The end of the calendar year is around the corner. One thing you can always count on at the end of the year is an explosion of diet and exercise program commercials on television taking advantage of peoples’ desire to make a new year’s resolution to lose weight or get in shape. Some people will adopt P90X, while others will do the Atkins diet or do a cleanse. One thing is for sure, success at losing weight will not be due to the method chosen, but rather the commitment, consistency of execution and changing of underlying habits for the long term.
Most people, especially those who have struggled with weight loss, understand this inherently.
While the percentage of people who want to lose weight is probably relatively high in the population, the proportion of companies that want to become more customer centric and differentiate on the customer experience is even greater.
So, why is it that in Customer Experience, we have not learned the very same lesson that we learn from weight loss?
There are a lot of theories on which metric is the right one to use to judge the success of your CX program. Fred Reicheld gave us NPS. The Corporate Executive Board espouses Customer Effort Score, and Forrester swears by CXi. Some customers use custom indices and others just use overall satisfaction. Like fad diets, some will swear that the method has worked for them, while others will conclude that it failed. For many it will work for a few years and then progress will be stalled or reversed.
Sound familiar?
Our recent CX Evolution study confirms there is no magic bullet to achieving CX success. As the chart below shows, the perceived success of companies CX programs is not really very different depending on the primary metric chosen. (One could argue based on this data that Customer Effort Score is slightly better, but that’s a discussion for another blog.)
Like dieting, success at differentiating on the customer experience will not be due to the target CX metric chosen, but rather the commitment, consistency of execution and changing of underlying habits for the long term.
My challenge to you is to answer a simple ranking question, based on your own experience.
Rank order the following in terms of their importance to driving success in your CX program?
- Having a robust, effective closed loop process
- Having the right tool in place to get CX feedback to front line employees so they can take action
- Having the right CX outcome metric that tells management how CX is progressing in the organization
- Having leadership that sets the right tone, right expectations, and leads by example when it comes to CX
Maybe not all will agree, but as our research confirms, selection of the right metric should be dead last.
Habits such as a good closed loop process, leadership that walks the walk, and having the right tools in place are far more important to a successful customer experience program than the metric chosen. Our research shows that the more robust your CX program is, the greater your success.
Like choosing a diet, you have to choose a primary CX metric that you feel works for you. Of the CX metric approaches mentioned above, there really are no bad choices. They will ALL work if you develop the right skills, habits and processes within your organization. They will ALL fail if you don’t.
If you’re happy with the metric you have, keep it. If you aren’t—change it. Either way, I’d recommend not wasting a lot of time on your choice. The difference between choices is negligible. In almost all cases, we are not going to tell you your choice is wrong.
I invite you to participate in our CXEvolution self-assessment and learn about where you stand. In fact, have people from around your company participate and get a more robust self-evaluation. Contact us to learn how we can help you get focused on implementing the right tools and developing the skills that will drive CX success in the long term.
No matter what metric you use, if you implement these tools and habits, I guarantee your metric will show success. More importantly, revenue will grow, retention will increase, and customers will be more excited to do business with your company.
Click here to sign up for Michael’s webinar on this subject.
