“How did they do that?”
If you have ever wondered how a brand creates a truly Magical Customer Experience that really moves you, then read on.
Spoiler alert: It’s simple, and its difficult. It takes planning, discipline and rigorous execution that can be summarized in 5 steps;
5 Steps to building your first Cx program
DESIGN the measure and method that you are going to use to collect customer feedback.
DEPLOY the survey to your customers in a thoughtful way.
ANALYZE the absolute scores and verbatim comments to understand what you’re getting right and what you need to improve.
Share clear, actionable FEEDBACK to the teams that can act on it.
ACT on the feedback by driving accountability for tangible action plans.
This article will explore each of these 5 steps in a little more detail, and offers practical advice on how to extract maximum value from your Cx measurement program.
Step 1: Design
If your organization is new to Cx measurement, I highly recommend starting with a simple, easy to understand measure called the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
NPS Background
Net Promoter Score was developed by Fred Reicheld and Bain and Company. The model is based on research that determined that one question - coined the “Ultimate Question” - is the best predictor of true customer loyalty. Reicheld found that the answer to this one question was predictive of exhibiting the following loyalty behaviours:
Recommend - tell your friends (good or bad)
Repurchase - buy the same things again
Extending Purchase - buy other product and service offerings
Provide feedback - give you input to co-design products and services or make improvements
Easy to do business with (low cost) - fewer escalations, calls, etc. drives lower cost
The Ultimate Question is simply stated as:
“On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [your company] to your friends and family.”
The research showed that the responses could be grouped into three categories based on their scoring of the Ultimate Question;
A score of 0 to 6 are called Detractors - Exhibit negative loyalty behaviours.
A score of 7 or 8 are called Passives - Do not exhibit positive or negative loyalty behaviours.
A score of 9 or 10 are called Promoters - Exhibit positive loyalty behaviours.
Calculating NPS
The NPS score is the proportion of respondents that were promoters less (net) the proportion of respondents that were detractors. The score is expressed as a number from -100 (all detractors) to 100 (all promoters) and everything in between.
Step 2: Deploy
Now that we know what we want to measure, we need to engage customers to collect feedback.
The Survey
The most pure form of the Net Promoter approach uses a simple, two-question survey. It asks customers the Ultimate Question and also a follow up, open-ended question “Why did you respond that way.”
Now, your data scientist roommate will spend an hour telling you why this is an overly simplistic way to measure, and they would be right. However, the simplicity is what is so incredibly appealing. NPS is expressed in a language and calculations that are easy to understand, it is used across industries and it gets you data quickly.
Timing
The timing of the survey is important.
A transactional survey is deployed shortly after an engagement with your company - a sales event, service event, contact centre engagement etc. - and is heavily weighted to that most recent transaction.
A relational survey is sent out rarely, perhaps annually, and it is used to evaluate the ongoing relationship customers have with your brand, regardless of whether or not they have had a recent interaction.
Recognize that the amount of time since the last event can influence the responses significantly. The NPS can erode by as much as 20 - 30 points just weeks after a successful service event. The implications include;
Keep in touch with your customers to reset their impression of your brand, and
Deliver promotional offers when NPS is at its peak, not a valley.
Sample Size
Aim to capture a significant number of customers on an ongoing basis in order to feed your improvement efforts with real-time current data. There are textbooks written on this subject, but my advice is to use as large a sample as is practical. By integrating an NPS survey into your transactional processes, it is easy and cost-effective to sample almost everyone!
Be careful when you are analyzing the data and splitting it up into categories. As the sample sizes in those categories get smaller, the reliability of the sample decreases. However, great ideas can come from just one response! Be sure to explore the verbatim comments to learn what customers are truly looking for, expressed in their own words.
Method
Measuring Cx using e-mail and other digital can facilitate high volumes of feedback in a short period of time at a very low cost.
Today, there are many Customer Experience Management (CEM) tools that can manage your customer engagement surveys, track responses and scores and analyze data for you at scale to track and measure your customer journeys. I’d save those for when you have the basics in place and start by dedicating a good analyst to quickly get your program off the ground.
Step 3: Analyze
There are any number of analyses that can be conducted on both the absolute scores as well as the verbatim comments.
Absolute Scores
What’s critical is that you can align your ERP or FSM data with the specific customers’ NPS responses and create a consolidated dataset. Now your analyst will be able to associate all of your internal operating data with the NPS for that specific customer interaction.
Interesting analyses can then be performed, including the study of changes in NPS across customer segments, transaction types, time of day/month/year, time to resolution, etc. The options are almost endless and you should let the data lead you (see below).
Verbatim Comments
If the NPS absolute scores answer the question “What”, then the verbatim comments give you clues to answer the question “Why”. Knowing that a customer rated you a 1 is almost useless if you don’t know why the experience caused them to score that way.
Spend time reading through the verbatim comments and categorizing them. Can you group similar comments together and identify trends? Can you establish what the highest priority comment is from the way it is written? Can you determine if the sentiment was positive or negative?
Customers will share many different elements of their experience and it takes practice and a strong understanding of the internal workings of your operation to determine what the customer was really getting at and what the internal source of that problem could be.
Let the data lead you
Armed with all of this data, you can now understand changes in NPS at a much deeper level. For example, imagine that your NPS dropped by 3 points this week. You can ask:
Which transaction types were lower? - "Home service visit"
Was one time of day lower? - "Afternoon"
Was one specific day lower? - "Wednesday"
What verbatim feedback did the lower scores offer? - "Call centre wait time"
What was going on in the call centre last Wednesday?
You can see how the data can lead you down the path. It doesn’t lead you to the answer, but rather to the source of the problem. In this example you can connect your contact centre stats to the NPS data and start to really understand the root cause for the low NPS score. Chances are, it won’t be the reason you thought it was going to be!
What should we fix first?
Once you have the comments categorized you can understand which comments drive the biggest change in the score, and which are experienced with the greatest frequency. With those factors, you can evaluate which concern is having the greatest impact on your NPS.
For example, imagine a customer scores a 0 because the technician dropped a wrench and scratched their floor. If that happens just once in the year, then fixing that specific problem is not going to drive a significant overall NPS improvement.
However, if a customer complains about call centre wait times when booking appointments and scores you a 7, take a closer look. That interaction happens on every service call, for every branch across the country every day. Improving that score from a 7 to an 8 or 9 will have a massive impact on your overall score and drive growth through loyal customers.
Follow this approach and you can deploy project teams to improve the experiences that will have the biggest NPS impact and improve customer loyalty the most.
Step 4: Share Feedback
Start at the top
Start by communicating the importance of putting the customer at the centre of everything you do, and then back it up with action. Recognize the right behaviours and teams that drive improvement in NPS. If you can create a customer-centric culture, then your people will be dying to know last week’s NPS and
understand what they can do to improve it.
Use standardized dashboards
Providing frequent, relevant feedback that is supported with data is critical to building credibility and support for change. If the dashboards are confusing and the data poorly understood, you will spend more time discussing the data than what you’re going to do to fix the issues.
I recommend a weekly summary report in a consistent format that is tailored to your business. Take the time to train the users of the report on what it means, how the data is collected and how the conclusions are made. Getting buy-in early will save a world of hurt in the future.
Insights not data
Be sure that you are providing insight and not just data. It’s great to see the scores and the trends, but the organization needs to understand why they are happening in order to fix them. That means digging into the operational details and understanding the root causes for changes in NPS.
Feedback works both ways
Include updates from the operation about actions that have been put in place to demonstrate the value of the closed-loop process.
For example, if the contact centre implemented a new shift schedule on Wednesday, then we should be prepared to analyze the data around that change. How many customers will the change affect and what verbatim comments do we expect to see more/less of? Including this detail in the weekly operating report brings it to life and shows how actions taken in the field are directly connected to changes in NPS.
Ad Hoc Feedback
Positive Feedback - don’t wait to share great news from customers. When you come across a truly exceptional customer comment, build a process to share it with the person involved and their management. That real-time recognition and celebration goes a long way to building an engaged team and reinforcing a customer-centric culture.
Negative Feedback - build a real-time feedback loop to deal with urgent issues. When there is an ongoing service issue or problem with a sales transaction you need to get that feedback to the people who can make it right immediately. You also need an accountability mechanism to ensure that the concern is resolved. With a transactional survey, you have the chance to correct a customer experience in real-time, before it becomes a bad headline. In fact, when a bad situation is turned around, it often creates a loyal customer for life.
Step 5: Act
If you don’t change the experience, why would you expect the NPS to change? Build an operating cadence that reinforces the importance of improving NPS and keeps the customer high in the priority list.
Action logs drive accountability
Build a culture of accountability by accurately capturing the actions taken and planned by each team. Include owners, timelines and due dates and share the updated log weekly.
Experiment
Run small, controlled experiments of new processes deployed to a controlled group of customers. By rapidly iterating, and failing or winning quickly, you will drive significant, measurable improvement in NPS with minimal risk and lower total cost.
Repeat
The job of improving your customer experience will never be complete. This approach builds Cx measurement into your regular operating systems so that you never lose focus on the customer.
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We can help
Chapman Management Solutions has deployed Cx measurement models at large and small B2C and B2B businesses. We can help you to implement a simplified approach to get actionable insights quickly. That’s how you create a Magical Customer Experience that will deliver long-term, sustainable growth.
Call 289.885.3878 now to learn more about our do-it-yourself online Cx Measurement training program.
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