The SaaS market is estimated to be worth $ 1 trillion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 18.4% (between 2024 and 2032). While the SaaS industry is booming, 92% of SaaS startups crash and burn within their first three years.
This clearly states that sustaining in the hyper-competitive space is no joke.
How can a B2B SaaS brand ensure its success?
The answer is simple. Keep customers happy.
Customers can take a brand to great heights, even if it’s an early-stage startup. On the other hand, poor CX can significantly impact revenue and reverse progress, especially for SaaS businesses.
Simply put, customers can make or break a brand. So, delivering exceptional customer experience (CX) is not an option — all B2B SaaS businesses, whether a startup or an established brand, must prioritize it.
So, how do we ensure customers stay engaged and happy?
One of the sure-fire ways is to track the right CX KPIs as it offers a peek into the customer journey to identify areas of improvement.
This post will discuss 7 customer experience KPIs every B2B SaaS marketer must track in 2025 and beyond. Tracking these metrics is key to refining customer experience strategies, ultimately contributing to the success of your B2B SaaS.
What Are Customer Experience KPIs?
Customer experience KPIs are the quantitative and qualitative measures that help brands assess and enhance how customers perceive and interact with their services.
In the B2B SaaS realm, tracking CX KPIs like customer satisfaction score (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), customer effort score (CES), and others is critical. These metrics help B2B SaaS professionals achieve their ultimate goal 一 solve real customer problems with the product.
These KPIs gauge the performance of the CX and customer success teams and help them make informed decisions that enhance services and strengthen long-term customer relationships.
B2B SaaS firms must track these metrics to boost customer loyalty and combat churn 一 a big challenge faced by businesses in this domain. In this domain, where subscription services are billed quarterly or annually, churn negatively affects business revenue and growth.
Here’s why B2B SaaS businesses should track CX metrics.
- Improve customer engagement. These metrics offer real-time insights into how customers interact with the SaaS platform, allowing CX teams to address the experience gaps.
- Offer exceptional customer support. When SaaS businesses track CX, they identify the pain points and solve real customer issues. The insights add a lot of value to the customer service team.
- Enhance customer retention. CX metrics offer B2B SaaS professionals an in-depth understanding of the key drivers of customer loyalty. Thus, they can take proactive steps to boost the customer’s lifetime value and reduce churn.
The major CX KPIs can be easily tracked using B2B customer management and engagement software that offers in-depth insights for identifying bottlenecks in the customer service process.
An ideal platform must be intuitive, easy to use, and ensure seamless integration with existing infrastructure. Moreover, it should offer flexibility and fair pricing for small businesses. If you are a startup or a small or medium-sized B2B SaaS firm, consider an alternative to Zendesk, which is a popular platform but offers prohibitive pricing for small businesses.
Selecting the right platform is important as it impacts the business’s ability to monitor and improve customer experience, ultimately boosting business growth.
7 Customer Experience Metrics to Track for B2B SaaS Companies
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
CSAT is an essential CX metric that indicates how satisfied customers are with a product or service. It is measured through customer feedback on the question (or a variation) –
‘How would you rate your overall experience/ satisfaction with the product or service?’
Respondents need to respond using a 1 to 5 scale 一 1 being ‘very unsatisfied’ and 5 being ‘most satisfied.’
Why should SaaS businesses measure it?
CSAT measures the level of commitment your existing customers feel toward your brand. It represents the customer’s feelings throughout their journey with your company. Hence, CSAT must be closely monitored along with other SaaS CX metrics to enhance experiences for the customers.
How to improve this metric?
Creating personalized experiences can significantly improve the CSAT score. Using customer data, service agents can address unique customer needs. They can offer personalized recommendations, targeted solutions, and tailored support.
B2B SaaS enterprises are adopting several content personalization tactics to drive customer loyalty and retention. They are focusing on delivering innovative and personalized solutions to clients seeking engaging digital experiences.
For instance, many SaaS companies choose a scalable CMS like WordPress over Sitecore or Drupal for building their websites. When comparing Sitecore vs WordPress, they find the latter to have several plugins and themes that support the level of customization needed to deliver exceptional digital experiences.
Net promoter score (NPS)
NPS shows how likely are your existing customers to recommend your SaaS product to their acquaintances or social networks. To determine this, a brief survey is conducted that offers insights into the effectiveness of the firm’s customer experience strategy.
The question asked is –
How likely are you to recommend the brand to someone you know?
Customers need to use a scale of 1-10 where,
- 0-6 are detractors or unhappy customers who are likely to discourage people from engaging with the brand.
- 7-8 are satisfied with the brand experience but not to the extent that they will promote the brand.
- 9-10 are promoters who are the loyal and enthusiastic advocates of the brand.
Why should SaaS businesses measure it?
For SaaS brands, NPS is a great metric to identify customers on the extremes. The metric gives marketers an idea of customer satisfaction and future business growth. It is a powerful metric offering valuable insights when used in combination with customer effort score (CES) and CSAT.
How to improve this metric?
First things first, improving your relationship with detractors can reduce the negative experience and potentially change your view of the brand. Empower your staff to reach out to such customers to understand their concerns and resolve their issues.
Next, work on the promoters by taking your experience to the next level. Probe into the areas promoters are happy with and collect in-depth feedback on how you can improve the experience further.
For instance, a B2B eCommerce firm may have great customer service and a loyal fan base. However, they must continue to have a robust distribution channel to manage their order fulfillment through distributors, manage returns, and track shipments. For this, they may optimize the distribution routes, integrate a distribution management system, monitor the relevant KPIs, or use continuous improvement methods like Lean or Six Sigma.
Customer effort score (CES)
CES evaluates how tough it is for a customer to have their request fulfilled. The request could be a specific query or signing a contract.
CES is a percentage of the total number of customers who acknowledged that the interaction was easy by the overall number of responses.
Why should SaaS businesses measure it?
CES is an important metric because it shows how customers appreciate the level of effortlessness offered when they engage with a brand. Research published in a book The Effortless Experience reveals that 96% of customers with high-effort interaction became disloyal with a brand.
Hence, the easier a SaaS firm makes these interactions the higher will be the customer satisfaction.
How to improve this metric?
Firstly, make customer service accessible from any device. Offer multiple support channels to make it easy for customers to contact you. Eliminate the pain points by making the customer experience smooth and without hiccups.
Make sure your team resolves customer issues the first time they contact you. Repeated interactions are frustrating. Finally, gather customer feedback to make the customer feel heard and act positively to make a difference.
Average resolution time (ART)
It is the average time spent in solving a customer query. The time starts the moment the customer reaches out to you with a query and stops when the interaction is complete and the issue is resolved.
It is calculated by dividing the total resolution time of all tickets closed in a specific time frame by the total number of tickets closed during that time.
Why should SaaS businesses measure it?
ART is also referred to as Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR) and is a vital indicator of the quality of support a firm provides. It offers insights into which agent is performing well and who needs training.
Finally, it flags the areas for improvement in the internal workflow, allowing businesses to address issues or skill gaps before they impact the customer.
How to improve this metric?
One effective way to reduce the ART is to offer self-service options. Across industries, 81% of customers prefer taking care of issues themselves rather than reaching out to a live representative.
Make sure you invest in chatbots, FAQs, and an extensive knowledge base to solve minor problems. Leverage automation to improve collaboration and productivity. For instance, a B2B SaaS marketing automation software like Encharge can seamlessly automate your marketing and sales processes across the user journey to build an exceptional customer experience.
Finally, invest in comprehensive training programs to equip your team with the relevant knowledge and communication skills.
Customer churn rate
Customer churn is the percentage of customers who exit or stop doing business with you over time. This metric can be evaluated monthly, quarterly, or annually.
Here’s how it is calculated –
(Lost customers / the total number of customers at the start of a chosen period) X 100
Why should SaaS businesses measure it?
Churn impacts a SaaS business beyond merely the loss of a customer or revenue. It represents the loss of all the customer acquisition efforts and investments. Hence, tracking churn and addressing it is a cost-effective method to build a strong base of customers and grow revenue over time.
How to reduce churn?
B2B SaaS businesses can reduce churn by creating a seamless onboarding process that sets clear expectations and personalizes the experience for customers. The onboarding should continue after the initial setup where the customer is given adequate support and education in using the platform.
Secondly, elevate your customer support by training your team to be empathetic. They must have the required knowledge and strong problem-solving skills.
Finally, focus on tailoring the user experience to meet the customer’s needs and preferences. Study usage patterns, support interactions, and customer surveys to understand individual needs. Use this data to personalize product features or settings.
For instance, customizable dashboards, modifiable workflows, and adjustable notifications can make customers feel empowered to use the SaaS platform. It can greatly enhance their satisfaction levels and sense of ownership of the brand.
Customer health score
It is a custom-built metric that indicates the status of a specific retention or growth goal. The score is typically tied to a KPI or a product feature, expressed on a scale of 1 to 100 or color-coded from red to green.
Health scores are an indicator of whether a customer is about to leave or stay. The metric is a subjective amalgamation of several metrics that represent customer health.
Why should SaaS businesses measure it?
The Global State of CX 2024 top three challenges SaaS businesses face when delivering exceptional customer experiences – competing priorities, aligning business goals with CX, and building a customer-centric culture.
Each of these challenges can be overcome using a customer health score. Focusing on this metric helps businesses improve retention, multiply referrals, and detect churn precursors early.
How to improve this metric?
To improve customer health scores, it is first important to understand their needs and preferences. This information can be used to improve their experience and relationship with the business.
Secondly, empower your team with the relevant technology. For instance, the sales and marketing teams can work effectively to nurture leads by leveraging smart marketing automation.
Customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV)
Customer lifetime value is an essential metric that shares the total amount a business is likely to receive from a customer during their relationship with the company.
Simply put, it is the customer value for the business over a certain period. This metric is always seen alongside other SaaS metrics like churn rate, average revenue per user (ARPU), and customer acquisition cost (CAC).
Why should SaaS businesses measure it?
CLV or LTV helps in evaluating the health of a SaaS business in the long term by predicting future revenue and profit.
It is a reliable business metric that gives a clear picture of how well your service is resonating with the customer. Further, it gives an understanding of how customers spend, making it easier for SaaS marketers to build efficient marketing campaigns.
How to improve this metric?
To improve CLV, SaaS businesses should prioritize customer retention efforts and maximize upselling opportunities. Start by delivering exceptional customer onboarding to reduce churn in the initial stages.
Personalized customer success tactics like proactive support can go a long way in adding value to customers. Besides, tiered pricing and add-on features can help encourage cross-selling and upselling opportunities.
Conclusion
As we step into 2025, monitoring the key CX KPIs will remain central to the success of a B2B SaaS. The metrics discussed above offer in-depth and actionable insights into customer satisfaction, loyalty, and overall engagement.
By effectively tracking these KPIs, businesses can identify customer pain points and refine their strategies to deliver awesome experiences. Use the information shared in this post to foster a strong relationship with your customers and drive sustainable growth for your B2B SaaS.
