Here’s how to measure customer experience (CX): 5 key metrics

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    Quick Summary 

    Measuring customer experience (CX) is essential for driving retention, loyalty, and business growth. We explore five key CX metrics—NPS, CSAT, CES, churn rate, and journey analytics—explaining how each reveals critical insights. Learn how to move beyond surface-level scores, connect metrics to real customer journeys, and leverage tools like TheyDo to turn data into action. Visit our Resources Hub to deepen your understanding and start improving customer experiences today.

    Looking to measure your customer experience efficiently?

    According to Gartner, over 80% of organizations expect to compete mainly on customer experience (CX). That says a lot about how important an outstanding CX has become in today’s competitive market. Delivering an exceptional customer experience isn’t just about standing out—it’s also about building brand loyalty, driving repeat purchases, and attracting new customers.

    In this TheyDo guide, we’ll explore exactly that, along with some best practices to guide you through the dos and don'ts. 

    But first... 

    Why listen to us?

    At TheyDo, we analyze customer journeys holistically, using real-time insights to uncover gaps and opportunities. 

    For instance, Amtrak improved its customer experience by applying service design principles and using our journey management tools. These tools helped align teams, create inclusive journey maps, and develop actionable roadmaps. The result? Better cross-functional collaboration and more customer-focused operations. 

    What is customer experience (CX)?

    Customer experience (CX) is how customers perceive and interact with your business at every touchpoint. It’s the sum of their emotions, frustrations, and satisfactions throughout the journey—from discovery to post-purchase support. Strong CX builds loyalty; weak CX drives customers away.

    CX isn’t just about customer service. It includes product usability, digital experiences, communication clarity, and operational efficiency. Every interaction shapes perception, whether intentional or not.

    Measuring CX means tracking how customers feel, where they struggle, and what drives satisfaction using structured methodologies.

    Why should you measure customer experience?

    • Identify Friction Points – Understanding where customers struggle helps you remove obstacles and improve their journey.

    • Increase Retention & Loyalty – Satisfied customers stay longer, spend more, and recommend your brand.

    • Optimize Business Decisions – CX data ensures investments and improvements are based on real customer needs, not assumptions.

    • Enhance Competitive Advantage – A superior experience differentiates you from competitors and strengthens your market position.

    • Boost Revenue – Happier customers drive higher conversions and lifetime value.

    • Align CX with Business Goals – CX should be measured and structured in a way that connects directly to business growth and operational efficiency.

    How to measure customer experience: 5 key metrics

    1. Net Promoter Score (NPS) 

    Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty by asking how likely customers are to recommend your brand on a scale from 0 to 10. It categorizes respondents into:

    • Promoters (9-10) – Highly satisfied and likely to recommend.

    • Passives (7-8) – Neutral customers with moderate satisfaction.

    • Detractors (0-6) – Unhappy customers who may discourage others.

    NPS surveys are a key tool for gauging customer loyalty. Open-ended feedback within these surveys helps you uncover sentiment patterns and refine CX strategies.

    While NPS is simple, its real value comes from contextualizing responses. A standalone score won’t reveal why customers feel the way they do. To make NPS actionable, you’ll need to:

    • Segment by journey stage – Understanding NPS at different touchpoints helps pinpoint specific friction areas.

    • Analyze verbatim responses – Open-ended feedback explains customer sentiment beyond the score.

    • Correlate with behavioral data – NPS alone lacks depth; combining it with customer journey analytics offers clearer insights.

    • Benchmark Against Competitors – Comparing your NPS with industry averages can highlight relative strengths and weaknesses.

    At TheyDo, we integrate NPS into journey maps, helping teams visualize where sentiment changes occur. By layering NPS with other CX metrics, you can connect customer emotions to operational realities. Instead of treating NPS as a static benchmark, use it to identify weak points, predict churn risk, and prioritize improvements.

    A high NPS without retention growth is a big red flag. Sure, customers might love your brand, but something’s holding them back from sticking around. By looking at NPS alongside the entire customer journey, you can make smarter, more strategic decisions.

    Potential Limitations: While many businesses use NPS, experts debate its ability to predict long-term success. It fails to capture the reasons behind customer scores unless paired with qualitative insights.

    2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) 

    Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction, product, or service. Unlike NPS, which captures long-term sentiment, CSAT focuses on immediate experiences—making it ideal for pinpointing short-term improvements.

    Customer experience surveys typically measure CSAT by asking users to rate their satisfaction after an interaction. You can use real-time survey data to spot dissatisfaction trends and optimize high-impact touchpoints.

    Along with survey responses, talking directly to customers through user interviews gives you a deeper understanding of what’s driving their satisfaction, and what’s causing them frustration.

    To maximize CSAT’s impact:

    • Tie responses to journey stages – A low CSAT at onboarding signals different issues than one post-support interaction.

    • Analyze trends, not just averages – Averages hide critical dissatisfaction spikes that affect retention.

    • Correlating CSAT with operational metrics – Pairing CSAT with metrics like First Contact Resolution (FCR), Average Resolution Time (ART), and First Response Time (FRT) provides deeper insights.

    CSAT truly shines when it’s mapped across customer journeys. That’s why we make it easy to embed CSAT into key journey steps using tools like Qualtrics. This ensures you’re measuring satisfaction exactly where it matters most. After all, a single transaction-level CSAT score doesn’t tell the full story unless it’s tied to bigger CX trends. 

    A drop in CSAT at key touchpoints usually points to bigger issues, not just one-off problems. Instead of just reacting, the focus should be on tracking where satisfaction drops so teams can improve the experience before things go wrong. CSAT should feel like a real-time feedback loop, not just another number on a report.

    Potential Limitations: CSAT scores often suffer from response bias, with feedback coming mainly from customers who are either thrilled or frustrated. If you want to get a clearer picture, try strategies like randomized surveys or offering post-interaction incentives to encourage more balanced responses.

    3. Customer Effort Score (CES) 

    Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy or difficult it is for customers to complete a task, such as signing up, resolving an issue, or making a purchase. Unlike CSAT, which tracks satisfaction, CES directly predicts loyalty—low-effort experiences drive retention, while high-effort ones increase churn.

    High CES scores often indicate process inefficiencies, such as unclear instructions, slow response times, or repetitive customer actions. To make CES actionable:

    • Map CES to journey touchpoints – Identify which interactions create the most friction, such as onboarding, checkout, or support resolution.

    • Combine CES with session recordings & heatmaps – Visualize areas where users struggle on digital platforms.

    • Use predictive analytics – Anticipate where customer effort is likely to spike and address issues proactively.

    Embedding CES within your customer journey analytics ensures that effort scores are tied to specific customer actions and moments. Instead of addressing friction reactively, you can proactively redesign workflows to eliminate unnecessary steps.

    Potential Limitations: While reducing effort is key, research suggests that some high-effort interactions (such as thorough issue resolution) can still lead to high satisfaction if handled well.

    4. Churn Rate 

    Churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop doing business with you over a given period. A rising churn rate signals unresolved pain points, competitive weaknesses, or misalignment between customer expectations and actual experiences.

    Churn analysis is only useful when it goes beyond the what and uncovers the why. To make churn rate actionable:

    • Segment churn by customer journey – Are users dropping off after onboarding, during renewal, or post-support? Each stage reveals different risks.

    • Correlate churn with CES, CSAT, and NPS – A poor experience at a critical touchpoint often predicts churn before it happens.

    • Monitor early warning indicators – Behavioral analytics (e.g., usage drops, complaint volume) can help prevent churn.

    Our journey mapping and taxonomy help businesses track churn by connecting experience breakdowns to actual customer exits. Instead of treating churn as a final outcome, you can pinpoint where and why disengagement happens.

    A retention strategy that ignores customer experience patterns is simply guesswork. Reducing churn requires proactive intervention—identifying weak moments, closing experience gaps, and optimizing journeys before frustration leads to departure.

    5. Journey Analytics 

    Customer journey analytics provide a holistic view of customer interactions across touchpoints, helping teams understand where friction, drop-offs, and opportunities occur. Unlike isolated metrics like NPS or CSAT, journey analytics connects customer sentiment with real behaviors, making it a cornerstone of CX measurement.

    Traditional analytics often focus on individual interactions, but customer journeys are nonlinear. To make journey analytics actionable:

    • Identify patterns across multiple touchpoints – A customer might have a poor support experience but leave only after a frustrating renewal process.

    • Combine quantitative and qualitative data – Metrics like CES or churn rates show what is happening, but journey analytics reveals why.

    • Using AI to detect friction points at scale – Spotting experience gaps manually is time-consuming—AI-driven tools can accelerate insights.

    Our Journey AI automates journey analytics, rapidly transforming raw data into structured, actionable insights. Instead of waiting for quarterly reports, teams can continuously refine experiences based on real-time journey trends.

    AI-powered data analysis helps detect friction points at scale, identifying hidden patterns in customer behavior that traditional analytics might miss.

    Without journey analytics, CX measurement can feel all over the place—teams end up fixing symptoms instead of tackling the real issues. Taking a strategic approach means every improvement works with the entire customer journey, boosting retention, engagement, and driving real business growth.

    Best practices for measuring customer experience

    Align CX metrics with your business goals

    Measuring CX isn’t just about tracking scores—it’s about making smarter decisions. Link metrics like NPS, CES, and CSAT to big-picture goals like retention, revenue growth, and customer lifetime value. After all, a high CSAT doesn’t mean much if customers are still leaving because of poor long-term engagement.

    Segment data for deeper insights

    Aggregated CX scores can be tricky. Instead of looking at NPS, CSAT, or CES as a whole, try breaking them down by customer journey stage, demographic, or product usage. You might find that a dip in CSAT isn’t a big-picture problem but something specific to a certain group or touchpoint.

    Prioritize high-impact touchpoints

    Not all customer interactions have the same impact on retention. Focus on the ones that really count—like onboarding, solving issues, and renewals. Trying to measure everything equally can water down your insights and make decisions harder. Keep it simple and prioritize what matters most.

    Integrate CX data across teams

    CX insights aren’t just for the customer support team. They can help product teams improve features, guide marketing to tweak messaging and help operations streamline workflows. If you’re measuring CX in a silo, you’re missing out on its full potential.

    Use CX trends, not just snapshots

    One NPS or CES score at a single moment doesn’t give you the whole picture. It’s all about tracking trends over time to spot what’s just a one-off and what’s a bigger problem. For example, a dip in CES during checkout for a week might just be a fluke, but if it keeps dropping, that’s a red flag that needs fixing ASAP.

    Choose TheyDo to Streamline Your CX Management

    Measuring customer experience is all about understanding where customers struggle, why they leave, and how to create better journeys. By leveraging the above metrics, you can turn raw data into meaningful action. And that’s where TheyDo comes in.

    We help teams map, analyze, and optimize customer journeys by integrating CX metrics into a structured framework. With Journey AI, businesses can uncover pain points, align teams, and continuously refine experiences—all in one platform.

    Start transforming your customer experience—sign up for free today and see the difference firsthand.