5 KEYS [ ] to Successfully Tracking Customer Experience. Are you delivering a top-notch customer experience that <keeps them coming back?

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1 Are you delivering a top-notch customer experience that <keeps them coming back? [ ] Note: It s not just about satisfying your customers. 5 KEYS to Successfully Tracking Customer Experience Learn how to successfully track your customer experience to help ensure loyalty and retention.

2 Why Measure and Track Your Customer Experience? How happy are your customers? How does their experience with you compare with that of your closest competitors? Compared to last year are your customers now more or less likely to return? Cost to gain a new customer Do you know the answers to the above? Why are they important? Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyjet, a UK-based discount airline explains, Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you. In other words, your customers are very powerful. They can make or break your brand based on their experiences with you. Not surprisingly, customer experience is tied to profits. If your customers are happy they are more likely to stick with you. According to a research study by consulting firm Bain & Company a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits significantly from 25% even up to 95%. The research also found that it costs six to seven times more to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one. Cost to keep an existing one What is surprising is that many companies still do not include customer experience measures among their key business indicators. The focus remains primarily on bottom line measures such as market share, profitability, earnings-per-share growth, etc. While these measures are vital to understanding business performance they are all lagging indicators. They are the results of factors shaped by customer experience such as brand differentiation, customer loyalty and brand preference. A more proactive stance would be to move upstream to measure and track those business activities that are at the root of business success the ones that influence customer experience on a day-to-day basis. The remainder of the article will focus on key factors involved in successfully implementing a customer experience tracking program in order for companies to remain competitive and relevant. Potential pitfall areas when implementing a customer experience management program are also discussed. The Five Keys to Successfully Tracking Your Customer Experience Key #1 Set reasonable & correct goals and clearly communicate their importance throughout all levels of the company. A key to success in the initiating of a customer experience research program is to set clear goals that make sense for your company. 5 Keys to Successfully Tracking Customer Experience / flowmonitorinc.com /

3 For example, setting as a target to become your industry s best-in-class in customer satisfaction may not necessarily be a reasonable or correct goal for your business. To become the bestin-class in satisfaction will take significant time, money and company-wide effort; however, most importantly, customers may not reward this level of increased service with more business. Thus, this goal would be overkill. The key is to find the sweet spot where improvement levels result in the most positive impact without over- or under-investing resources. All customer bases are unique. Understanding from the research what really matters to your customers will help you reallocate resources most effectively. Once goals are identified and established they need to be communicated throughout all levels of the company. Customer experience improvement needs to be an all company effort in order for it to be successful for the long term. Senior management has a vital role in communicating clearly the importance of the initiative from its inception and to actively demonstrate that the endeavor is extremely important to the ongoing success of the company. As consultants Shaun Smith and Andy Milligan note in their book Uncommon Practice: People who deliver a great brand experience, leaders need to walk the talk not stumble and mumble in demonstrating decisive leadership with the company s customer experience management efforts. Key #2 Involve and empower front line employees to tie research findings to front line solutions. From the customer s point of view, your front line employee the sales associate, a customer service rep, the delivery driver is your company. Your organization may have 10,000 associates, but for the customer, the person they are in contact with (and sometimes the only employee they have contact with) is the organization. Engaged front line employees often intuitively know what makes customers happy. A company that understands this and has actively internalized it is Disneyland Resorts. At Disneyland s theme parks throughout the world the most importan t employee group is not the actors who wear the Mickey Mouse and Snow White costumes. They are the cleaning staff. This is because the Disneyland cleaning staff has a role more important than their primary one of keeping the park clean. Their most important role as a Disneyland associate is to act as the tour guide for visitors. When visitors want directions they approach a member of the cleaning staff. For many visitors, the cleaning staff is often the only employee group (not in costume) they interact with during their visit. Thus, the cleaning staff are employed for their customer skills and the importance of their role in providing a high quality customer experience is emphasized from the beginning of their employment. 5 Keys to Successfully Tracking Customer Experience / flowmonitorinc.com /

4 Given the importance of the front line associate to the customer it only makes sense to involve and empower them in any effort to improve customer experience. After all, they are the ones who are in the trenches day-to-day. They are in a position to provide management with valuable feedback as to what customers value. A front line employee who is actively engaged in his or her key role as the face of the company often intuitively knows what makes customers happy. They can provide valuable input in determining which customer experience attributes should be measured. They will also know what improvements will be practical and effective when implemented, and which ones sound great but will not have the greatest net effect to the end customer. Further, after initial customer experience measurements are taken, empowering associates who have the responsibility of making customers happy on a day-to-day basis with insights on how to do their job even better will likely result in improvements right where the most important customer/ employee interactions take place. Key #3 Use a methodologically sound quantitative survey instrument. A key, overriding factor in the successful surveying of customers today is K.I.S.S. keep it short & simple. Not surprisingly, today s consumer has little patience for long questionnaires that cover multiple topics. The key to maximizing survey completion and minimizing break-off is to keep the survey quick (five minutes or under) and cover only a limited number of interrelated topics. Further, the survey content should be timely and relevant for the customer. For an ongoing customer experience tracking study a good time to invite customers to participate is right after a transaction takes place and the survey content should center on the experience they just had with your company. Also, the basics of effective survey research should be employed Obtain the appropriate number of survey completes. Factors such as random selection, margin of error, and confidence levels should be considered. While a detailed discussion of these topics is beyond the scope of this article, an Internet search of these terms will result in an abundance of quality information on how to determine the correct sample size for your research project. Use consistent scales throughout to enable an apples-to-apples comparison (e.g. don t use a 5-point scale for overall satisfaction and switch to a 10-point for the individual attributes). Ask the general questions first, and then move onto the specifics. This allows for the accurate measurement of customers overall feelings about their experience prior to thinking about the specific attributes. Capture the input not just of angels & demons but of a representative sample of all customers by offering an incentive for completing the survey. A value-appropriate incentive will encourage all customers to provide feedback, not just those who are at the polar opposites in their feelings toward your company. 5 Keys to Successfully Tracking Customer Experience / flowmonitorinc.com /

5 Key #4 Don t focus just on customer satisfaction but factor in customer expectations and what customers value. Customer satisfaction is not synonymous with customer experience. While providing high satisfaction is important, there are other elements that make up a high quality customer experience. From the customer s perspective, a top-notch experience is not only one that is satisfactory, but one where their expectations on the attributes they value are met or exceeded. A top-notch customer experience not only satisfies but also exceeds expectations on attributes customers highly value. A customer experience tracking study that uncovers what customers value and what attributes drive their intention to repurchase and recommend is one that will provide the most value for management. For example, research uncovered that for customers of Harrah s Hotels & Casinos a short line at reception was of utmost value. As a result of the findings, their Total Gold loyalty program was reconfigured into Total Rewards which provided Gold, Platinum and Diamond loyalty tiers. Gold customers are offered fast-track lines; Platinum customers have even shorter lines; and Diamond customers do not have to wait in line at all. By meeting and exceeding expectations on an attribute that customers value most Harrah s significantly increased their share of these important customers. Additionally, it is important to note that satisfaction is different from loyalty or retention. To obtain a holistic view of the experience you are providing customers, along with satisfaction also measure their likelihood to buy from you again, and their likelihood to recommend you to family, friends and colleagues. The most loyal customer will likely not only be highly satisfied, but be highly committed to repurchase from you, and be happy to act as an advocate for your company to others. Key #5 Establish a program to regularly engage customers for live feedback. A well-written and well-administered survey will provide valuable information on where you stand with your customers. Adding a qualitative element to your program by actually speaking with your customers about noteworthy survey findings will add further context and meaning to the data and will result in the most robust insights into your customer experience. Qualitative research following the survey analyses will yield robust insights into your customer experience. While surveys are most effective at quickly identifying what your customer experience issues are, in order to get at the underlying whys and hows the best method is to engage your customers in a dialogue using qualitative research. Once you identify the survey findings you want to explore in more detail a variety of qualitative research techniques are available in reaching out to engage customers personally. Phone & 5 Keys to Successfully Tracking Customer Experience / flowmonitorinc.com /

6 online focus groups, in-depth interviews (IDIs), or shop-alongs are all useful methods to dig deeper on customer experience issues in an open, relaxed, and candid setting. Additionally, by using online qualitative software and video technology the customer feedback sessions can be made available for viewing by a variety of cross-departmental managers and front line staff who would benefit greatly from hearing and watching customers speak candidly about the experience they have with your company. Areas of Caution When Tracking Customer Experience Just like any research-driven initiative customer experience tracking has potential pitfall areas. The following are some areas of caution: Avoid directly linking customer experience performance scores with employee incentives. While employees certainly should be rewarded for their efforts to improve their customer service skills, directly linking survey results with employee recognition & incentives will often skew research results. Have you ever heard the following or similar from a sales associate after a transaction Was there anything today that would prevent you from giving me all 5 s (the top score) on this customer survey? If an employee knows that his or her performance evaluation is directly tied to the results of a survey it is not surprising that they may want to nudge customers into giving them favorable scores. Make sure improvements based on research results are what customers truly expressed. Keep the research fresh by reviewing and replacing the attributes to be rated on a regular basis. Original sentiments expressed by actual customers can sometimes get lost in the shuffle after much internal discussion, brainstorming by management, consideration of existing programs, and available resources. A research effort that is genuinely useful rather than a mere academic exercise is one that helps managers establish a direct link between what customers want and new company initiatives that result in increased customer loyalty and retention. One way to make sure proposed changes & improvements are in line with what your customers value is to engage customers in feedback sessions along the way. By bringing customers into the discussion & brainstorming process managers can help ensure that the end result is one that truly incorporates the desires of customers. Make sure the research remains fresh and relevant yet consistent for ongoing measurement. With research that is ongoing like customer experience tracking it is sometimes easy to allow 5 Keys to Successfully Tracking Customer Experience / flowmonitorinc.com /

7 things to get stale. While managers and stakeholders become readily engaged for the kick-off and initial rounds of findings & analyses, for subsequent rounds this may be challenge. To minimize stakeholder fatigue, it is important for the research manager to keep the research fresh and relevant as time goes on, and at the same time take care that any changes do not affect the basic structure of the questionnaire that is necessary for ongoing tracking. Attributes measured should be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure they remain relevant to customers and they are ones the company is able (and willing) to address. Additionally, any recent customer-facing changes or initiatives should be reflected in the questionnaire to see how they are resonating with customers. Customer Experience Tracking A Powerful Tool for Improving Loyalty and Retention Companies of all sizes will benefit greatly by initiating a program that puts the experience of your most valuable asset, your customers, right in the forefront alongside other key business indicators. As writer and management guru Peter Drucker famously said what gets measured gets managed the continuous improvement in customer loyalty and retention begins with the implementation of an effective customer experience tracking program. Selected references: CFI Group & Interactive Intelligence, Inc. Top 10 Customer Satisfaction Best Practices, Smith, Shaun. Customer Experience Management: 10 Best Practices to Create Real Business Value, Stockley, Derek. Frontline Staff Critical to Customer Service Success, Zoomerang, Inc. Measuring and Tracking Customer Satisfaction, info@flowmonitorinc.com Learn More About How Customer Experience Tracking Can Benefit Your Company With today s consumer having more choices and more factors that influence those choices than ever before, consistently delivering a top-notch customer experience is a must for ongoing success. To learn more about how customer experience tracking can help your business call us at , us at info@flowmonitorinc. com or visit us at FlowMonitor Customer Insights & Dialogue provides holistic market research services utilizing a mixed method approach. We integrate online survey research with creative qualitative techniques to address business issues at a fraction of the cost associated with traditional research methods.