Welcome to the definitive 2023 guide about Customer Success Metrics for SaaS!
You’re probably familiar with customer success metrics, as nowadays, these are an essential part of SaaS business growth and success. According to Forbes, it’s estimated that a customer success specialist is the 6th fastest growing job in the US. Crazy, right?
However, according to this report, 37% of companies don’t have a clearly defined customer success strategy. This leads us to the following thought: if many business owners don’t know the importance of customer success metrics, how can they help improve their organizations’ overall success?
Are you aware of what customer success metrics are? Do you know why they’re important to track? What are the most useful ones for you? Today, we’ll answer these questions, and more, including:
- What are Customer Success Metrics?
- Why track Customer Success Metrics?
- What are the most important Customer Success Metrics?
Ready? Let’s get started!
What are Customer Success Metrics?
Customer success metrics are benchmarks that quantify customer success and help businesses ensure that their products and services allow customers to achieve their desired results.
In other words, these metrics help companies answer questions like this: is the product or service positively impacting our customers? Are our users recommending our service to their friends and family? How are our users doing with product adoption?
Generally, these metrics provide important insights into customer churn, adaptation rate, and production satisfaction when used effectively. They are fundamental to improving the results of SaaS products or services. If you’re interested in learning why to track customer success metrics, jump over to our next section!
Why track Customer Success Metrics?
Retaining customers is one of the most challenging tasks a SaaS company can face. With competition and new technologies emerging every day, churn happens at any time. That’s why keeping an existing customer is sometimes more cost-effective than acquiring a new one. Think about it; SaaS companies wouldn’t be able to grow and expand their business without customer retention strategies and customer support tools.
Because of this, tracking customer success metrics has become increasingly important for every SaaS company to ensure they’re achieving customer satisfaction that will lead to a solid customer base.
But what are the most important customer success metrics to consider?
The most important Customer Success Metrics
Knowing which are the most important customer success metrics isn’t as easy as pie. That’s why we’ve listed the ones your company should focus on below:
1. Customer health score
The customer health score is a metric used by customer success teams that determines whether a customer is at risk (risk of churning) or healthy (satisfied). To measure it, the scores are determined subjectively and vary from company to company. The customer health score helps product and customer success teams determine whether their customers will grow, renew, or churn and act consequently.
2. CSAT
A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a metric that measures how happy customers are with a product, service, support, or feature. To calculate it, SaaS businesses ask customers to respond to the following question: “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the (product/service/support) you received?” To answer, there’s a corresponding survey scale that goes from “very satisfied” to “very dissatisfied.” Afterward, this information is collected, and you should apply the corresponding formula.
CSAT = (Number of positive responses/number of total responses) x 100
3. NPS
Net promoter score (NPS) is a customer loyalty and satisfaction metric that measures customer experience and predicts your company’s growth. NPS has a single motivation: asking customers how likely they are to recommend your brand, product, or service to someone else.
To achieve this goal, you have to ask your customers a simple question: “How likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague on a scale of 0-10?”
Take a look at our article Net Promoter Score (NPS): Tips for Converting Passive Users into Promoters to learn more about NPS.
4. Customer Churn rate
The churn rate is one of the most famous metrics. It measures the number of customers who have canceled their subscription or don’t want to renew it for a period of time. When your churn is significant, it indicates that certain factors aren’t working for a business.
To understand why customers churn, have a look at our latest article, The main SaaS Churn Reasons and How you can Stop your Customers from Leaving.
5. Quick AHA moment/Eureka
The “Aha moment” occurs when a user realizes the value of your SaaS product for the first time. It’s when they understand how a product works, its main functionalities and value, and how to add it to their daily processes. The sooner it occurs, the better. The key to achieving a quick aha moment is through a successful onboarding experience.
6. CLV Customer Lifetime Value
Typically, customer lifetime value (CLV) reflects how much revenue a business will earn from a customer for the duration of the customer relationship. To measure it, companies have to analyze the total average revenue generated by a customer and the total average profit. CLV is an important metric for testing your marketing and sales strategies.
7. MRR
The monthly recurring revenue (MRR) metric shows how much income is generated per month. By using MRR, you can assess the current financial health of the business and project future earnings.
8. ARR
The annual recurring revenue (ARR) is a metric that shows the MRR of a company, but instead of monthly, it’s annually. Based on yearly subscriptions, it shows you how much recurring revenue you may earn.
9. Customer Effort Score
Do you know that 96% of the customers who faced high effort in solving issues with your company are more likely to churn? The customer effort score measures how difficult it is for a customer to access the help they need from a company. It shows if your company has any barriers to solving issues. To measure it, companies use surveys after the problem is solved.
10. Product Usage Rate
The product usage rate shows how your customers use your SaaS product or service. It measures how they use it, how they feel about it, or when they use it. This metric is very useful for SaaS companies as it helps businesses develop strategies with consistent data.
11. Free Trial Conversion Rate
Do you know the percentage of users that have converted from your free trial (if you have one) into paying customers? That’s the conversion rate. Using this metric, you can determine if your product is valuable to your customers and if they’re willing to pay for it.
12. Renewal Rate
The renewal rate is how many users renew their subscription with your company at the end of a period. It’s super easy to measure. To do so, calculate the percentage of customers who renewed at the end of the specified period by dividing the number of customers up for renewal by the total number.
13. Active Users
Active user rates help app developers gauge how their daily active users interact with particular parts of their apps or products. It’s often used to determine which users engage with your product and generate revenue.
All these metrics will give you a 360° vision of how your business is evolving. Collecting all this information will help you develop consistent and successful strategies to increase retention and satisfaction and reduce customer churn.
Track your SaaS Customer Success
Keeping track of customer success is essential for every SaaS company since it shows how far your company can go. Think about it: your business’s success depends on your customers’ happiness. Tracking customer success will help determine if your users plan to renew or upgrade their subscriptions or churn.
However, customer success is challenging to track as it depends on many metrics and factors. Luckily, you can use all the above metrics to help you identify issues and solve problems, ultimately increasing customer success. The most important ones are customer churn, customer satisfaction score, net promoter score, customer effort score, and customer lifetime value. All you need to do now is find the results for your company!
Still trying to figure out where to start? Download our Customer Success Ebook with secrets, tactics, and frameworks to improve your customer success, calculate your customer churn quickly through our Churn Calculator, or book a demo with us today!