The Customer KPI Library: 53 Scorecard Measures

Henry Ford once said, “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.”

If you prescribe to the same line of thought as Mr. Ford, then you agree that the customer is of paramount importance. But if you’re not tracking the right measures, you simply can’t be sure that your customers will continue to buy your products or use your services and thus, “pay your wages.”

The best way to combat this issue is to track key performance indicators (KPIs) that are in line with your organizational strategy. Customer KPIs are often divided into two categories: drivers, and outcomes. Driver measures are used to understand if your customers are buying your products or services, and outcome measures are used to help you determine if your marketing and product development efforts are driving sales. (Don’t get too hung up on whether your KPIs are outcome or driver measures, because both are important!)

Our suggestion is to think about what kind of behavior each measure is driving and whether it is the kind of behavior you’re looking for. Marketing automation has made gathering and storing customer data simple, so the possibilities for data-driven measures are quite expansive. To get you on the right track, we’ve documented 53 customer KPIs and scorecard measures that you may want to consider implementing.

Note: We’re not suggesting nor advocating for you to begin measuring all of these KPIs. Rather, you can use this extensive list to get an idea of what likeminded organizations may be looking at, research KPIs from other lists, and then decide upon the critical few KPIs that are in line with your unique strategy.

Life Cycle KPIs

1. Conversion Rate: Helps determine the success of a particular customer interaction by tracking the percentage of interactions that result in a sale. Formula: (Interactions with Completed Transactions) / (Total Sales Interactions) = (Conversion Rate)
2. Cross-Selling Rate: Measures a brand's ability to sell a consumer a product related to the one they have purchased, thereby expanding wallet share. This rate can be measured in additional products sold or additional revenue gained from these products.
3. Customer Churn Rate: Indicates the percentage of customers that either fail to make a repeat purchase or discontinue their service during a given period. Formula: (Number of Customers Lost in a Given Period) / (Number of Customers at the Start of the Period) = (Customer Churn Rate)
4. Customer Lifetime Value: The net profit a company anticipates gaining from a consumer over the entire length of the buying relationship. This can help to determine the costs and benefits of acquisition efforts.
5. Customer Lifetime Value / Customer Acquisition Cost: The ratio of a customer's lifetime value to the cost to acquire a customer. This ratio should ideally be greater than one, as a customer is not profitable if the cost to acquire is greater than the profit they will bring to a company. Formula: (Net Expected Lifetime Profit From the Customer) / (Cost to Acquire the Customer) = (Customer Lifetime Value / Customer Acquisition Cost)
6. Customer Profitability Score: Determines which customers make the most and least substantial contributions to profit. Companies can use this to determine where they will allocate spending and investments.
7. Customer Retention Rate: Measures the portion of consumers who remain customers from the beginning to the end of a reporting period. Formula: (1) - (Customers Lost in a Given Period / Number of Customers at the Start of a Period) = (Customer Retention Rate)
8. Early Repeat Rate: Measures the portion of consumers who make a second purchase within a set amount of time after their first purchase. This could be a good indicator of how well companies are converting their one-time buyers into more loyal customers. Formula: (Number of Customers Who Make a Second Purchase Within X Amount of Time)/(Total Customers Who Made a Purchase During this Time) = (Early Repeat Rate)
9. Life Cycle Distribution Status: Measures where customers fall within the various stages of the customer life cycle. With this measurement, companies can evaluate how many customers they have in each particular stage and the rate at which they are moving.
10. Rate of Adoption: The rate (determined by length of time) at which an innovation is adopted by a given population.
11. Renewal Rate: A good indicator of whether clients find a service useful. If this rate is low, companies may need to determine why clients are not renewing the service. Formula: (Clients Who Renew) / (Total Clients Whose Previous Licenses Came to an End) = (Renewal Rate)
12. Up-Selling Rate: The rate at which customers are converted from purchasing a product to purchasing a more expensive version from the same product family, which increases wallet share.
13. Winback Rate: Tracks the percentage of churned customers who are successfully "won back" into making a purchase during a given period. Formula: (Churned Clients Who Repurchase) / (Churned Clients) = (Winback Rate)
14. Referral Conversion Rate: Measures the portion of referral invitations sent that are accepted by their recipients. Formula: (Converted Referrals) / (Total Referral Invitations Sent) = (Referral Conversion Rate)

Numbers & Rates KPIs

15. Average Number of Referrals per User: A higher number of referrals per user is likely to lead to more sales, increasing the profitability of each customer. Formula: (Number of Referrals) / (Number of Users) = (Average Number of Referrals per User)
16. Bounce Rate: Measures the number of visitors that access a page on a company website and leave before visiting any other pages.
17. Click-Through Rate: Monitors how many people click on links in an email. This is a good way to gauge the success of an email campaign and the quality of an email’s content.
18. Client Summit Attendance: Counts the number of people who attend a client event. It could be measured as a percentage of a specific attendance target or of the total client base.
19. Contact Volume by Channel: Keeps track of the number of support requests by phone and email. This allows the organization to not only compare which method customers prefer, but also to track the number of support requests month-to-month.
20. Customer Complaints: Helps companies determine whether innovations are effective in improving the customer experience with their product.
21. Direct Traffic: Traffic to a company's website that occurs from visitors typing in the URL directly (i.e. actively seeking it out).
22. Indirect Traffic: Measures website traffic that stems from indirect sources, such as clickable email campaigns or referral links.
23. Number of Reads on Company Blog Articles: Helps companies determine whether visitors are finding their content useful and which content performs better than others.
24. Number of Social Media Followers: Indicates the level of customer engagement a brand has.
25. Number of Support Requests per Product: Allows a company to determine which products their customers find easier (and harder) to use.
26. Open Rate: Tracking the number of opened and unopened emails allows companies to evaluate whether an email campaign strategy is successful or not.
27. Rank on Search Engines: Can indicate whether a search engine optimization (SEO) process is effective.
28. Rate of Referrals: Can help illustrate customers' level of satisfaction with a product or service. Formula: (Number of Referrals in Period) / (Units of Time in Period) = (Rate of Referrals)
29. Redemption Rate: Provides companies with vital consumer behavior information. Formula: (Reward Points Redeemed) / (Reward Points Offered) = (Redemption Rate)
30. Repeat Customer Rate: Indicates whether a product or service inspires repeat purchases from customers. Formula: (Customers That Have Purchased More Than Once) / (Unique Customers) = (Repeat Customer Rate)
31. Search Volume for Brand: Can help companies gauge brand awareness. Determined by the number of times that consumers search a brand using search engines.
32. Sessions per Day: Tracks how many times a customer is using a service or product per day.
33. Share of Wallet: Measures the portion of a customer's total spending that goes toward the company's products and services.
34. Visit Frequency: If a visitor makes frequent trips to the company website or location, it demonstrates interest in the product or service, which can provide a company with more consumer insights.
35. Number of Customer References: The number of customers that brands can rely on to refer others to a product or service. The more customer references, the better.
36. Number of Customers: Allows companies to track the size of their customer base over time.
37. Number of Customers per Employee: Indicates the workload per employee and how much bandwidth a company has available for each customer. Formula: (Number of Customers) / (Number of Employees Serving Those Customers) = (Number of Customers per Employee)
38. Number of New Customers: Allows companies to track the growth rate of their customer base.
39. Number of New Marketing Leads: Determines how many marketing leads are added in each period, as opposed to the total number of leads. Formula: (Total Leads) - (Leads at the Beginning of Each Period) = (Number of New Marketing Leads)
40. Number of New vs. Repeat Site Visits: Allows companies to differentiate their website traffic and generate insights on prospective customers. Formula: ([1] - [Website Visits by New Visitors]) / (Total Website Visits) = (Number of New vs. Repeat Site Visits)
41. Time per Website Visit: Can indicate how engaged a visitor was with the website content during their visit.
42. Brand Attitude Index: Customers' attitudes about a brand can include how positive or negative the customer feels about the brand, as well as how strongly they feel about their conviction.

Satisfaction KPIs

43. Comparison of Product with Customer Expectations: The product or service should meet or exceed expectations in order to retain customers.
44. Customer Effort Score: The less effort the customer must expend in order to complete their task or goal with your product, the more they will want to use the product.
45. Customer Satisfaction Index: Helps gauge a company’s success at meeting customers’ needs.
46. Customer Satisfaction with a Particular Feature: Can be used to hone in on customers' opinions of a specific feature of a product.
47. Customer Satisfaction With the Buying Process: If a buying process is satisfactory for customers, they may be more likely to remain loyal to the product.
48. External Benchmark Survey Ratings: Compares one organization's customer satisfaction with its competitors' customer satisfaction.
49. Intention to Repurchase: This is the equivalent of a likelihood to repurchase, and many times this is self reported in a survey of the customer near the time of the original purchase.
50. Net Promoter Score: Determines how likely customers are to recommend a brand to others, generally represented on a 1-10 scale. A score that qualifies promoters (usually 9-10) and detractors (under 6) would need to be determined in order to calculate this metric. Formula: (Number of Promoters) - (Number of Detractors) = (Net Promoter Score)
51. Percentage of Customers Who Are "Very" or "Extremely" Satisfied: Determining this metric opens up an opportunity for further surveying into what makes these particular happy customers so satisfied. Formula: (Customers Who Consider Themselves "Very" or "Extremely" Satisfied) / (Total Survey Respondents) = (Percentage of Customers Who Are "Very" or "Extremely" Satisfied)
52. Satisfaction With Interaction: Indicates customers' average ratings of their satisfaction with an individual service interaction. This is normally determined right after the interaction has occurred. Formula: (Sum of response rates from customers who rate their satisfaction on a 1-5 scale) / (Total Survey Respondents)
53. Satisfaction With Services Offered: May provide insight into which products or services are doing well and whether to expand the product offering.