How to Measure Customer Service

Find out how to measure customer service experience and performance using the metrics that matter the most.

Customer service interactions are make-or-break moments in which customer loyalty is won or lost. In fact, according to Medallia Market Research’s 2024 study, The State of Brand Loyalty: Demystifying what makes your customers loyal, customers who report a low to average customer service experience are 14 times more likely to stop being a customer of a company compared to customers who rate their service experience as a nine or 10 out of 10. 

Not only that, customers who feel loyal to brands are 1.8 times more likely to care about having the best service experience and the majority of consumers (59%) say they’ve sworn off doing business with a brand due to a bad experience. 

So how can brands tell if the customer service they’re delivering is having a positive impact on the customer experience? It all starts with knowing how to measure customer service, measuring customer service in real time using top customer service metrics and tools, and making in-the-moment improvements based on your company’s latest customer service measurements.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• The top types of customer service metrics to measure
• The four steps to take to measure your customer service experience and performance
• Best practices for customer service measurement
• The benefits of customer service measurement

Let’s get to it.

The Top Types of Customer Service Metrics to Measure

What are customer service metrics, anyway? As the name suggests, customer service metrics are different ways of measuring customer service quality, performance, and effectiveness. 

One of the main types of customer service metrics looks at customer service measurement from the customer’s point of view, focusing on customer satisfaction. The other main type evaluates contact center teams and how efficiently they operate. 

1. Customer Satisfaction Metrics

1. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

Customer satisfaction score, CSAT score, measures how satisfied or dissatisfied your customers are with your products, services, business, or the overall customer service experience.

It is measured at transaction or interaction touchpoints using dedicated CSAT surveys. Organizational and agent-level customer service teams then use the responses gathered from this customer feedback to gauge customer sentiment, monitor service quality, and spot opportunities to improve performance.

CSAT scores are calculated by dividing the total number of satisfied customers by the total number of survey respondents and multiplying this amount by 100 to get a percentage.

2. Net Promoter® Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score® measures customer satisfaction based on the likelihood of an individual recommending your products, services, or business. Customer responses are graded on a classic 11-point scale, with inputs ranging from 0, being “not likely at all,” to 10, being “extremely likely.”

Based on their responses, customers are then classified into promoters, passives, and detractors, with promoters being the most likely to make recommendations and detractors being the least likely.

To derive your NPS®, ranging from -100 to 100, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. A high score will indicate that more customers are satisfied. 

(Lately, though, we’ve been asking ourselves, Is NPS still the right metric for customer experience? And it turns out, omnichannel insights are a key complement to this measure.)

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

This customer satisfaction metric measures the effort it takes a customer to receive a response from your business, such as getting their question answered or ticket resolved.

Customer effort scores are calculated with direct surveys, usually sent after the customer interacts with a customer service agent. 

As with NPS, CES tells us who our promoters (5+ ratings), passives (neutrals), and detractors (<5 ratings) are. 

2. Operational Efficiency and Customer Support Metrics

4. First-Call Resolution Rate (FCR)

First-call resolution rate, also known as first-contact resolution rate, measures how effective your contact center is in meeting the needs of your customers without further follow-up or call-backs.

If you have a high FCR rate, meaning fewer tickets come in after the first customer call or contact, this is a good indicator that time and resources are being channeled in the right direction. The reverse is the case for low FCR. Having customers follow up on unresolved issues indicates your processes need improvement.

FCR is also a direct way to measure customer experiences, as the higher your FCR score, the more likely your team is successfully closing out customer service interactions during the initial touchpoint and, in turn, the less likely your customers are to churn. 

5. First Response Time (FRT)

First response time, or first response rate, measures the time between a customer’s first ticket outreach and when your contact center responds. 

To find your average first response time, divide the total FRT for received customer inquiries by the total number of interactions your agents receive within a given period of time.

6. Average Handling Time (AHT)

Unlike FRT, which measures the time it takes for an agent to respond to a customer’s initial inquiry, AHT, or average handle time, calculates how long one interaction takes your agents and customers from start to finish.

7. Average Response Time

Another metric to measure customer support efficiency is the average response time. Also called average reply time, this metric calculates the total time it takes your customer support agents to respond to a customer ticket on average.

To find your average response time, divide the total response time by the total number of replies your agents provide within a given time period.

8. Resolution Rate

Resolution rate is the percentage of customer service requests successfully resolved by your customer service agents within a certain timeframe. This is a healthy indicator of your contact center’s effectiveness in satisfying customer needs. 

To calculate your resolution rate, divide the total number of resolved tickets by the total ticket volume your agents receive and multiply by 100.

4 Steps to Measuring Customer Service

1. Identify Your Key Metrics

Now that we’ve gone over the top types of customer service metrics to measure, you can review this list above to identify the right key performance indicators (KPIs) for your business that will help you understand customer sentiment, operational effectiveness, and overall contact center performance.

2. Choose Your Methods for Measurement

The next step after identifying your key metrics to measure is choosing how to do it. Effective options include using: 

• Real-time feedback surveys
• AI-powered technologies
• Social listening tools

Here’s an overview of how to measure customer service performance using these methods.

Capture Real-time Customer Feedback After Every Interaction

Real-time customer feedback about your agents’ performance can be captured using surveys via a variety of channels, via website forms, email, SMS, live chat, and in-app messages. Though good survey response rates are harder to come by, survey feedback collection is most effective when it is personalized, brief, and gathered at optimal times.

The best time to collect customer feedback about contact center agents is during or immediately following service interactions when the experience is fresh in the customer’s mind. 

Your support team can then translate customer feedback into insights that not only help you understand customer sentiment but also improve your company’s customer service and business processes. 

(For more on how to measure customer service using surveys, be sure to check out our guide, How to Strengthen Your CX Program When Survey Response Rates Are Declining.)

Use AI Text and Speech Analytics to Monitor 100% of Customer Service Interactions

What happens when you use AI-powered conversation analytics tools like Medallia’s conversation intelligence to review your customer service agents’ performance? You can analyze every single interaction to drive contact center training, engagement, and rewards, and ensure faster, more efficient, and more personalized service delivery.

Medallia’s Text Analytics and Speech Analytics, which are natural language software solutions, analyze transcripts from customer service interactions — such as live chat interactions and recorded customer service calls — to identify patterns, common issues, and areas for communication improvement. These tools additionally track and automatically measure KPIs like CSAT, FCR, and customer sentiment.

The vast majority of practitioners using conversational intelligence (87%) say these analytics have helped improve customer service interactions in real time, according to Medallia Market Research’s 2025 study, Conversational Intelligence: The New CX Advantage.

Conduct Social Listening

Social listening, a proactive customer feedback strategy that involves monitoring social media mentions of your brand, is one of the most important ways to evaluate customer sentiment.

Not only can you listen in on your brand, product, or service mentions, but you can also discover what your customers are saying about your competitors and industry as a whole. 

Implementing a social media monitoring strategy at scale provides your customer service team invaluable data points to build public rapport and also safeguard your brand reputation by nipping negative feedback in the bud before it escalates.

3. Analyze Touchpoints in the Customer Service Journey

Your customer service journey starts as initial contact and ideally ends with a resolution. But in between those milestones exist a variety of other potential touchpoints, such as in person interactions as well as digital ones across social media, live chat, and phone support, that are critical to customer satisfaction.

As mentioned above, the customer service experience is incredibly powerful, with customers who’ve said they’ve had poor to average customer service experiences being 14 times more likely to stop being a customer of a company compared to customers who rate their service experience as a 9 or 10 out of 10. In particular, personalized experiences can be incredibly impactful. In fact, Medallia researchers have found that most consumers are willing to spend more if they can offer a customized experience (61%), and even more (82%) say tailored experiences influence brand choice at least half of the time when shopping. 

Consider tracking conversations and interactions across your omnichannel customer service journeys and touchpoints — and find and implement strategies to improve personalization during these customer service experiences — all of which have the potential to increase conversion rates, customer retention, and overall customer satisfaction:

1. In-person customer service touchpoints
2. Customer service touchpoints on your company’s website
3. Customer service touchpoints on your company’s app
4. Contact center support channels (self-service portals, chatbots, call support, live chat, SMS, email, support tickets, etc.)
5. Customer feedback (surveys, social media, forums, online reviews, etc.)

4. Iterate and Improve

Analysis identifies areas your support team needs to optimize to meet and exceed customer expectations. But it’s one thing to analyze data and another to act on the insights.

As a best practice for customer service measurement, regular reviews should be embedded into your support team’s internal processes. Don’t let analytics data sit idle — iterate on gathered insights from customer-agent interactions and performance to identify weak spots and improve your customer service strategies.

Best Practices for Customer Service Measurement 

1. Combine Quantitative and Qualitative Data

The first step is to combine quantitative data, such as survey scores and analytics, with qualitative data from customer feedback, live chat transcripts, phone call transcripts, and social media monitoring.

This combination comprehensively measures hard data with other insights around sentiment, trending topics, and recurring themes that help brands understand customer satisfaction, such as customers’ feelings and opinions, and help teams make better-informed customer service decisions.

2. Utilize Omnichannel Feedback

Omnichannel customer experience insights are now a business imperative, linked with greater revenue growth, time and cost savings, better employee experiences, and overall improved brand strength. 

3. Monitor Real-Time Customer Interactions

Use AI-powered tools such as Medallia’s Text Analytics and Speech Analytics to monitor and analyze real-time customer interactions. 

These insights measure customer sentiment to not only proactively resolve issues but also personalize and improve the overall customer experience. 

4. Understand Customer Sentiment

How can you deliver excellent customer service if you’re not sure how your customers perceive your brand?

Customer sentiment reveals how your customers feel about your business. These feelings could be negative, positive, or neutral. 

Not only do metrics such as NPS® and CSAT provide insights into customer sentiment, AI-powered analytics can assess sentiment in real time, as can social listening, giving customer support agents actionable learnings for how to address pain points and improve customer satisfaction.

Key Benefits of Customer Service Measurement

1. Improved Customer Experience

Negative customer service interactions motivate most of us — 65% of consumers — to consider switching to a competitor brand. This clearly indicates the need for concentrated efforts to improve customer experience by using customer experience management to maintain excellent customer service standards — at scale — or risk losing customers. 

2. Effective Resource Allocation

By identifying which aspects of customer service require additional attention, businesses can allocate resources strategically to areas that will have the most significant impact on customer satisfaction and business outcomes.

These insights can only be gained from customer service measurements.

3. Competitive Advantage

What differentiates you from a competitor offering a similar product or service in the same industry is not your brand colors — it’s your competitive advantage.

One way to gain a competitive advantage in today’s business world is by delivering exceptional customer service. Customer service measurement hands you the insights you need to improve your internal processes to aim for standout excellence in service quality.

4. Proactive Issue Resolution

With real-time metrics from effectively measuring customer service, your support teams can proactively handle emerging issues before they escalate. 

Resolutions become less reactive and more anticipatory as measurement provides useful insights that reveal customer sentiment in the moment.

5. Improved Service Quality

Customers’ needs and preferences are constantly changing. Regular customer service measurement empowers your support teams to pick up on trends to stay ahead of customer service interactions.

6. Enhanced Customer Satisfaction

Satisfied customers are highly likely to make a repeat purchase or recommend a brand to other people. Customer service measurement allows businesses to gauge customer sentiment accurately to implement personalized strategies that heighten customer satisfaction across all touchpoints.

3 Data-Backed Reasons Why You Have to Measure Customer Service

1. So your company doesn’t lose customers to the competition. According to Medallia Market Research’s 2024 report on customer loyalty, customers who say they’ve had poor to average customer service experiences are 14 times more likely to stop being a customer of a company compared to customers who rate their service experience as a 9 or 10 out of 10. And the majority of consumers (59%) say they’ve sworn off doing business with a brand due to a bad experience. 

2. To strengthen customer loyalty. Customers who feel loyal to brands are 1.8X more likely to care about having the best service experience, according to the Medallia study cited above.

3. To get more customer referrals. Most (52%) of consumers agree that a negative customer service experience would impact their willingness to recommend a brand the first time it happens, according to a 2023 Medallia study about the customer service experience.

Measure Customer Service in Real Time with Medallia

The world’s leading brands leverage Medallia’s powerful real-time customer service measurement capabilities not only for measuring customer service across channels and touchpoints, but to improve customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty and to drive operational efficiencies, savings, and revenue gains.