Customer Experience Analytics: A Guide to Improve and Grow

Donald Peterson, one of the most admired CEOs in the auto industry, helped transform Ford Motor Company in the late 1980s by focusing on a deceptively simple idea: the customer comes first. At a time when Ford was losing ground to Japanese automakers like Nissan and Honda, Peterson rallied his teams with a powerful reminder: “If we are not customer-driven, our cars won’t be either.”

Peterson understood then what many leaders still overlook — that the customer experience (CX) is a business imperative. Whether you run a bank, a hospital, or an auto dealership, the stakes are the same. A positive customer experience is essential — and so is understanding how well your business is doing at delivering one. That’s where customer experience analytics comes in. If you can’t measure CX, you can’t improve it.

In this post, you’ll learn how to collect and analyze customer experience data that leads to real insight — and impact. The goal? Turning data into decisions that make your business not just better, but exceptional in your customers’ eyes.

Main Takeaways

• Analytics should be conducted on data from multiple touchpoints, both online and offline, to develop a comprehensive picture of the customer experience. 
• CX analytics has seven major benefits for businesses, including improved customer retention and loyalty, the ability to personalize and target marketing campaigns, and increased sales and revenue growth. 
• AI tools make it easier to collect and analyze customer experience data from online and offline touchpoints. 
• Analyzing CX data helps identify patterns in consumer behavior, providing clear guidance for optimizing the customer journey and creating a better customer experience. 

What Is Customer Experience (CX) Analytics?

First, let’s consider what the customer experience analytics process is and why it matters. Simply put, customer experience analytics is the collection and sorting of customer data, such as behavior, preferences, and purchasing activity. Analysis and interpretation of that data informs improvements to the customer experience. 

You can gather CX data from multiple customer touchpoints, including website activity, social media, text, chat, phone, and personal interactions. Collected comprehensively, this data provides invaluable insights into customer decision-making.

Think of customer experience analytics as the raw material businesses can use to fully engage customers and predict their future behavior. They can use this data to guide business strategy, optimize marketing and sales, and refine customer service strategy. 

The 7 Benefits of Tracking Customer Experience Analytics

There are seven key benefits that any business can derive from tracking customer experience analytics. 

Benefit 1: Improved Customer Retention and Loyalty

CX analytics shed light on pain points in the customer journey, providing brands with the opportunity to remove friction and enhance engagement. Consider this example: If an analysis of customer experience data reveals that an insurer’s product page isn’t converting visitors, the marketing team can zero in on that page, checking for broken links, refining messaging, and adding personalized content to better connect with customers.

Eliminating these kinds of roadblocks doesn’t just improve the experience in the moment — it also strengthens brand loyalty and boosts customer lifetime value (CLV).

Benefit 2: Optimized Customer Journeys Across Multiple Touchpoints

Customer experience analytics offers an omnichannel view, helping businesses track and connect interactions across both digital and analog channels — from websites and social media to chat and phone calls.

This holistic perspective allows brands to streamline and optimize the customer journey, even when it spans multiple touchpoints. Tools like Invoca’s PreSense help eliminate friction by bridging the gap between digital and voice interactions. PreSense shares real-time insights from a customer’s online activity with call center agents before the call is even answered.

Smart home services provider Vivint uses PreSense to equip its sales agents with immediate context, enabling more personalized conversations and more effective sales outcomes.

Benefit 3: Enhanced Personalization and Targeted Marketing

Customer experience analytics reveals deep insights that empower marketing teams to craft highly personalized messages and target the audiences most likely to convert.

AI-powered tools like Invoca’s sentiment analysis take this a step further by detecting shifts in customer emotions and behaviors during phone calls. These real-time signals help marketers better understand how customers perceive campaigns and adjust strategies accordingly to boost engagement and conversion.

Benefit 4: Increased Sales and Revenue Growth

Customer experience analytics enables brands to identify high-value customers and tailor sales strategies for stronger results, directly influencing revenue growth. And advanced call routing tools like Invoca’s PreSense help sales teams distinguish between qualified leads, such as existing customers, and unqualified ones, like out-of-area or unsolicited calls.

Satellite broadband provider ViaSat used PreSense to automatically deflect calls from regions outside its service area, while routing existing customers straight to support agents. This allowed sales teams to stay focused on high-conversion opportunities and more easily identify upsell potential, improving both efficiency and revenue outcomes.

Benefit 5: Reduced Customer Effort and Higher CES (Customer Effort Score)

The less effort a customer has to expend to get what they need, the better their experience, and the more likely they are to stay loyal. A high Customer Effort Score (CES) is often linked to reduced churn and stronger brand loyalty.

CX data technology can significantly help in reducing customer effort. Case in point: Intelligent call routing and automation eliminate call transfers and reduce resolution times for customer inquiries by directing calls to the most suitable agent based on the caller's intent.

Benefit 6: Data-Driven Decision-Making for Business Growth

Customer experience analytics delivers insights that can add strategic value across the entire organization. Robust CX data helps executives and managers clearly identify strengths, expose pain points, and make smarter, more confident decisions that drive growth.

The emergence of AI-driven customer experience tools, capable of analyzing customer data at scale in near real time, allows businesses to pivot strategies far faster than before. This is a competitive advantage for businesses willing to embrace AI. 

Benefit 7: Improved Agent and Contact Center Performance

Customer experience analytics use cases extend into the contact center. Platforms like Invoca make it possible to automate quality assurance at scale by monitoring and analyzing 100% of calls — not just a sample. This comprehensive, AI-powered approach delivers objective call scoring, giving contact center managers clear, actionable insights into team performance.

These tools also help identify coaching opportunities, surfacing specific agent behaviors that can be improved — all without adding extra work for managers. The result? Better support, stronger agent performance, and more consistent customer experiences.

Key Metrics to Track Throughout the Entire Customer Journey

You can use several key performance indicators to help you track and inform your total view of the customer journey and CX analytics. Top examples include:

Customer Effort Score (CES)

CES measures how easy it is for customers to interact with a business. CES is typically collected through a numerical response, ranked from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), to a specific question or statement, such as: “It was easy for me to get my problem resolved by customer service.” CES is calculated by dividing the total of all responses by the total number of customers surveyed.  

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV estimates the total revenue a business can expect from a customer throughout the entire duration of their relationship. It combines actual transaction history with predictive analytics to forecast future spending, offering a data-driven view of each customer’s long-term worth. CLV is a key metric for guiding retention strategies, marketing investments, and CX initiatives.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures customer loyalty and the likelihood customers will advocate for your brand with friends and relatives or in social posts. The score is based on the answer to a single survey question, such as: “On a scale of 0 to 10 (0 = highly unlikely, 10 = extremely likely), how likely would you be to refer our product or service to a friend?” Scores of 9 or 10 indicate promoters, while scores below 7 indicate detractors. 

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is a measure of a customer’s satisfaction with a specific interaction or experience. It is typically gathered through a short, post-interaction survey, with responses averaged to generate a score. A CSAT helps brands identify where service is meeting expectations and where it’s falling short.

Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis isn’t a traditional numerical metric, but it’s an important tool for understanding the customer journey. It’s an AI-driven evaluation of customer emotions during actual interactions. It can help you gauge if customers are likely to continue doing business with you or are experiencing pain points that might cause them to leave.

Tools like Invoca provide sentiment analysis at scale, analyzing 100% of calls to surface emotional insights that help brands spot issues early, improve experiences, and strengthen customer relationships.

How to Collect Customer Experience Data

So, how do you start collecting customer experience data? Here are three easy steps to take.

1. Identify Key Data Sources

You’ll need to identify the main customer experience data sources to use in your analysis. Here are the top sources to consider. 

First-Party Data

Data you’ve collected directly from your customers through your website, social channels, surveys, customer reviews and feedback, loyalty programs, and other direct contact is the richest form of data available to you. It can be used to create accurate customer personas, map the customer journey, personalize experiences and optimize marketing and sales strategies. 

Third-Party Data

Third-party data from a trusted provider can be a valuable source of insight into industry and customer trends and deliver broader insights into your target audience. This data can be combined with first-party data to build out customer personas, refine target messaging, and enhance personalization for your brand. 

Voice-of-the-Customer (VoC) Analytics

Voice-of-the-customer analytics is a subset of first-party data. If you often interact with customers by phone, it’s easy to extract emotional cues and customer intent from phone conversations at scale if you have the compliant technology to do so. 

Invoca’s AI automatically records, transcribes, and analyzes every customer call to identify and extract data on customer behavior, preferences, and intent. This “true voice of the customer” data helps enhance personalization, identify and fix pain points, and optimize products.

2. Track Customer Interactions Across Multiple Touchpoints

Next, you must prepare to track and collect data from multiple touchpoints where you engage with customers.

• Website and digital: There are many touchpoints to track in the digital customer journey. These include page views on your website, clicks (including ad clicks), and chatbot or virtual assistant interactions. 

• Phone call data: These are sometimes overlooked as touchpoints, but they are rich sources of data. An AI-powered customer experience analytics platform can help you bridge the gap between online and offline journeys by identifying friction points and spotlighting where customers drop out of the journey. 
• Email and surveys: Post-interaction emails and customer satisfaction surveys are valuable sources of feedback that can be used in customer experience metrics.
• Social media and reviews: You can also gather data from social media by analyzing customer comments on your channels, as well as asking for and collating online reviews. You can also collect brand mentions across various social channels to understand sentiment.

3. Choose the Right Customer Experience Analytics Tools

Lastly, selecting the right customer experience analytics tools is crucial for transforming customer data into actionable insights. And if you’re using multiple platforms, be sure they can integrate seamlessly, so you’re not wasting time reformatting or reconciling data.

Here are three key categories of tools to consider:

• AI-powered conversation analytics: Tools like Invoca create a customer experience analytics platform that tracks and isolates customer intent, bridges the gap between online-to-offline customer handoffs, and monitors contact center interactions at scale.
• Website behavior tracking: Analytical tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar can be useful for collecting insights into how customers interact with your website and other digital assets. 
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms: Robust CRM systems, such as Salesforce and HubSpot, are excellent tools for analyzing and centralizing customer data. Other tools, including Invoca and Google Analytics, integrate easily with these platforms, bringing all customer experience data together.

How to Analyze Customer Experience Data for Actionable Insights

Congratulations, you have the data! What’s the best way to approach creating actionable insights from that data? Follow these simple steps.

Identify Patterns and Trends in Customer Behavior

Use customer experience data to segment interactions based on demographics, purchase history, and sentiment. This segmentation allows you to create more targeted content, ads, and promotions that speak directly to your audience’s preferences and behaviors.

To accelerate this process, use AI tools that can quickly surface actionable insights. For example, Invoca’s Signal AI automatically detects caller intent, identifies product interest, and flags negative signals — giving sales teams the context they need to respond effectively and make timely adjustments.

Optimize the Customer Journey with CX Analytics

The customer journey can be complex, but the right customer experience analytics tools make it easier to navigate and improve.

CX analytics help identify exactly where customers drop off in the journey, giving sales agents the insights they need to adjust their approach on future calls. These tools also empower marketing teams to optimize engagement. For example, if data shows customers are more likely to convert via text than email, marketers can quickly pivot to the most effective channel.

Tools like Invoca PreSense can further optimize the journey by delivering insights into a caller’s digital activity, enabling agents to be equipped to handle incoming calls and respond with personalized greetings and recommendations. See how it works in the short video below:

Turn Insights into Action

The real value of the metrics you collect from your data is putting those insights to work to drive business decisions and enhance the customer experience. Otherwise, what’s the point? 

Review key performance indicators, such as CLV, NPS, CES, and CSAT, to identify areas where your business can improve and where growth opportunities exist. Dive into AI-powered sentiment analysis from tools like Invoca to uncover specific friction points in the customer journey. Then use those insights to refine your training programs, address service gaps, and reduce negative customer experiences — fast.

When insights lead to action, better experiences — and better results — naturally follow.

Unlock Actionable Customer Insights with Invoca

We hope this article has made it clear why and how customer experience analytics can transform your connection with customers and grow your business.

Invoca makes that transformation easier. Our AI-powered solutions deliver actionable insights before, during, and after every call, enabling you to personalize interactions and enhance outcomes at every stage of the journey.

By bridging the gap between online behavior and offline conversations, Invoca gives your team a comprehensive view of the customer experience. With that insight, you can make more informed decisions, achieve stronger marketing and sales performance, and foster higher customer retention.

Additional Reading

To learn more about how Invoca’s AI-driven quality intelligence tools can help you take your customer experience analytics to another level, see these additional resources:

• Customer Experience Optimization: What You Need to Know
• Customer Service Analytics: Benefits, Challenges, and Tips for 2024  
• Customer Experience Management (CXM) Explained

When you’re ready, you can also book a free demo with our team to learn how Invoca can help your business elevate its customer experience strategy — and much more.

FAQs

What Is the Role of Analytics in Customer Experience?

Analytics plays a vital role in helping brands interpret customer behavior and deliver a better, more consistent customer experience across all touchpoints. 

Why Are Customer Analytics Important for Businesses?

CX analytics provides actionable insights that allow brands to reduce customer effort, personalize messaging, increase customer engagement, and build stronger customer relationships — all of which contribute to greater loyalty and revenue growth.

What Is the Best Tool to Measure Customer Experience?

There’s no single tool that captures the entire customer experience. Instead, businesses must rely on a combination of key metrics, including Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and Customer Effort Score (CES). Sentiment analysis can also provide real-time insight into how customers feel about your brand and whether they’re likely to stay loyal.