As we shared our best practices, one member pointed out how we were all focusing on metrics – questionnaire-based responses from customers. And sure enough, most of the debate revolved around whether to use Net Promoter Score, the Loyalty Index, satisfaction, or another survey-based metric. This makes sense – we often have a budget for this type of work, and this is one of the few areas where the customer experience team may actually have some control. So it’s what we typically use to gauge how our customer experience is doing.
And what’s wrong with that? Nothing by itself. Except that these measurements can feel disconnected for your teams that are trying to deliver a great customer experience. Telling teams to improve their Net Promoter Score is equivalent of telling managers to make their employees happier. Both are good goals, but neither gives any direction about how to do it.
Her recommendation was to focus on measurements that teams can impact. Identify those items that drive customer impact, and then measure actual delivery of those items along with your metrics. I’ve written before about driver analysis, to find more tactical measurements that drive your relationship scores. But it can even be hard to impact. these “My sales person seems to care about me” has a level of action to it, but can still be interpreted in very different ways.
The answer? Develop actionable measurements that tie to the driver. In the case of a caring salesperson you can create measurements such as frequency of contact or regular sharing of information.
To better illustrate this, I worked with one client to understand what drove their recurring purchases. We analyzed past Net Promoter scores, tying them to revenue. Next, we looked at their secondary questions (their drivers). It turned out that confidence in shipping is one of their key drivers. But again, it can be hard for teams to directly impact this. Our next step will be to develop measurements that, from their customers’ perspectives, will measure the current state of their experience – items like on-time shipments, % of expedited shipments, and the rest.
The first step is to identify the drivers for your customer experience. Once that’s done, look at your top drivers to discover what can be measured regularly to tie into that. Then come to next year’s Unwound session to tell us about it.
