Organizations are always looking for that magic pill that proves a particular initiative delivers value, and, more importantly, ROI. <\/p>\n
I receive a lot of questions on what are the best metrics to use to monitor CX performance and drive CX optimization. That’s a tough question because each company is different. It depends on your customer mix, the outcomes you desire, and other factors.<\/p>\n
One point is clear though and that is you must understand your data and what is behind the numbers before you can take action to optimize the CX.<\/p>\n
The old management adage, you can\u2019t manage what you don\u2019t measure, applies here.<\/p>\n
In a 2016 study conducted by Forrester, 39% of respondents admitted that they don\u2019t regularly ask customers about their interactions. Worse, 77% don\u2019t regularly track the drivers of CX in their organization. Without measuring CX, companies can\u2019t know what customers care about and where the CX can be improved.<\/p>\n
Yet, even when companies are paying attention to metrics, they are doing nothing with the data. In the same survey, Forrester reported that 79% of respondents don\u2019t act on CX metrics or share them with all employees regularly. That means leadership and staff don\u2019t know what is broken and what to do to make improvements.<\/p>\n
What are companies to do?<\/p>\n
Putting together an effective CX dashboard is a great place to start.<\/strong><\/p>\n A CX dashboard provides many benefits.<\/p>\n -It provides a snapshot to help you take the pulse of your CX at a particular moment in time.<\/p>\n -A CX dashboard is a great tool to help you make sense of all your data holistically, in an easy-to-understand way. It uses the data to tell a complete story in a visually appealing manner, to illustrate what is going on with your CX. This visibility into your CX serves as an alert to pinpoint opportunities where you can improve the CX.<\/p>\n -It helps you determine trends so you can monitor progress.<\/p>\n -It raises awareness of CX across the entire organization so employees understand the importance of CX and how it is attributing to the achievement of your business outcomes.<\/p>\n -A CX dashboard gives you a roadmap to help you prioritize so you focus on what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n The main goal for CX leaders is to transform customers into lifetime brand advocates. Thinking of a CX dashboard in those terms will help you be successful.<\/p>\n So, what are the best practices<\/strong><\/em> for building a CX dashboard that drives performance?<\/p>\n 1. Begin with the end in mind.<\/strong><\/p>\n What does CX success look like? What business and customer outcomes do you want? Knowing the results you want will help you determine the inputs and outputs you need to achieve them.<\/p>\n Make sure your dashboard is relevant and actionable.<\/p>\n Also, make sure you are regularly monitoring the performance of your dashboard. Look at trends and conduct root cause analyses. This will help you understand what is behind the numbers, so you know why numbers are improving or declining. Without this intelligence, you will not know how to improve the CX.<\/p>\n 2. Get stakeholder buy-in.<\/strong><\/p>\n An effective dashboard helps answer questions and enables collaboration with peers for better decision-making. Different stakeholders need different data views and levels of granularity. A CX dashboard is a great way to align with a unified CX vision across the organization. This will require understanding and working with stakeholders to define the KPIs that will determine success and the metrics to include in the CX dashboard. <\/p>\n A CX dashboard can also help improve employee engagement. Creating and using a CX dashboard as a guideline will enable employees to take ownership and accountability for ensuring CX success.<\/p>\n 3. Determine and align your data sources.<\/strong><\/p>\n Know where your key data is coming from and ensure it is aligned across the organization. If it isn’t and you do have data silos, that fuels departmental animosity and results in teams hoarding data. In addition, insufficient collaboration and poor decision-making result. <\/p>\n The organization needs to ensure data transparency and processes and guidelines are in place so teams are sharing data and are working effectively together.<\/p>\n