Customer-Focused Key Performance Indicators for Electric Vehicle Charging (2024)
- The Aljebari
- 15 hours ago
- 3 min read
Report Details
This report proposes a new framework of KPIs for public electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Many existing metrics measure "technical health" of chargers or rely on negative customer surveys, but those dont always reflect real user experience. According to the authors, improving EV adoption depends heavily on real customer experience; from ease of start, reliability, smoothness of session and more factors that will be highlighted in the report.
The report is produced by ChargeX Consortium and aims to define granular, actionable and standardised metrics that stakeholders (charging station operators, regulators, planners) can use to evaluate, benchmark and improve the public charging experience
The current metrics and why the shift matters
Traditional metrics like "charger-uptime" mean time between failures, or "percentage of available chargers" may indicate technical readiness, but do not guarantee a good user experience. A charger may be "up" but still fail to start charging due to payment issues, authentication problems, communication errors, or connector malfunctions.
Composite customer satisfaction scores or general survey lack granularity. They may tell you "customers are unhappy", but now which part of the charging process is broken (the start, payment, reliability, unplugging) Without precise KPIs, its hard to know where to focus improvement efforts
The report argues that having standardised, customer centred KPIs allows operators and policymakers to benchmark across stations, networks, even countries; to track improvements; and to prioritise investments (maintenance, UX improvements, payment/authorisation systems, charger hardware upgrades) where they matter most for drivers
The KPIs - Shift the focus
The key indicators allows the shift of focus from "is the charger operational" to "did the user get a working charge"
Charge Start Success
The percentage of all charge attempts by customers that result in the EVSE (charger) beginning to deliver power. That means all steps (plugging in, authentication/payment, communication between EV and charger) occur without customer intervention, retrying or failure
Charge End (or Session) Success
The percentage of charging sessions that not only started successfully but also completed properly (ended either by user or reaching the energy/state of charge target) and allowed the user to unplug without issues (e.g. connector unlock problems)
Visit Success
For a given station visit (even if multiple attempts are made), the percentage where at least one charge session was successfully completed (as per above). This accounts for cases where a first attempt failed but subsequent attempts at the same station succeeded.
For any region building or scaling public EV charging infrastructure, this KPI framework is especially valuable as it:
Allows you to measure real user experience, not just technical uptime: This matter where users depend heavily on public charging such as in areas lacking widespread private charging at home
Helps design future charging infrastructure investments more strategically: you can identify weak spots rather than blindly adding more chargers
Supports building trust among early EV adopters: reliability and goos service equals better reputation and accelerates adoption
Provides data driven feedback to continuously improve charger networks, service quality, user interface and operations, which is critical when EV infrastructure is still scaling
GCC Adaptation
As the GCC accelerates its EV rollout, adopting customer focused KPIs offers a real competitive edge. Instead of expanding charging networks blindly, these metrics allow operators to target the right investments, ensuring reliability, ease of use and a consistently positive charging experience. This level of trust and convenience is exactly what encourages drivers to make the shift to electric.
