top of page

Customer Experience Tools

The Tools and Metrics Every Business Needs to Understand Customer Experience

By Valentina Melo

April 13, 2026

Customer Experience Tools

By Valentina Melo
April 13, 2026

In a world full of information being put out in our faces it is important for us to organize information about how customers are viewing and interacting with our business.

We can do so by learning about tools such as NPS, CSAT, CES, and behavioral data. These tools can be essential for us to be able to efficiently measure customer experience.

So, if you are interested and want to learn more about how to properly organize and make sure every customer has a great experience with your business, I would continue reading.

Tools Such As NPS, CSAT, and CES Help Companies Keep Track Of Their Overall Performance:

The first step is to establish what each of these abbreviations mean:

NPS refers to Net Promoter Score which is a metric used to measure the customers loyalty and satisfaction with a brand or company. An example you might have seen a lot of NPS is when a company asks you to evaluate from 0 to 10 how likely it is that you would recommend the product or service to a friend or family member.

CSAT refers to customer satisfaction score which is a metric to measure the level of a customer's satisfaction for a product or service. This is obtained via surveys or questionnaires in which customers are asked to rate their satisfaction. An example of this could include a Universal Studios Orlando survey asking you the level of satisfaction or fun that you received at the theme park.

CES refers to customer effort score which is a metric used to measure the effort that customers need to make in order to interact with a company or product. This is based on the idea that if less effort is required from the customer then customers will be more satisfied and more loyal to your brand or company.

Now, let's actually analyze how these tools help companies keep track of their performance.

In their article, Theoretical foundations of Customer Experience (customer experience, NPS, CSAT, CES, Service Balcony, Journey Map), the authors explain that companies use tools such as CSAT to “assert the level of customer satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. By measuring customer satisfaction, organizations can take steps to address customer concerns and improve the quality of their products or services” (3).

In the same article it states in NPS “customers are divided into three categories based on their responses: promoters (9-10), passives (7-8), and detractors (0-6). NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters” (3), meaning that companies separate customers into three different groups depending on their responses of the likeness to recommend the product of service and then calculate a final score to determine the companies overall grade by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

Then the article discusses CES and how it can be useful for companies to track their areas of improvement in order to make it easier for the customer to close the purchase with them.

The article states “The focus is on the degree of effort a customer has to make in order to clarify a concern or problem with a company. This includes queries, problems, or questions that may be related to products or services or even to the purchasing process as such” (8).

This impacts you as an entrepreneur, business owner or even a marketing professional because you need to learn how to properly use these tools and metrics to make improvements based on the results and data gathered by such tools and therefore improve your overall customer experience and performance.

What is Behavioral Data? And how does it show real customer actions and not just their opinions?

Behavioral data refers to the information you collect as a company or brand about your customers actions while inside your business across multiple different media.

According to Marcus Collins in “You Need More Than Data to Understand Your Customers”, “Information- think traffic, engagement on social networking platforms, purchases, and search queries- consists of the factual representations of events that have taken place. This data can reveal quite a bit about a consumer’s interests, intentions, and desires.” (1).

Basically, the author is saying that behavioral data is based on the real actions of your customers in things such as engagement in social media platforms, purchases, and even what they are searching online, and that throughout these actions we can learn more about their interests, intentions and desires.

So, you might be thinking, why is it important for me to know what customers are doing inside of my company's different platforms? And that question can be answered with a very simple question, if you know what your customers are doing, what their desires are, and what their interests are it is easier for you to tailor your product or service to that specific audience.

An example of this could include you as an owner of an energy drink company noticing that a large portion of your monthly sales comes from surfers and then wanting to participate in specific surf events so that more and more surfers are able to see your products and purchase them. I know this is simple marketing, but it is actually the entire idea of what behavioral data is.

Both sources show that companies need both factual data and behavioral data to fully understand their customers and how well they are truly doing with customer experience. Metrics such as NPS, CSAT and CES which collect factual data helps you analyze how well you are doing your customer experience process, as it analyzes the percentage of customers that are going to recommend your company, the overall satisfaction of your customers, and how hard it is for your customers to actually purchase your product or service. While behavioral data analyzes their actions inside of your company's different platforms, which can help you target your products in a more efficient way to those who are interested in purchasing your product or service.

Behavioral data may raise ethical concerns and make customers feel like they have lost their privacy.

This might be the opinion of a lot of people especially when it comes to companies being able to track what you do inside of your own cell phone.

But, Michal Wlosik explains that “Because first-party comes from direct customer interactions, it is highly actionable for optimization and inherently compliant with privacy laws if managed responsibly” (Wlosik, 2023) and “Implement relevant measures, such as data anonymization and appropriate security measures” (Wlosik, 2023).

Meaning that behavioral data itself does not raise ethical concerns, but the way the data is managed and protected is what matters. Therefore, it is important to have certain laws in place and make sure that there are precautions in order to protect your customers privacy.

Anyone who has a company or works for a company knows that they depend on customers and protecting the privacy and rights of these customers are extremely important to establish customer trust. As customers are not going to purchase from your company if they believe you do not protect them and that they can not trust you as a brand or company.

Tools and metrics do not measure each and every customer experience with a brand, therefore they are inaccurate.

Although there are some tools and metrics that are unable to measure each and every customer's experience with a brand due to the amount of information they collect, there are tools that can do this in a very simple and organized way.

Mozdeh Rastegar-Panah, author of article “Customer reviews: How to get and use them” states, “Customer review is a form of feedback or personal evaluation provided by a customer who has used a product or service” (Rastegar-Panah, 2025).

Meaning that customer reviews is an easy form for you as a company to know exactly how your customer is feeling and how to either improve your customer experience or keep doing certain things.

If you are an entrepreneur or a business owner, you know that customers can either give you a very bad review, or a very good review. Sadly, there are little neutral reviews because there if the customers experience with your company or brand was neutral they would not leave a review.

But, if you happened to get a very bad review, you could address that person directly and possibly provide them with any type of compensation or active customer service assistance and then learn from your mistakes.

On the other hand, if you received a very good review you can directly contact that person and thank them for their review and even invite them to come back or purchase from you again.

It is truly important to have this type of relationship with your customers. So, although there are metrics and tools that help you improve your customer experience with data from a large portion of people it is also important for your customers to feel seen and heard. So, essentially a combination of the two would be perfect.

Tracking metrics helps companies measure and predict customer experience and loyalty.

Tools such as NPS can be very efficient to both measure and predict the customer experience and customer loyalty of your company.

In the article “Use of Net Promoter Score (NPS) in Hospital Marketing Strategy to Increase Patient Satisfaction and Loyalty” by Kristanti Dillasari and Wachyu Sulistiadi it states “NPS is widely used because of its simplicity, simple way of implementation, and its potential for industry benchmarking, competition analysis, and internal performance evaluation between products, location, and over time” (2), as well as, “NPS is considered more powerful than measuring retention rates or repurchase intent because these metrics are not necessarily related to loyalty but rather can be influenced by the convenience or absence of alternative products” (2).

Both of these quotes explain that tools and metrics such as NPS are amazing at measuring customer experience, helping companies in comparison to their competitions, and are more powerful than other methods when it comes to measuring customer loyalty.

Tools and metrics such as NPS are more than capable of doing an amazing job at helping companies measure and predict both customer experience and loyalty.

These tools and metrics do not account for customers' emotions and feelings.

Although it may be true that certain tools and metrics we have discussed are not so efficient nor accurate when it comes to measuring true customers emotions and feelings there are two very useful ways to account for that:

Customer sentiment “analyzes the emotional tone of customer feedback across channels such as support tickets and social media interactions” (Gainsight, 2025). As a business owner, entrepreneur or even a marketing professional this matters because "understanding tone and language reveals how customers really feel, giving you deeper insight into their motivations and concerns” (Gainsight, 2025). You can implement this in your own business by “using sentiment analysis tools to categorize feedback as positive, neutral or negative, then track trends over time” (Gainsight, 2025).

Customer Emotional Intensity “measures the strength of customer feelings about your brand- whether positive or negative” (Gainsight, 2025). This matters to you because “strong emotions often signal moments of truth in the customer journey, making them opportunities to reinforce loyalty and repair trust” (Gainsight, 2025). You can implement this metric into your own business by “analyzing communication tone, word choice, and behavioral cues during interactions to gauge emotional investment” (Gainsight, 2025).

Customer Sentiment and Customer Emotional Intensity are two tools extremely focused on accounting for customers' true emotions and feelings when it comes to your brand or company.

Both tools are extremely important for your relationship with your customers because they help establish a truthful and trustworthy relationship with them. Also, one can also conclude that metrics such as Customer Sentiment and Customer Emotional Intensity work best when they are together to provide accurate information about how your customer truly feels when it comes to your brand or company.

Tools and metrics such as NPS, Customer Sentiment and Customer Emotional Intensity can all work together to improve the customers experience when purchasing a product or service from your brand or company.

Research has shown that companies who use the tools and metrics we have discussed to track customer experience improve customer satisfaction and retention over time. As a business owner, entrepreneur, or marketing professional you need to implement tools and metrics such as NPS, CSAT, CES, behavioral data as well as Customer Sentiment and Customer Emotional Intensity in order to keep track of your company’s customer experience and loyalty.

These tools and metrics can help you collect data from multiple customers and identify areas of improvement which can ultimately increase your customer’s satisfaction and loyalty.

Now that you are aware of the different tools and metrics used to measure customer experience and loyalty, it is time to implement them into your own company.

It’s not about ignoring customers emotions and feelings; it is about keeping track of customer experience and loyalty.

Marcus Collins. “You Need More than Data to Understand Your Customers”. Harvard Business Review, December 13, 2023,

https://hbr.org/2023/12/you-need-more-than-data-to-understand-your-customers

CRM Magazine Verient: The Customer Engagement Company. “A Simple Strategy for Customer-First Success”. April, 2021.

https://research.ebsco.com/c/vc3evs/search/details/xqpkbtqh3fdb=a9h&limiters=None&q=%22Customer+Experience%22+AND+%22methods%22+AND+tools+AND+metrics+AND+NPS+AND+CSAT+Ahttps://research.ebsco.com/c/vc3evs/search/details/xqpkbtqh3f?db=a9h&limiters=None&q=%22Customer+Experience%22+AND+%22methods%22+AND+tools+AND+metrics+AND+NPS+AND+CSAT+AND+%22behavioral+data%22&searchMode=booleanND+%22behavioral+data%22&searchMode=boolean

Kristanti Diliasari and Wachyu Sulistiadi. “Use of Net Promoter Score (NPS) in Hospital Marketing Strategy to Increase Patient Satisfaction and Loyalty”. IJSSR International Journal of Social Service and Research. March 3, 2024.

https://research.ebsco.com/c/vc3evs/search/details/qzfqnwahq5db=a9h&limiters=RV%3AY&q=%22Customer%20Experience%22%20AND%20%22methods%22%20AND%20tools%20AND%20metrics%20AND%20NPS%20AND%20%22behavioral%20data%22&searchMode=boolen

Gainsight. “Customer Experience Metrics: The Essential Guide for 2025”. January 20,2025.

https://www.gainsight.com/blog/customer-experience-metrics-the-essential-guide-for-2025/

Carlos Ermel Bourne Gastezzi, Martha Maria Fernandez Rodriguez, and Andres Castillo. “Theoretical foundations on Customer Experience (customer experience, NPS, CSAT, CES, Service Balcony, Journey Map).” Journal of business and entrepreneurial studie 8 (2). April, 2024.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379941368_Theoretical_foundations_on_Customer_Experience_customer_experience_NPS_CSAT_CES_Service_Balcony_Journey_Map

Markku A. Laitinen. “Fix, Develop, Keep! Net Promoter Score as a Tool for Improving Customer Experience”. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries. 2019, Vol 8(2).

https://fiu-flvc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/openurlinstitution=01FALSC_FIU&vid=01FALSC_FIU:FIU&volume=8&date=20190601&pages=147-158&issn=22411925&issue=2&au=Laitinen,%20Markku%20A.&isbn=&genre=article&spage=147&title=Qualitative%20%26%20Quantitative%20Methods%20in%20Libraries&atitle=Fix,%20Develop,%20Keep!%20Net%20Promoter%20Score%20as%20a%20Tool%20for%20Improving%20Customer%20Experience.&sid=EBSCO:Academic%20Search%20Complete:142303573

https://www.qqml-journal.net/index.php/qqml/article/view/577/513

Rastegar-Panah, Mozhdeh. “Customer Reviews: How to Get and Use Them [+ Templates].” Zendesk Blog, 12 Aug. 2025,

www.zendesk.com/blog/customer-reviews/ .

TTEC. “CSAT vs NPS vs. CES: How to turbocharge key metrics for contact center success”. TTEC, n.d.

https://www.ttec.com/blog/csat-vs-nps-vs-ces-how-turbocharge-key-metrics-contact-center-success

Wlosik, Michal. “What Is Behavioral Data and How Can It Help You Better Understand Your Customers.” Piwik PRO, 27 Dec. 2023,

piwik.pro/blog/what-is-behavioral-data-and-how-can-it-help-you-better-understand-your-customers/.

bottom of page