Customer experience measurement programmes are great, but only if they lead to CX leaders making decisions and improving the commercial performance of their organisations.
As a consultancy that specialises in customer experience measurement for organisations that make premium products and services, we question the rationale of doing such measurement if it doesn’t lead to action. If you do not intend to make better, more informed decisions as a result of working with us, then you should not hire us (or indeed any CX agency).
Some people argue that any feedback is good – “what harm can it do?”.
We don’t subscribe to this view. Customer journeys, and thus how you measure experience, are often complex. Frequently they involve multiple touchpoints with the brand, products, services, and/or their agents. Businesses invest significant resource and capital to understand their customers’ experience. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the programme is working effectively, or that it delivers the deeper insight that the business requires.
If you are responsible for customer experience in your organisation and committed to using CX as a driver of improvement, you need to ask yourself two questions:
- Are we doing measurement for measurement’s sake? What action can we take with the information gathered? Is it going to improve our commercial performance?
- Are we creating customer experience measurement programmes that truly augment our customer experience? Are we asking questions at an appropriate time, that are relevant, and do they make sense? Could we annoy the customer and do more harm than good?
Avoid Measurement for measurement’s sake
Customer Experience measurement is only warranted if it allows CX leaders and owners to make informed decisions to change their organisations and improve commercial performance. The output and feedback the programme creates must be useful, useable, and impactful.
We have all experienced this at some point. We’re in a shop or restaurant; we’ve used an online service; taken a train journey; or even used a toilet. We are asked our satisfaction or whether we’d recommend the service just received (see our recent blogs on NPS and using recommendation as a metric ). Invariably, there is some preamble about how our opinion matters and “please take time to respond”. And occasionally we are even shown some evidence as to how well they are performing.
It sounds reasonable doesn’t it?
Well it is, so long as the CX leader or owner of the customer experience measurement is able to answer three relatively simple questions as a result of measuring the metric:
- Can we demonstrate that the feedback that is collected can be used to improve an aspect of the experience? Is it useful?
- As an organisation, do we really intend to use it for that purpose? Is it useable?
- If it is useful and useable, will it help us drive better commercial performance? It is impactful?
If the answer to any of these three questions is no, then you are measuring for measurement’s sake. You need to revise your CX programme to ensure you can answer positively to these three questions. Or, frankly, you should stop measuring and use your organisations resources elsewhere.
Make sure your CX measurement augments customer experience
It’s important to remember that even gathering customer experience feedback is an experience in its own right. And, in light of that, the way you measure customer experience must not:
- Annoy a customer by asking questions too frequently
- Annoy a customer because of the timing
- Make your brand look incompetent
- Ask irrelevant questions to the experience they’ve just had
- Raise questions over the sincerity of gathering feedback
To really make sure that you measure customer experience in a way that generates the most useful feedback and reinforces the positive customer view of your organisation, you must:
- Ask for feedback at the right time
Make sure any feedback request is appropriate for the situation and being asked at the right time. It is this lack of detail that is one of my big bugbears on some customer experience programmes.
- Remember feedback is an experience in itself
Every feedback request is an opportunity to gather information but also an opportunity to annoy if you don’t think it through or implement the right business rules. It should match your underlying brand values – after all it is another customer touchpoint.
- Take care in designing your feedback processes
We totally accept that it is difficult to cover every situation perfectly. But, design your programme so it is an extension of your brand’s values, so that it reflects positively.
- Match your brands promise and your customers’ expectation
A customer’s experience needs to match to your promise and their expectation. If it does not, it creates a dissonance that will undermine your customer’s view of you.
Finally, we strongly urge you to test all the processes for gathering customer experience, as if you were the customer. If it annoys you, it will annoy them!
So, is your CX measurement leading to action that improves commercial performance?
If you are measuring and using customer experience feedback to drive your organisation then you may find our blog on “Getting the most out of your customer experience measures” useful.
If you have cause for thought or think your customer experience measurement could be better at driving performance, then contact us here: https://beehiveresearch.co.uk/contact-us/