In the digital age, consumers can access information instantly with the tap of a screen. This has redefined their expectations and created new business demands. Customers want to interact with businesses using multiple channels and expect that each of those interactions seamlessly connects — aka, the omnichannel consumer journey.

An omnichannel experience offers customers variety and means more convenience, both of which are increasingly important in today’s environment. To best serve customers, organizations need to leverage a cloud omnichannel infrastructure that can bolster contact center operations and enable them to utilize contact center tools.

Data-driven, easily integrated contact center tools used within a strong omnichannel framework offer businesses the ability to tailor customer interactions based on contextual data and ensure that customers (and agents) have a seamless experience. They also make another vitally important thing possible: measuring the customer experience.

Here are a few omnichannel metrics to keep in mind as you prioritize measuring the customer experience and work to understand how your customers are engaging with you across channels:

1. Customer Friction / Effort Score

A Customer Effort Score (CES) is an important metric for successful customer experience planning. It indicates how much effort a customer has to exert in order to utilize the various channels. Minimal friction is key because ease of use is one of the main factors that determine whether a customer will continue engaging with your business and utilizing certain touchpoints in your omnichannel offerings. If some touchpoints are more difficult to use than others, they won’t satisfy the customer or deliver value to your business.

2. Customer Lifetime Value

Lifetime value is one of the most important metrics to consider when measuring the omnichannel customer experience. It measures a customer’s value over the course of their relationship with your business. Because this variable is most affected by lower-funnel behaviors, LTV is commonly thought of as a loyalty metric. The greater the LTV, the greater the loyalty of your customer. Take a two-pronged approach when considering LTV: segment customers and then examine the channel preferences and buying behaviors of the highest-value segments. By looking for patterns in these data, you can derive insights about the channels most likely to drive loyalty and, as a result, the most value for your brand.

3. Customer Retention

In order to effectively retain customers and track what’s contributing to the engagement, it’s important to keep track of which channels customers use to interact with your business and how they’re doing that. The timing of and approach to future interactions may shift depending on the channel a customer has engaged with most recently (and the context of that engagement). Communicating with customers in a timely manner and offering the most tailored, relevant information possible will increase retention. When done well, this allows you to look back and determine which specific communication strategies positively impacted your ability to keep retention high.

4. Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a common measure of a customer’s emotional response to the interactions they’ve had with your business over time. It requires active input from your customers, so having a strong strategy for gathering their feedback is key. The most popular measure of customer satisfaction is the Net Promoter Score, which surveys customers using a single question: “On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to recommend [business] to a friend or colleague?” By evaluating the differences in highly satisfied versus highly dissatisfied customers, you can begin to understand your audience better — including the areas in which you may be missing, meeting, or even exceeding customer expectations across channels — and determine how to improve customer satisfaction moving forward.

Offering a robust omnichannel consumer journey will continue to become a significant competitive advantage and differentiator for businesses operating in today’s marketplace. But creating an excellent omnichannel experience without measuring its success leaves your business missing key insights with the power to improve omnichannel offerings in the future.

At USAN, we are committed to ensuring businesses have the tools to create a metric-driven omnichannel experience. To find out how we can do this for your organization, click here.