting CSAT or Churn.
Churn Rate
Churn rate is a crucial metric for a SaaS startup — while it’s not exclusively a CX metric, CX teams can directly impact it. The way to calculate your churn rate is the number of customers lost divided by the number of customers you started with in a given time period. One of the main questions we get is, “Okay, I have measured Churn, but how do I prevent Churn from happening?” This is a question we can fully tackle in another article as it’s a multifaceted answer, but one of the most important things needed to improve Churn is creating a qualitative feedback loop with your customers. This can look like qualitative feedback in your CSAT inquiries, exit interviews for lost customers, and proactive calls from CSMs to power users. This allows you to get ahead of future issues and address them before customers churn.
We’d love to hear from you and discuss how to implement these metrics for your business. Reach out to us at sales@getleverify.com
