Let's start with the good news. Customer experience (CX) has grown tremendously over the last 5 years. For some time, great customer experience was seen as a 'nice to have' or even maybe a gimmick. But luckily more and more companies are realizing that delivering on customer expectations also helps them drive revenue. With rapidly changing customer expectations we've seen a surge in companies trying to capture customer feedback to make the necessary changes.
However...
Are organizations doing it right? Asking for feedback is one thing, but capturing feedback in a way that enables you to take action is a whole different ballgame.
We started to notice this in many of our talks with companies across industries. When we ask CX managers what their program entails we've been getting answers like:
"We have surveys."
"We do NPS℠."
And then when we ask what they do with it, the answer is usually:
"We share it internally."
"We add the monthly score to the management meeting."
"We just send the feedback to our stores".
Surprisingly, or not, these companies weren't able to tell us what the results of their CX initiatives are.
The CX teams have implemented surveys in the customer journey without a clear purpose and therefore are unable to make changes or prove the ROI down the line. Asking for feedback is of course a cornerstone of any customer-centric initiative, but you do need to have an end goal in mind!
Plus, sharing feedback internally is great, but when there is no clear strategy on how to follow up, it will ultimately frustrate your employees to see the same feedback come in over and over again.
That is why we need to take a step back and reposition feedback strategies toward their original goal: capturing customer feedback so you can take action and ultimately, drive your revenue.
Designing CX strategies with the end goal in mind
We can't argue that capturing feedback and sharing it internally is a good start, but it takes more than setting up surveys to make your company customer-centric. If companies want to increase revenue, gain market share and engage their employees, they need to change something in their processes, products, and services, or people engagement.
That is why we have written this e-book, to help you do exactly that. We will cover some CX pitfalls and guide you through the building blocks on how to drive revenue using customer feedback.
It is what we live and breathe at Hello Customer and, in our opinion, it is how to do customer experience right.
Enjoy!
The most common actionability pitfalls
All successful CX programs share the same building block: customer feedback. Capturing feedback is essential if you want to cater to the ever-changing needs of your customer. However, the way that you capture feedback can either propel you towards action or prevent you from changing anything at all.
We identified five mistakes companies make, ranging from practical survey design to strategic decisions. Here's the list:
Asking too many questions: In fast times like these, no one has five minutes to complete your survey. Companies that ask too many questions are often stuck with low response rates and too little feedback to make change happen.
Relying solely on closed questions: Multiple choice questions definitely have their value (more on that later), but when you evaluate the customer experience using only Likert-scales and multiple-choice questions, you're not really listening. Don't jump the gun and try to listen first before trying to confirm your assumptions.
Overusing NPS: Companies need to use relevant metrics at the right time in the customer journey. NPS surely is a useful metric to measure customer loyalty, however, when it comes to making adjustments in your processes or products, CES (Customer Effort Score) and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) provide much more hands-on information. We know NPS is a classic, but you will be rewarded if you try something new.
Asking for feedback at the wrong time: The best time to ask for feedback is right after a customer interaction. The problem we see here is that companies send general surveys, often once or twice a year, to their entire customer base. It's a useful way to gauge how your brand is perceived, but that is not what we are after.
Not using their existing data: Companies have more data than they are sometimes aware of. CRMs are packed with customer data but are rarely put to use. Combining the demographic, contextual, and transactional information of your customers with feedback provides depth to your analysis and moves you on the right path towards actionability.
