STRATEGIC ACCELERATION SERVICES Choosing the right CX metric By Donnovan D. Simon
A review of CX metrics Many companies invest lots of time and money measuring how their customers feel about their company, their products and their overall experiences. For many, this investment is translated into employee compensations plans as well as bonus plans for channel partners and others within the customer experience ecosystem. There is no question that having metrics to inform companies on their progress is important. What is even more important is collecting the correct metrics and extracting the correct information from these metrics to drive business forward. It is not unusual for companies to collect metrics based on what is commonly used in a sector or sometimes what is current and trendy. When I designed my first customer satisfaction survey many years ago, many of the metrics being used today were not mainstream, in fact, some did not exist. For our survey, we opted to create a weighted customer satisfaction index based on several core processes that impacted our customers. These included the sales and engagement, logistics, and post-sales support processes. To minimize the risk of customer survey fatigue, the goal was to gather the broadest possible perspective from the customer using a single survey. In addition to generating a customer satisfaction index (CSi) on a scale of 1 4, we also included net promoter score (NPS) based on a classification of responses to the question of whether the customer would recommend our company to a colleague or friend. While both metrics (CSi and NPS) provided us with an annual gauge of how we were perceived there were many things that, in hindsight, should have been amended to make these metrics more meaningful for the organization and more specifically the teams directly involved in the customer experience cycle. Interpreting the key metrics By using a weighted average approach to calculating the customer satisfaction index, we attempted to normalize the aggregated data gathered from the scores for each question in each segment of the survey. Like many organizations, the senior leaders want to have a single metric for progress (or decline) in a key business area. It also allowed us to analyze each segment relative to the overall score for other segments as well as the overall CSi metric. That analysis allowed us to highlight areas of greatest opportunity for improvement as well as those with the greatest percentage change from previous surveys. Additionally, the structure enabled us to more specifically engage key players in the customer experience ecosystem to develop strategies to drive desired improvements to the customer s experience. Our standard approach was simple; we focused on segments of greatest percentage change relative to previous surveys as well as segments with the highest and lowest overall scores. The consensus was that focusing on these areas would provide the organization with the best opportunities to improve the scores in the next survey. What is the best metric? Having looked at the different metrics we collected and also examining the collection of others used by different businesses, I must conclude that there is really no best metric to collect. There are pros and cons to each and business leaders need to, most importantly, determine what the key intended use of the metric is in order to get the most from it. I will examine a number of common ones to show what I mean. Strategic Acceleration Services 2013 Page 2 of 6
Net Promoter Score (NPS) This metric is great to give a gauge on the customers acceptance of a brand in terms of trust, quality and other outputs of the culture of the organization. It is not a descriptive metric as it merely describes a potential action, which may not necessarily occur i.e. when the opportunity to recommend/refer presents itself, the customer may choose not to. It is also not an indication of the customers overall satisfaction with the different stages of a customer journey. A customer may be inclined to recommend based on varied factors some limited to product features, price, recent competitive offers/experience, etc. Another factor to accept when looking at NPS is that it does not give any clear indication of how the customer s experience has been. It is left to the user of the NPS to deduce and establish causality i.e. being a promoter means you had a satisfactory experience and vice versa, which may not be reasonable for all circumstances. In the end, the NPS is a mere indication of the potential tendency of a customer related to the brand. When we calculated NPS we choose to correlate it to the overall CSat score which may have skewed our view of the world (who knows, others may have done that too!). The score in our world was a reflection of acceptance of our offerings, our differentiation and our support, even though those were not included in the question which drove the NPS rating. I would caution anyone using NPS on limiting stretching the score beyond the simple fact it provides i.e. the percentage of customers are likely to recommend your brand should they be provided with an opportunity to do so. Customer Experience Index (CXi) This index developed by Forrester and primarily used in the United States is similar to the index provided by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The greater value provided by the CXI is the simplicity of its focus and the extraction of important customer perceptions what the customers are actually feeling/thinking. The focus on the key outcomes customers are looking for, ease, pleasure and value are comprehensively captured and represented by the index. While it does not provide details on the alignment of these ratings to the customer journey, it does create an excellent starting point for companies to dive deeper into areas of customer irritation. What the CXi provides cannot be provided by NPS. While the CXi gets significantly closer in delivering a deeper perspective from the customer, it does not provide a real descriptive data on the occurrences at each transaction point. It also does not reflect the dynamics which may have led to the rating overall. A customer having a fantastic experience at all phases of the customer experience cycle is likely to provide an overall excellent rating despite the less than stellar interaction with support or another stage in the process. The rating is based on the aggregate of the experiences. If it felt good overall, or not, the rating of Easy, Pleasurable and Valuable, will reflect how the entire process was seen. Users of the CXi therefore should apply the appropriate analysis to ensure that the aggregate view is what is addressed while action taken at the individual stages is taken into account. E.g. a low rating on easy could trigger a website overall when the real problem could be the payment process only. CXi is excellent in representing the customer desire and outcome equation did they feel they way they were hoping to? Companies can build numerous plans to address the CXi metric directly. These may include promotions, pricing, feature upgrades, etc to directly impact the CXi scores. Even Strategic Acceleration Services 2013 Page 3 of 6
communication to customers on progress made in certain initiatives could have an effect on how a customer perceives and ultimately rates their experience with an organization. Customer Effort Score (CES) A recent addition to the list of CX metrics, it as a subset of CXi, even though its application can be somewhat varied. The metric attempts to quantify the customer s perspective on ease. This lends it to many interpretations. The measure of customer effort is ultimately subjective even though it can be translated into hard data e.g. number of clicks, time of transaction, etc. which would be very useful to businesses. The fact that there can be a translation of what is essentially a perception metric into a corresponding descriptive metric makes the CES a unique and very valuable metric for organizations to look at. The progress made in improving the factors that could have caused the customer perception should therefore translate into some correlated improvement in CES. That is the expectation. It may not however be the case as there may be multiple factors which contribute to the customer s sense of easy to do business with. One drawback with the CES is the fact that it assumes that all customer s have the same perspective on ease and ultimately the CES would reflect that common perspective. In reality, what may be considered difficult by one person is simple to another. Additionally, the degree of difficulty acceptable by a customer before they would rate a process or product difficult varies by person. This means that the same rating by different customers means different things. The structure of the rating scale would therefore need to be appropriately structured to capture the range of perceptions being expressed by a single rating/score. Ultimately, the use of the CES should be geared at identifying trends in customer perception and the need for an organization to acknowledge and respond to these trends versus being absolute measures. Important to the customer is the improvement of a process or tool which would make their experience more satisfying and consequently positively influence the overall rating they would apply to their interactions. The CES is an excellent measure for organizations to use to drive change and customercentricity. Customer Satisfaction (CSat) The most common, if not traditional, of the metrics in use by organizations is CSat which captures the degree to which customers express satisfaction with their engagement with an organization. When I managed the customer satisfaction survey and reporting, our key goal was to measure how the customer rated their interactions and ultimately align those ratings to other organizations within the market category that we operated. In most cases, the CSat score was a direct reflection of the work done by customer facing teams. In effect, the customer should be reasonable satisfied if customer facing teams were delivering near the average of their goals, e.g. if customer service agents were meeting answer/response time metrics the CSat should reflect that (positively or negatively). Similarly, if the collection of key performance indicators (KPIs) for customer facing teams were excellent then the CSat was expected to reflect accordingly. It reflected a more inside out approach to measuring customer experience when compared to the CXi which focuses on true customer perception. One benefit to CSat however is the validation it provides to organizations where customers ratings align with outcomes from internal initiatives, e.g. a revision of a call script that leads to reduced answer times may be seen as the cause of a nominal increase in customer satisfaction. Similarly, an Strategic Acceleration Services 2013 Page 4 of 6
increase in CSat scores could be attributed to increased training provided to support agents. Ultimately, the entire customer journey is not represented in the CSat score as the ratings customer are asked to provide tend to be focused on discrete transactions usually in the sale or post-sales stages. The use of the CSat metrics in certain settings also allows management teams to establish both internally and externally driven goals that challenge teams to improve performance. A call centre may have operational goals such as reducing cost to serve which would occur by increased efficiency on incident handling. This is an internally driven goal that can be achieved through various means e.g. call scripting, empowerment, etc. To challenge the same contact centre with improving the company s CSat score adds an external dimension to the goal which would require more collaboration between teams and more focus on how customers are likely to feel about interactions. What is recommended? The best approach for organizations to take when determining the right metrics for their customer experience program is to align metrics to their customer experience strategy and their customer experience cycle. This is important to not only ensure alignment with effort and investment but also in terms of the message being sent to the entire organization regarding key business drivers and focus areas. If the priority of the organization includes increasing customer centricity, the metrics of importance would be customer perception metrics like CXi. The company should apply a premium to how customers were rating the easy, pleasure and value being extracted from interactions across their journey. If the focus is however on being reactive and reducing operating cost, the CSat measure would be satisfactory in the short term. Table 1 summarizes the key attributes of each metric. Table 1: Summary of attributes of CX metrics NPS CXi CSat CES Shows brand alignment Focused on customer s feelings and perceptions Reactive and focused on aggregate view of many events Specific to moment of truth Internal focused Drives internal and external goals Provides feedback on elements of customer s experience Gives indication of improvement areas Aligns to customer experience cycle and customer journey Relates easily to other CX metrics Ultimately, all customer experience metrics provide organizations with customer s perception. Companies should strive to ensure relevance of the metrics to their overall strategy. It is also key that the trends provided by the metrics enable the organizations to apply actionable responses in order to improve both the customers experiences and metrics. It is also important for organizations to Strategic Acceleration Services 2013 Page 5 of 6
determine which of the different metrics best fits the executive scorecard and apply investments to those desired outcomes as they would capital and other expenses. When choosing CX metrics for a corporate scorecard, the following should be examined: - the alignment of CX metric to CX strategy - the degree to which the metric represents the customers perception - the extent to which the metric can result in actionable solutions - the frequency with which the metric can be reasonably collected - the relation of the selected metric to other CX metrics Summary The selection of the right customer experience metric must be driven by the needs of an organization. Ultimately, the metrics selected should provide an organization with the data on changes which impact their ability to achieve the goals built on their customer experience strategy. Some metrics are strong on providing direct customer perception and are therefore readily actionable. Others metrics are more inwardly focused, and are geared to validating actions taken without providing deeper customer perspectives. Increasingly, more metrics are trying to capture the degree to which customers are engaging with organizations in a manner they perceive to be easy, pleasurable and valuable. The value of metrics cannot be overstated however their relevance and value will be a function of their alignment to the organization s customer experience strategy and their business drivers. Where the measurement framework is not effectively aligned they may not generate actionable outcomes which will ultimately improve the experience of the organization s customers. About Strategic Acceleration Services Strategic Acceleration Services is a Canadian training and consulting practice focused on Customer Experience. We assist companies in assessing the state of their customer experience and implementing solutions to achieve desired results from investment in customer experience initiatives. The principals utilize over 25 years of experience in customer facing management roles complemented by strong academic qualifications to deliver programs, ideas and solutions that help teams and companies achieve, and exceed, desired results. Check our site for more information www.strategicaccelerationservices.com Strategic Acceleration Services 2013 Page 6 of 6