Customers now have more touchpoints than ever, interacting with your business by visiting your website, direct messaging on social media, sending emails, and making phone calls.
There’s never been more to keep track of — and it’s never been more important to measure it accurately.
Knowing how engaged your customers feel is important, so it’s no surprise that you may worry if customer conversations seem hollow or you don’t have a plan in place to ensure customer loyalty and retention.
Marketing and support strategies can help you reach users across the entire customer journey, and. Let’s look at 18 essential metrics to help determine how engaged your customers are.
p.callout { background-color: #98e4d27d; padding: 1em; border-radius: 4px; width: 90%; font-size: 1em; min-height: 70px; line-height: 1.5; }Why Is Measuring Customer Engagement Important?
Customer engagement metrics provide insight into how happy and invested customers are with your business, products, and support team. Engaged customers are often loyal customers, committing for longer and purchasing more.
Tracking customer engagement metrics can offer the following benefits:
- Keeping a pulse on customer satisfaction
- Tracking the impact of your customer onboarding and retention strategies
- Identifying areas of improvement through cross-department teams and efforts
- Assessing if employees consistently have positive interactions with customers.
- Optimizing every touchpoint throughout the customer journey.
18 Key Customer Engagement Metrics
When tracking the impact of customer retention strategies, it’s important to note that there are different segments of metrics to track. For example, your customer support team will want to monitor these customer service metrics closely.
The 18 metrics we’re about to discuss are the most important KPIs for customer engagement in your company.
1. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
Your CSAT details how satisfied your customer is with your company, product, or service. This information is typically collected with a customer feedback survey sent after an interaction with your business, such as a purchase or a customer support call.
This score can help determine if customers feel you’re putting them first.
It’s calculated by compiling the responses that score either a four or a five and dividing them by the total number of survey responses received. Satisfied customers will typically give either four- or five-star ratings.
(Number of responses scoring either four or five/total number of responses ) x 100 = CSAT
So, if you had 40 responses with four- or five-star ratings out of 50 responses, that would be:
40 / 50 = .8 x 100 = 80%
CSAT Benchmark: Scores of 75–85 are considered “good” CSAT scores.
2. Net promoter score (NPS)
NPS will show how willing a customer is to recommend your product or company to another person. This is another metric that comes directly from customer feedback and often on a scale of 1–10.
These are the ratings and their values:
- Promoter: Scores 9 and 10; these customers are extremely likely to recommend.
- Passive: Scores 7 and 8; these users are relatively neutral.
- Detractor: Scores 0–6; these users are unlikely to recommend.
You can calculate NPS using this formula:
% promoters – % detractors = NPS
So, if 50% of responses fall within the promoter category and 10% within the detractor category, you have an NPS of 40.
Customer referrals are often a major business driver, indicating a customer’s overall happiness with your company. This score should be tracked closely.
NPS Benchmark: Above 0 is good, above 20 is great, and above 50 is excellent.
3. Customer effort score (CES)
Your CES tells you how much effort customers must put into fixing a problem they experience.
For example, you don’t want a customer encountering a technical glitch to need to send an email and a chat message and make three follow-up phone calls over a week. You also don’t want them to have to argue with a customer support agent for an hour after four call transfers. Minimizing your CES will result in an improved customer experience.
Your CES is calculated based on customer survey results. Surveys often use a five- or seven-point scale, asking users how difficult it was to resolve their problem. One would indicate that it was very easy to solve their problem, while higher numbers would indicate greater difficulty.
CES Benchmark: Low scores are better for CES. Scores of one or two on a scale of five are good; scores of one to three on a seven-point scale are good.
4. Customer lifetime value (CLV)
CLV tells you the average total revenue customers bring in over the lifetime of their relationship with your business.
You want this number to be as high as possible, and it’s worth noting that the longer you retain a customer, the more money they’ll typically spend with you.
Calculating CLV can be tricky, and some businesses assess CLV for specific audience segments. You can use this formula:
Average order value x purchase frequency x estimated average customer lifespan = CLV
So, if the average customer purchases a monthly subscription at $20 and they typically retain it for three years, you’ll use this calculation:
20 x 12 x 3 = $720
CLV Benchmark: A good CLV is 3–5 times your customer acquisition costs.
5. First week engagement
This metric measures a user’s interactions with your product or service in the first week of use. It speaks to the overall user experience and ease of use. It can help you determine how engaged new customers are from the start and how approachable your product or service is.
The goal here is low abandonment. For SaaS products, you want to see regular active usage of key features.
First Week Benchmark: Low abandonment rates here are critical.
6. “Stickiness”
“Stickiness” tells you how happy your customers are using your product and how likely they are to return. It’s calculated by comparing your daily active users (DAU) to your monthly active users (MAU). These are simply the number of unique customers interacting with your product daily or monthly.
(DAU / MAU) x 100 = Stickiness
The closer your DAU numbers are to your MAU metric, the higher your “stickiness” is, indicating that users are highly engaged.
Stickiness Benchmark: A ratio higher than 13% is good, meaning your customer uses your product once a week.
7. Customer churn rate
Your customer churn rate tells you how many paying customers stop using your product and cancel their contract or subscription. For e-commerce businesses, this may indicate customers who cease purchasing after a set period.
Tracking and decreasing your churn rate can improve customer retention and LTV. Determining why customers churn can be instrumental to improving your customer success process.
Your churn rate can be calculated with this formula:
(Number of customers who churned in a set period / total number of customers during that set period) x 100 = churn rate
If, for example, you lose 10 customers out of 100 total customers, you’d use this formula: 10 lost customers / 100 total customers = .10 X 100 = 10%.
CRR Benchmark: A 2–8% churn rate is considered healthy for most businesses.
8. User activity rates
User activity is a massive indicator of engagement, so it’s one of the most important user engagement metrics on our list.
You want to track both DAU and MAU.
You can use your DAU and MAU to determine how many customers engage with your product daily or monthly. To do so, use this formula:
(Daily or monthly active users in a given period / total number of paying customers in a given period) x 100 = rate of DAU or MAU
Activity Rate Benchmark: Active user rates of over 20% are usually considered solid.
9. Feature usage
Feature usage is a significant KPI for startups and SaaS companies with trackable online user activity.
This data will tell you which features customers are using the most. It helps you determine what matters most to customers and can even provide insight into where your product team can expand your offerings further.
While you want to track your feature usage overall, you’ll want to pay particularly close attention when a new or updated feature rolls out.
Feature usage may be calculated using this formula:
(Number of users utilizing a feature / total number of active users) x 100 = feature usage rate
Feature Usage Benchmark: 28% is usually a sign of good feature adoption.
10. Social media engagement
Social media engagement is a great way to assess how your community feels about you and your marketing efforts. A loyal and supportive customer is more likely to engage in some way on social media than those who aren’t.
Each social media platform has its own unique metrics, but they often include a mix of likes, shares, saves, comments, and mentions.
Remember that while likes are always a good sign, other forms of engagement are often more “high-intent” and, therefore, more valuable.
Social media platforms each have their own native analytics for business accounts. They’ll calculate the engagement rate using this formula:
(Total amount of engagement on a post / total impressions on a post) x 100 = engagement rate
Social Media Engagement Benchmark: An engagement rate between 1 and 5% is considered good, depending on the platform.
Read More: Provide Amazing Customer Experience on Social Media
11. Pages per session
This metric details the average number of website pages users view in a single session before leaving.
The more pages, the better because they’re consuming your content and potentially interacting with your CTAs.
Service-based businesses may only need two pages per session to reach immediate sales goals: the home page and a contact page.
Retail or e-commerce businesses, however, may benefit from more pages per session. Users need to navigate at least one product page, view cart page, and checkout page to make a purchase.
Pages per Session Benchmark: 1.7–4 pages per session is considered good.
12. Time on page
This metric details how much time the average user spends viewing a specific page on your site.
For product pages, this can tell you how quickly users are finding the information they need. This metric may be low for contact pages if customers are looking for a specific answer promptly or don’t find your content relevant.
Website analytics platforms will provide this metric for each page. Average session duration is also a valuable metric and can help you identify how long people spend on your website overall.
Time on Page Benchmark: 52 seconds is considered a “good” time on page.
13. Pageviews
Pageviews tell you the total number of times viewers have visited a particular page on your website. Every page on your site will have its own pageviews metric to help you determine how much traffic it generates.
Website analytics software can tell you how many pageviews each page has. A tool like Ahrefs or Similarweb provides estimated pageviews a site gets.
Pageviews Benchmark: Small businesses may want to aim for around 1,000 pageviews per month. For large businesses, a solid benchmark is around 10,000 pageviews per month.
14. Bounce Rate
The bounce rate tells you the number of visitors who came to your site and left immediately without engaging with your content. These visitors don’t view any additional pages or click on links.
A high bounce rate indicates a disconnect between the audience you’re reaching and the target audience you want to reach. It may also suggest that you need to strengthen your website UX, copy, or navigation.
Use website analytics tools such as Google Analytics to track your bounce rate.
Bounce Rate Benchmark: Average bounce rates may vary between 20 and 55%.
15. Click-through rate (CTR)
Your CTR details the number of people who saw a particular marketing message and clicked on it. That message may be a social media link, an ad, an email newsletter CTA, or an on-page link.
CTR is expressed as a percentage, and it’s calculated with this formula:
(Number of users who clicked on a link / total number of impressions on the link) x 100 = CTR
So, if you publish an email newsletter that 200 people open and 50 people click on the link inside, you’ll have a 25% CTR for that particular newsletter.
CTR Benchmark: While CTR benchmarks vary depending on the platform, a 6–7% CTR is generally considered strong.
16. Unique visitors
This metric tells you the total number of individuals who have visited your site in a given period. Each visitor will only be counted once on their first visit; repeat visits count toward total site visits but not your unique visitor count.
In general, the more users, the better.
Unique Visitors Benchmark: 10% of your website visitors should be new users to balance scalable growth and customer retention. If your returning site visitor count is low, engagement may be an issue.
17. Scroll or page depth
This metric tells you how far down a page users typically scroll before leaving the page or your website. It can help you gauge how quickly users find the information they need and whether they’re engaged enough to read on to the bottom of the content.
Remember that some pages will have relevant CTAs placed high up on the page; if they’re effective, you may not have a high scroll or page depth, so check your on-site traffic behavior to see how users interact with your page. The quicker you meet the customers’ needs, the better.
Scroll Depth Benchmark: 50% is considered good, depending on the page type.
18. Exit pages
Your exit percentage on a specific page tells you how many users left your site after viewing it. An exit page is, therefore, the last page on your site that users visit before clicking away.
Most website analytics platforms will provide exit page data for you; no calculations are required on your part.
Look at pages with high exit rates and see if you can do anything to keep users on your site longer. This may include adding clickable CTA buttons, improving the on-page content, or adding more prominent navigation options.
Exit Page Benchmark: This list (and the percentage of users exiting each page) needs to be as low as possible.
Tracking Customer Engagement Metrics With Nextiva
Nextiva is an all-in-one communications and customer support platform that offers VoIP service, customer experience features, and social media management tools.
Nextiva provides contact center technology that can help you improve your customer experience no matter where they’re at in their journey.
And while we can’t enforce your company’s training or engagement tactics, we can help by providing a powerful set of tools to help you foster a customer-centric culture.
So, if you’re unhappy with your customer experience and engagement metrics, there’s no time like the present to make a change. Talk to a Nextiva expert about how our tools can help.👇
