Constant engagement is key to creating a quality, meaningfully improved customer experience (CX). And for banks especially, the quality of the experiences customers have with a brand is the key factor in determining a customer’s longevity and willingness to maintain a relationship with a company. While an integrated CX approach demands that you go beyond the survey and look at data from everywhere – social reviews, call transcripts, chat logs, email threads, and more, CX surveys are the foundation. Banks can and should engage with customers via CX surveys and other feedback methods to see what customers love about the experience and what might need a little tweaking. Even more importantly, banks should engage with customers to let them know that they’re cared for not just as customers, but people.
Customers who feel heard and seen in this way will keep coming back even when the competition out there is fierce (and as you well know, it’s always fierce in the banking world). But what best practices should you follow to create winning CX surveys for bank customers?
Most banks rely on surveys to engage with their customers and gather this valuable intelligence, which is why today’s conversation focuses not ‘just’ on how to build a great survey, but how to do so in a way that speaks effectively to banking customers. So, with that in mind, let’s kick things off by going over our two favorite survey types: relationship surveys and transactional surveys.
Relationship Surveys
Relationship surveys are all about the big picture—brands in every industry use them to get a glimpse of the entire customer-company relationship instead of one or two transactions. A good relationship survey gives banks not only how their customers feel about experiences now, but also helps highlight which experience elements might be even more influential tomorrow.
What follows is the secret sauce for a great relationship survey. You want to include metrics that measure overall satisfaction and loyalty. You also need questions about brand perception, channel usage and satisfaction, product usage and satisfaction, and the experiences that impacted, or are impacting, your customers the most. Questions about marketing communication perception never hurt either! All of these questions, when used together, will give your bank a 360-degree view of customer relationships that goes a long way toward Experience Improvement (XI).
Transactional Surveys
As its name suggests, a transactional survey is all about how well (or not) a transaction at your bank went for your customer. These surveys can be tuned to both in-person interactions and online banking. Though transactional surveys are of a smaller scale than relationship ones, they’re also much more specific, which is great when you’re trying to get into the details of individual interactions.
Generally speaking, you want your transactional survey to ask how well the transaction went, overall satisfaction with elements like application processes and bank teller interactions, and whether there were any problems with either the transaction itself or the resolution that followed. All of that makes for a good enough survey, but we challenge you to go beyond by also asking about elements like how knowledgeable your customers think your reps are, how complete your information is, and whether it’s easy to jump between channels for a more fluid experience.
The Next Step
Whether you’re looking to design your first survey or double-checking whether your current one is up to scratch, we also challenge you to bear something else in mind: having a survey is great, but knowing when and where to deploy it is even better. Hot alerts, contextual survey deployments, and being able to analyze unstructured survey feedback can help take your bank straight to the top.
Interested in learning more on how to do all that? Click here to read our full-length eBook on how banks like yours can use surveys to meaningfully improve experiences, strengthen your bottom line, and build meaningful relationships with customers!
How do you respond when someone asks, “Are you doing okay today?” What if someone asked, “How do you feel today?” Most likely, you would answer these two questions slightly differently. One question asks you just generally how you feel while the other implies that you might not be doing well in the first place, so you might answer differently. There was bias in the wording of one question while the other stayed more open-ended.
You have possibly come across this phenomenon in your customer surveying experiences. Asking the right question to get responses from customers is crucial to making surveys a valuable tool. When your business decisions are influenced by the feedback you get in customer surveys, it’s even more important to make sure you’re asking the right questions to get the right feedback. But what are the right questions to ask? Read on to learn more about the different types of customer survey questions and what questions can help you get the most valuable feedback.
What Are the Different Types of Customer Survey Questions?
There are different types of questions you can ask customers for different types of surveys. A great survey will include a variety of questions to gather a variety of feedback. Depending on your goal for the feedback, you’ll want to focus on different aspects of the problem you’re exploring. We’ll walk you through four different types of survey questions to consider.
Open-Ended Questions
If you’re looking for deeper insights, open-ended questions can be extremely beneficial. These questions will include a section for customers to fill in or answer with more in-depth thoughts. These types of questions are sometimes more complex and can’t be answered in a word or two. The feedback you collect may also be complex, so it’s important to have a good way to understand and utilize the data. When you get longer answers, it can be difficult to mine for the key insights, so it’s important to have a strong analytics system in place.
Open-ended questions also run the risk of customers choosing to skip these questions. These questions require more thought and effort to write up or talk about their answers that some customers may choose to go onto the next question. So open-ended questions can be extraordinarily valuable, but they need to be used sparingly to help customers finish the survey. Save open-ended questions for the insights you need that can’t be gathered from another question type.
Yes or No Questions
While open-ended questions can provide deep insight, simple questions still serve a valuable purpose in a customer survey. A yes or no question just asks customers to select an option between yes or no. These questions are simple for customers to answer, so very few will skip the question. The main drawback of this type of question is that it will only provide a little information about how the customer feels about a topic. But, despite that, these questions prove valuable to revealing a problem. For more insight, you may need a follow-up question, but a simple yes or no question can still give you a good idea of where a problem may lie.
Options Questions
Options questions are another simple question type that gets more specific than just yes or no questions. For these types of questions, customers will choose from a predetermined set of options. Sometimes it’s beneficial to allow customers to select more than one option, and you should make that clear to customers. Option questions are also often very useful to find insight into if something is a problem—without requiring too much effort on the customer’s part to answer the question. The data you gather from options questions can be more manageable since it’s already decently organized, and the insights can still be incredibly valuable.
Scale Questions
Scale questions allow customers to slide or select a numeric value that aligns with their answer. Often these numbers are attached to an answer or feelings. For example, a scale question might have three numbers for disagree, neutral, and agree. Scale questions give less detailed insight than open-ended questions, but they can give more detail than some yes or no questions. Scale questions, though, can involve more effort on the part of the customer—depending on how complex the scale is. On the other hand, scale questions data is very easy to use, find the average of, and begin implementing.
Overall, these are some of the types of questions that many people use in customer surveys. All of these questions can be utilized in many different survey formats. These are some of the most common survey formats used.
Survey Formats
Email surveys. These surveys typically include a link to questions that target a customer’s experience. Sometimes email surveys come after a purchase or to just check in with customers at any point in their journey. These online surveys are usually easy for customers to respond to, but sometimes the extra step of following the link can lose some customers and potential respondents.
Pop-up surveys. Instead of sending out an email, you could use a pop-up survey to ask customers about their experience. For example, after a purchase, you might have a brief pop-up survey that asks them to rate their experience and to illustrate any challenges they faced on your website.
Exit surveys. When a customer decides to leave your company, an exit survey can be a valuable tool to find out why. These are often online surveys that pop up after a customer unsubscribes, or they could be email surveys that are delivered when a customer hasn’t purchased a product in a long time.
Receipt surveys. If you use a brick and mortar store, you probably hand out receipts to most customers. A link to a survey on the receipt can be a way to learn more about customers’ experiences. These links also work well for digital receipts.
Comment card surveys. These surveys are an old staple, but they’re a staple for a reason. Using pen and paper, you can leave physical cards for customers to fill out and leave comments on their experience. It can take more of your time to enter this data (as online surveys are fairly simple to begin analyzing), but this survey type can reach other customers online surveys may not.
In-store surveys. If you have a brick and mortar store, you can set up a survey system inside the store. Kiosks by entrances and exits are a great way to reach customers who may not subscribe to your email list or visit your website.
What Are the Top Customer Questions to Get the Most Valuable Feedback?
The type of question and the format of the survey all influence how customers may respond, but the actual content of the questions can also have a large impact on how customers respond. What are the most valuable questions to ask in a survey? These are some of the main categories of questions and the specific questions that can help you get the most valuable feedback from customers.
Demographic Questions
What is your name? This question is simple for customers to answer and can give you a way to organize the rest of the data you collect.
What is your age/gender? These are more simple questions that customers likely won’t skip, but they can help you determine if there are any trends among certain demographics for your products or services.
Where do you access your news? Understanding where your customers are going for information can help you determine where they could come across your products and how to best reach them in the future.
Psychographic Questions
Do you prefer reading online or through a physical copy? Knowing where your customers want to get their information is important to know how to reach certain groups of customers and potential customers. If you know that your customers like to read physical copies, you’ll know it could be advantageous to have physical copies of materials for customers.
How do you prefer to receive information? It can be valuable to simply ask how your customers prefer to receive information from you. If you know how they want to receive information, you can then focus your efforts on particular channels.
For Marketing
How did you learn about our company? If you know how your customers learned about your company, you can begin focusing your marketing efforts on particular areas to reach more potential customers.
How often do you use our product/service? Knowing when your customers use your products can help you find the specific areas where you could improve your marketing efforts to reach your customers. For example, if you learn your customers use your products or services three times a week, you could better market to future customers about how your products could be used.
What made you decide to purchase from us? Learning about what drew customers to go through with a purchase can help you know where and how to enhance that to draw more customers through the marketing funnel and to commit to purchasing.
For the Website
Have you used our website before? This question is simple and takes little time for customers to respond to, but it can inform you on whether or not customers use your website in the first place.
Did you find what you were looking for on the website? It’s important to know how easy it is to navigate your website and how easy it is for customers to find what they’re looking for. It’s even more important to know if customers aren’t finding what they’re looking for, so you can begin to improve your website to facilitate ease and help customers make purchases.
What would you change about the website? Customers may point out weak places on your website, or they might point out little points that could’ve prevented them from going through with a purchase. Knowing these things can help you fine tune your website to enhance the customer experience.
For Product Improvements
Which features do you love about this product? If you know what customers love, you’ll know what’s working well. If you know what’s working well, you’ll be better able to improve your products to enhance what works. If customers love a particular part of your product, you can bring that out more, adjust the parts that aren’t working, and add what customers love to new products.
What would you change about the product? If a customer would change something about the product, it’s worth knowing about. Those suggestions can help you pinpoint areas for improvement and how a customer might like to see the product improved.
What do you like the least about this product? Asking customers about what they don’t like can show you where the weak spots are with your product, so you can begin finding the right ways to improve it.
For Products That Aren’t Selling
What challenges are you trying to solve with this product? If you know why a customer bought the product, you can figure out how you might market the product that isn’t selling better. For example, if customers use a product that’s not selling well to solve a problem that you hadn’t intended the product for, you could shift marketing to begin targeting customers with that particular problem.
What would have stopped you from buying the product? If you know where a customer would have given up, you can work to keep future customers from stopping at that point.
Do you feel that the product is worth the cost? Sometimes a product isn’t selling because the price doesn’t match the product. Knowing this can help you adjust and find ways to make a product be successful.
To Measure Customer Experience
How likely are you to recommend this product or service? This simple question has customers rank the likelihood of recommending the product on a scale of 1 to 10. Ultimately, this question can help you determine your Net Promoter Score.
How satisfied are you with your experience with our company? You likely want to know how satisfied your customer is with your company and products, and customer satisfaction survey questions can help you understand that. Using this survey question can also help you determine your Customer Satisfaction score.
How well did our company help you handle an issue you had? Customers come across issues regularly, and your customer service representatives will often help them. It’s important to know how your team is working and where your customer effort score is.
5 Things Good Customer Survey Questions Should Do
Customer surveys play a pivotal role in understanding and improving the customer experience. The effectiveness of these surveys hinges on the quality of the questions posed. Let’s delve into the key attributes that define what good customer survey questions should do:
1. Elicit Specific and Actionable Responses
The hallmark of effective survey questions is their ability to extract clear and actionable feedback. Ambiguous or convoluted queries can muddy the waters, making it essential to craft questions that lead to precise and useful insights.
2. Address Relevant Topics
Good survey questions are purpose-driven, focusing on topics that directly align with the objectives of the survey. Whether gauging satisfaction levels or exploring product preferences, questions should be tailored to the specific goals at hand.
3. Consider the Customer’s Perspective
Crafting questions from the customer’s viewpoint is crucial. Language should be accessible, avoiding industry jargon or technical terms that might alienate respondents. Questions should resonate with customers, ensuring clarity and ease of understanding.
4. Encourage Honest and Unbiased Feedback
Neutral wording and a balanced approach characterize questions that elicit honest feedback. Customers should feel empowered to express their opinions candidly, even if they are critical. Minimizing bias in the questions contributes to the reliability of the responses.
5. Offer a Range of Response Options
Versatility in response formats—whether scales, multiple-choice, or open-ended—enables customers to express their sentiments in ways that suit them best. This flexibility enhances the richness of the data and ensures a comprehensive understanding of customer attitudes.
In essence, the success of customer survey questions lies in their capacity to generate actionable insights. By considering the customer’s perspective, maintaining clarity, and aligning questions with the survey’s objectives, businesses can gather valuable information to enhance their offerings and cultivate strong customer relationships.
Best Practices to Make Your Customer Questions More Fruitful
Once you have your survey questions designed, there are a few more best practices to keep in mind as you prepare your customer surveys:
Always A/B test your surveys before sending them out to customers. It’s important to figure out what will work well in your survey early on.
Make sure you ask satisfied customers and unsatisfied customers. Both types of customers will give you different results, so it’s important to ask both how they feel about something.
Always ask short and relevant questions. Longer questions are complicated and hard to answer, and short questions will get your more response and better data.
Send the surveys at the right time. Timing is key to nearly everything, including surveys. Research to determine when it would be best to send your particular surveys.
Thank your customers for their feedback. People love to be valued for the work they do, so thanking your customers will help them feel valued and encourage them to respond to future surveys.
Overall, focusing on your survey questions can help you gain valuable feedback and insights from your customers. Surveys aren’t the only way to get information, but they are certainly a valuable tool to utilize. Asking the right survey questions reduces the bias that can come from wording questions in particular ways, which can lead to false information. Information gathered that is inaccurate, untruthful, or not useful can actually harm a company in the long run because there should always be a constant improvement.
Instead, it’s important to focus on choosing good survey questions that are both accurate and valuable. To learn more about how to improve your surveys, talk with an expert today!
Customer experience metrics are crucial to tracking the success of a customer experience program. They help prioritize actions, benchmark against competitors, and more. Learning how to utilize these metrics is important to create long-lasting CX success.
As competition and buyer empowerment compound, customer experience (CX) is proving to be the only truly durable competitive advantage. Organizations must learn how to measure, manage, and act on customer experience KPIs and metrics so that they can deliver experiences that lead to increased loyalty, lower churn, more referrals, positive word of mouth, and higher-value customers.
Companies that earn $1 billion annually can expect to earn on average an additional $700 million within 3 years of investing in customer experience.
Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers.
As your organization starts your customer experience management efforts, you need to consider how to measure it. CX is a multi-layered concept, and to truly understand customer experience at scale, you need to have a good understanding of customer experience KPIs and metrics.
How to Measure Customer Experience
Measuring customer experience is a strategic imperative that helps your company build strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers, stay competitive, and adapt to changing market dynamics.
Measuring CX requires a layered approach that can include in-depth user interviews and gathering data at key points of contact, as well as tracking customer experience metrics like NPS, CSAT, and CES, among others. It is an ongoing process that requires attention to customer feedback, continuous improvement, and a commitment to delivering value.
It also involves collecting and connecting customer experience data from every touchpoint and channel for a complete view of the customer journey. After all, customers use a variety of channels to interact with your brand, such as your store, website, mobile app, contact center, social media, online review websites, and so much more.
As your company looks to measure customer experience KPIs and metrics, it’s important to integrate data from all the touchpoints and channels that matter to your business so that metrics are not analyzed independently of the broader experience.
Keep in mind that no single customer experience KPI or metric will give you a complete picture, and you will have to discover how to adapt the metrics you’re tracking to your business case. Nonetheless, various customer experience survey methodologies and metrics are used across industries and serve as a great place to start as you grow your program.
What Are Customer Experience KPIs and Metrics?
Customer experience KPIs and metrics are indicators that enable your organization to gain a comprehensive understanding of your customer experience performance. Regularly tracking and analyzing these metrics can guide your business as you look to make informed decisions that enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a CX metric that surveys customers based on one question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”
Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal, satisfied customers who will help fuel your business growth by buying and referring other customers to your business.
Passives (score 7-8) are also satisfied customers, but their lack of enthusiasm may render them vulnerable to offerings from the competition.
Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who may impede your growth and spread negative word of mouth about your business.
To calculate your Net Promoter Score, simply subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.
NPS Survey Powered by Pearl-Plaza
NPS is a valuable tool for measuring not just customer experience, but also customer loyalty, since it transcends single experiences. It is often referred to as a brand or relationship metric. The NPS question asks the customer to draw on the sum of their experiences with your company, not just the most recent, making it a good indicator for repurchasing (and growth). As a result, it is often considered a “board-level” metric.
NPS is a great place to start when you’re looking to measure customer experience. However, if you would like to learn more about the experience you provide at specific touchpoints or transactions along your customer’s journey, Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) should be one of the customer experience KPIs to track.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is the most popular transactional metric. A customer satisfaction survey asks a customer how satisfied they are with a recent interaction — often a purchase or a customer service call — on a rating scale. CSAT is flexible and highly customizable. In some cases, emojis (smileys, frowns) are used instead of numerical scales to overcome any language barrier.
Above is a 2-step CSAT survey on a mobile app powered by Pearl-Plaza
In the realm of CX, a short CSAT survey is most often used to gauge customer satisfaction with interactions with support personnel. It’s a great tool for identifying support agents who may need more training or for quantifying the impact of your last team-wide training effort. You will need to dig into the qualitative feedback you receive to understand which attributes of satisfaction are most important to your customers and which areas require improvement.
A related survey metric is the PSAT or Product Satisfaction Score. This is an adaption of the CSAT survey that is popular with software developers and advocates of product-led growth. An example is an in-app survey that asks a software user, “How satisfied are you with this product or feature?” The specific, contextual feedback that users provide in a PSAT survey helps to prioritize a roadmap of product improvements.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer Effort Score (CES) surveys ask the customer, “How much effort did you have to expend to handle your request?” This is scored on a numeric scale. It’s a customer service metric that is typically used to improve systems that may frustrate customers.
Customers may then respond on a 5- or 7-point scale, and scores are calculated simply by getting the average of all the collected responses. Reducing customer effort can be a valuable marketing investment that makes your brand stand out in a sea of unaccommodating, not-very-helpful competitors.
CES advocates believe that when it comes to customer service or support, “effortlessness” is the most relevant attribute of customer satisfaction. Tracking Customer Effort Score helps you identify and remove obstacles, and solve problems, so your customers can find success with ease. According to the Harvard Business Review, CES can predict repurchasing even better than CSAT, making it a go-to critical metric for companies that depend heavily on successful onboarding and customer success to lay the foundation for repeat purchases.
Churn Rate
Customer churn or attrition is defined as the loss of clients or customers and is also one of the first and most obvious indicators of customer dissatisfaction. This makes churn rate one of your most important customer experience metrics; it is especially critical if your business model is subscription-based (for example: software companies and membership-based services).
To calculate the customer churn rate, first determine the period for which you want to calculate the churn rate (e.g., monthly, quarterly, or annually). Then count the customers at the start of the period, as well as the number of customers lost during the period. Use the following formula to calculate the churn rate:
Churn Rate (C) = (Number of Customers Lost % Number of Customers at the Start of the Period) × 100
This formula expresses the churn rate as a percentage.
It’s important to note that while calculating the churn rate provides valuable insights, understanding the reasons behind customer churn is equally crucial. Analyzing customer feedback, conducting surveys, and identifying patterns can help you take proactive measures to reduce churn and improve overall customer satisfaction.
Tracking churn rate will also allow you to see and apply new ways to handle the challenging situation of customers canceling their plans or subscriptions as well as to overcome other roadblocks to fostering customer loyalty. Organizations that consistently keep an eye on this customer experience KPI are also better at predicting if and when a customer is at risk of churning so that they can take the next step and close the loop with at-risk customers.
Retention Rate
Customer retention rate is a customer experience KPI that measures the percentage of customers your business retains over a specific period. It’s a great way to assess your customer experience performance as well as the effectiveness of your customer retention strategies. A higher customer retention rate typically indicates that a company is keeping its existing customers satisfied.
To calculate your retention rate as a percentage, simply follow this formula: customer retention Rate = (Retained Customers % Number of Customers at the Start of the Period) × 100.
Monitoring and improving customer retention rates are essential for the long-term success of your organization. A high retention rate is often associated with increased customer lifetime value (CLV) and reduced customer acquisition costs. To make the most out of this metric, you should complement retention rate analysis with customer feedback to continuously enhance the customer experience and address potential areas of concern.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric that represents the predicted net profit your company can expect to earn from a long-term relationship with a single customer. This will tell you what a single customer is worth to your business throughout the course of the relationship.
Learning how to measure and increase customer lifetime value will help your company forge stronger customer relationships and achieve a competitive edge in the market. Increasing CLV will also improve the long-term profitability of your business, allowing your company to identify which customers are most valuable over time and determine how to allocate resources more efficiently to serve and retain those customers.
The simplest formula for calculating customer lifetime value is: CLV = customer value (average purchase value x average purchase frequency) x average customer lifespan.
First Response Time (FRT)
First Response Time (FRT) is a crucial metric for measuring customer experience, particularly in customer support and service environments. It represents the time it takes for a customer to receive an initial response after making a query or reporting an issue.
This CX metric matters because quick responses contribute to higher customer satisfaction. Customers appreciate the timely acknowledgment of their concerns, which demonstrates that the company values their time and is committed to addressing their needs promptly. First Response Time can even influence your company’s reputation: brands that are known for quick and efficient customer service are likely to be perceived positively, while a reputation for slow response times can harm your overall brand image.
Average Resolution Time
Average Resolution Time is a customer experience KPI that provides insights into customer service efficiency and directly impacts customer experience and satisfaction. By tracking this actionable CX metric, your company can set goals to reduce the time it takes to resolve issues, while also continually improving support processes, leading to an enhanced customer experience over time.
When quick and efficient issue resolution contributes to a positive overall experience, your company is better equipped to foster customer loyalty. Understanding how much time is typically spent on resolving customer issues can even help your company allocate resources appropriately. This can involve adjusting staffing levels, providing additional training, or implementing new technologies to improve efficiency.
CSAT vs NPS vs CES
There are always conversations around the three most popular customer experience KPIs: CSAT vs NPS vs CES. Which of these CX metrics are most suitable for your company? What are the advantages and limitations of each? These metrics differ in terms of the insights they provide and the areas of customer satisfaction they focus on.
CSAT captures satisfaction with specific interactions, NPS evaluates loyalty and advocacy, and CES assesses the ease of the customer experience. By utilizing a combination of these metrics, businesses can gain a more comprehensive understanding of customer satisfaction, identify areas for improvement, and develop strategies to enhance the overall customer experience.
Advantages
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a useful customer experience KPI because it’s an easy-to-calculate metric that provides actionable insights. Your team can follow up with detractors to understand the reasons for their dissatisfaction and take corrective action. NPS also allows you to benchmark your score against competitors and industry standards, providing context for your overall performance.
Meanwhile, Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) surveys are relatively easy to administer and understand. They often use a simple scale and provide immediate feedback, with some surveys being conducted right after a specific customer interaction or transaction, providing real-time feedback.
Advocates of Customer Effort Score (CES) often highlight the ease with which they can gather actionable insights from responses. CES results often offer specific areas for improvement, helping companies identify and address high-impact pain points in the customer journey.
Limitations
For larger organizations, NPS on its own may be too simplistic of a metric. It helps you understand that customers have had a positive or negative experience, but not necessarily why that’s the case. NPS works best if paired with other customer experience metrics, or when you utilize a secondary follow-up question to investigate the customer experience in greater detail.
CSAT, meanwhile, may not provide the most comprehensive view of the overall customer experience since it focuses on satisfaction at a particular point in time. The interpretation of satisfaction scores can also vary between individual customers, and what one considers satisfactory might not be the same for another.
The same goes with CES: it may not necessarily capture the entire customer experience and may focus more on transactional aspects. Interpreting CES scores on their own also often requires a broader understanding of the context of the customer experience, and a low score doesn’t always indicate a systemic issue.
Should You Measure All the CX Metrics?
Given the advantages and limitations of the customer experience KPIs listed above, should you measure all these CX metrics?
The short answer is: no. While tracking and measuring as many CX metrics as possible can be helpful in understanding and improving your performance, it’s not always necessary or practical to monitor every possible KPI or metric. The choice of metrics is not even as important as you might think, since driving improvement is what’s important.
With that in mind, choose metrics based on what you’ll be able to do with the data they provide. Are the results going to enable you to take action? If not, don’t spend time on them. The selection of specific metrics should align with your business goals, industry, and the nature of your customer interactions. It’s also important to regularly reassess your customer experience KPIs and metrics to ensure they remain relevant as your business evolves.
3 Most Common CX Metrics Questions
Customer experience (CX) metrics are a CX program’s bread and butter. NPS, CSAT, and CES have historically been the main tools every program utilizes to have a systematic way of establishing a voice of customer (VoC) source and leveraging those findings to improve customer experiences. But it’s not easy—a CX metric score alone can’t create transformation.
CX metrics aren’t one-size-fits-all. Certain CX metrics are more fitting for specific industries—and even then your brand might not need to use the same metrics as your direct competitors. There’s no one golden method for measuring CX metrics, which is actually why many businesses struggle to create a success framework.
What CX Metrics Can You Use to Determine Industry and Organizational Maturity?
Before you can answer this question for your company, there are three things you should answer first:
How are you measuring the customer experience? Is it through satisfaction or NPS, or is it another metric that aligns with the goals you have?
What are you doing with the metric? How are the metrics of field services, retail, call center, first-contact resolution, etc. used?
From an employee perspective, are you doing something beyond a basic employee engagement study? Or do you have an employee pulse metric by division, region, or queue?
There’s no one-size-fits-all metric that determines maturity? Instead, focus on where your company is toward your specific goals. Success is determined by how close you are to achieving that goal, instead of a set of objective metrics that may not even relate to your business. Truly mature organizations are aligned on specific business goals and have customer experience KPIs directly attached to those individual goals. They frequently check in on those metrics and take action to move the needle and tie that success back to their experience programs.
How Can You Tie Metrics Directly to CX and VoC Programs Versus Other Internal and External Factors?
The important thing is to look at your organization and how they talk about success as well as learning to speak that language. Are you a finance, operations, or retention-focused organization? And how are you integrating operational, technical, and financial data with customer survey data?
Organizations that are technically or engineering-focused often look for an extreme amount of precision. But survey data doesn’t always lead to one answer or the answer you expect. The real question is, “How do you pull information together and communicate that collectively?” As much as the mathematical connections are crucial, so are the practical ones.
Ultimately, metrics can be tied either statistically or practically, but the latter is much more realistic for a business. For example, the broader benefits when enabling an entire organization are hard to quantify but there could be specific benefits your program has contributed to making a project more successful. Maybe the insights your program provided can take accountability for 10% of the project’s effects. Then you can say, “It wasn’t all from our VoC or CX program but we get credit for that 10%.”
How to Analyze Which Attributes Influence NPS in Survey Analysis?
Let’s say your organization’s leadership is focusing in on NPS—where you are, what drives it, and so on. So, you try structural equation modeling, key driver analysis, or heavy-duty analytics. That approach is equatable to killing a mosquito with a sledgehammer. Instead, you want to break methodology down to core factors—using statistical analysis or text analytics—to see what themes come out and categorize them according to where your organization is.
Now, at an executive level, you might not want to communicate the “R-squared” of the modeling. Usually, executives just want answers to the questions, “What’s driving NPS?” and “What should I do with it?” Your job is to articulate the answers in a clear and simple way throughout the organization. That will drive your success from the top down. But of course, you should still have in-depth analyses prepared in your back pocket if you encounter someone who is statistically oriented.
How Can I Use KPIs to Improve Customer Experience?
Improving customer experience starts with tracking your current CX metrics, listening to customers, and analyzing data for insights that will be essential to forming an action plan. Keep in mind that this is a cycle that your organization has to do consistently and regularly.
Instead of sending out feedback or customer satisfaction surveys only once or twice a year, you may consider investing in a customer experience management software platform that enables your organization to achieve always-on listening. This means that you’re able to capture CX data and feedback from various touchpoints and channels, such as social media, website and mobile app analytics, call center transcripts, and online reviews, as well as from targeted surveys that deliver results in real time.
After you take these actions, you measure the response to your improvements and determine the success of your efforts. And once you’ve completed the cycle, you must do it all over again.
Tracked and managed the right way, the customer experience KPIs and metrics listed above should help support your organization’s commitment to putting customers first. They’re useful for collecting valuable sentiment data, generating actionable insights, and predicting future behavior. Most importantly, these metrics enable your organization to take the guesswork out of your strategy, accurately measure customer experience, and inspire more moments of customer delight.
Your Next Steps: Taking Action
Customer experience involves multiple touchpoints and interactions across various channels and stages of the customer journey. Capturing and measuring the entire, multi-faceted experience requires a comprehensive approach that takes into account diverse customer interactions.
This is where pearl-plaza.rues in. Combining award-winning technology with expert services in customer experience measurement and management, Pearl-Plaza helps today’s top brands deploy programs that are designed to measure customer experience KPIs and metrics in ways that are simple, speedy, and scalable.
References
SuperOffice. 32 Customer Experience Statistics You Need to Know for 2024 (https://www.superoffice.com/blog/customer-experience-statistics/). Access 12/1/2023.
Forbes. 50 Stats That Prove The Value Of Customer Experience (https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2019/09/24/50-stats-that-prove-the-value-of-customer-experience/). Access 12/1/2023.
Harvard Business Review. Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers (https://hbr.org/2010/07/stop-trying-to-delight-your-customers). Access 11/30/2023.
Customer experience transformation is the key to staying ahead of your competitors and connecting with your customers. With 93% of companies embarking on a digital transformation and taking a digital-first approach to their business, it is important that your business keeps up in an increasingly online world by practicing customer experience transformation to ensure you are being proactive—not reactive—about your customer’s expectations.
What is Customer Experience Transformation?
Customer experience transformation refers to the strategic and holistic process by which a business fundamentally reimagines and reshapes its entire approach to interacting with customers across various touchpoints and throughout the customer journey. This transformation is driven by the recognition that providing an exceptional customer experience is not merely a nice-to-have, but a critical element for business success in today’s competitive landscape.
Customer experience transformation goes beyond cosmetic changes and surface-level improvements. It involves a comprehensive overhaul of internal processes, technologies, organizational culture, and customer engagement strategies. The ultimate goal is to create meaningful, seamless, and personalized experiences that meet and exceed customer expectations, fostering customer loyalty, advocacy, and ultimately driving business growth.
If you do not undergo continuous customer experience management to help your business keep up with customer and industry competitors, you may develop a static CX program. A stagnant CX program, or stagnant customer experience strategy, can lead to declining customer satisfaction, loss of competitive edge, and missed growth opportunities. As customer preferences change and new technologies emerge, businesses that fail to adapt risk being left behind.
Signs that Customer Experience Transformation is Needed
The signs of a static CX program are not only signals of current shortcomings but also alarm bells indicating the need for immediate transformation. These signs act as wake-up calls that should prompt businesses to reassess their strategies and take proactive steps toward revitalizing their approach to customer engagement.
Consistent customer complaints: Consistent and recurring customer complaints are undeniable indicators that something isn’t working with your CX program. When customers express frustration, dissatisfaction, or disappointment through repeated complaints, it suggests that their expectations are not being met. These complaints highlight areas where your business is falling short of delivering the experiences that customers desire. Ignoring these complaints or treating them as isolated incidents can result in a negative impact on your brand reputation management strategy and customer loyalty.
Outdated processes: As technology evolves and customer behaviors change, outdated processes can hinder your ability to provide seamless and efficient experiences. If customers find themselves navigating convoluted processes, encountering unnecessary delays, or facing unnecessary hurdles, it’s likely that your CX program is stuck in the past.
Low employee engagement: The quality of customer experiences is closely tied to employee commitment. If your employees are disengaged or disconnected from the company’s mission, values, and customers, it will inevitably reflect in customer interactions. Employees who feel unsupported, undervalued, or disconnected from the organization are less likely to provide exceptional service.
Acknowledging these signs of a static CX program is the crucial first step toward igniting a transformational journey. Businesses must confront these indicators head-on and view them as opportunities for growth. Each complaint, outdated process, missed personalization opportunity, and instance of low employee engagement holds valuable insights that can guide strategic changes.
5 Ways to Begin Your Customer Experience Transformation
When looking at ways to revive your CX program, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. But, we’ve narrowed down five of the most important things you need to focus on when undergoing a customer experience transformation. These five areas will make sure you are developing a CX program that is efficient, scalable, and successful!
#1: Collect and Analyze Real-time Data
Gone are the days of relying solely on periodic surveys to understand your customers. Real-time data collection, unstructured data analytics, and predictive customer analytics are essential for gaining insights into customer sentiment and behavior. Leveraging this data empowers you to make informed decisions and address issues promptly, ensuring a more satisfying customer experience.
#2: Implement Personalization Strategies
Customers today expect personalized experiences that cater to their unique preferences. Implementing personalization strategies, such as tailored product recommendations and customized communications, can greatly enhance the customer journey. By showing that you understand and care about each individual, you create a stronger emotional connection.
Learn how Pearl-Plaza client, FootLocker, was able to consolidate all of its Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs and operational data into one platform, giving it the intelligence needed to create a unique experience for every customer.
#3: Embrace Omnichannel Engagement
Customers interact with businesses across various channels, both digital and physical. To provide a seamless experience, it’s essential to embrace an omnichannel customer experience approach. Integrating these channels ensures that customers receive consistent service and information, regardless of where they choose to engage.
La-Z-Boy partnered with Pearl-Plaza to do just that. By using the XI Platform and Pearl-Plaza’s Integrated CX approach, they were able to get structured and unstructured feedback from their customers into one hub.
#4: Empower Employees
Happy employees lead to happy customers. Fostering a customer-centric culture and empowering your employees to take ownership of customer interactions can make a significant impact. When employees feel valued and motivated, they are more likely to go the extra mile to create exceptional experiences.
#5: Continuous Improvement
Innovation is the lifeblood of any successful CX transformation. Staying ahead requires a commitment to continuous innovation, adapting your approach to new technologies and customer trends. Companies that dare to innovate often find themselves leading the pack in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
At Pearl-Plaza, we utilize the Continuous Improvement Framework with our clients to help them set their CX program up in a way that can change with their business and customer expectations.
Driving Your Customer Experience Transformation
Undergoing customer experience transformation can be a daunting task. Luckily, we’re here to help! Schedule a demo today to chat with one of our experts and see what Pearl-Plaza can do for you!
If your brand isn’t capturing customer feedback, unfortunately it won’t know how to improve—this is where the voice of customer (VoC) comes in. This article is designed to give you Pearl-Plaza’s take on what voice of the customer examples look like.
In the customer experience industry, we call capturing customer feedback a “voice of customer” program, and at Pearl-Plaza—we know that it’s not enough to capture feedback, you need to capture it, understand it, take action, and make sure customers know their feedback is being heard. We call this “experience improvement.”
Listening to the Voice of Customer Examples
Here are some specific voice of customer examples that can help you listen to customers and gather their valuable feedback.
Direct Feedback Methods
Direct feedback methods involve obtaining explicit and immediate insights directly from customers. By directly engaging with customers, businesses gain valuable, unfiltered feedback that helps them understand specific needs, address concerns, and make targeted improvements to enhance overall satisfaction. Direct feedback methods serve as a proactive approach to understanding and meeting customer expectations in real-time, fostering a more responsive and customer-centric business strategy.
Email Surveys
Email surveys offer a non-intrusive and convenient way to gather valuable insights from customers. By seamlessly integrating a survey link into email communication, you allow customers to share their thoughts at their own pace. This method not only ensures a broad reach but also provides a comfortable environment for customers to express their opinions, resulting in a diverse range of feedback that can uncover both positive experiences and areas for improvement.
Website Surveys
Strategically placed on webpages, these surveys enable organizations to capture real-time insights from visitors navigating their online platforms. By seamlessly integrating survey prompts within the website interface, businesses create an unobtrusive channel for users to share their experiences and preferences.
Furthermore, incorporating net promoter score metrics (NPS) into website surveys provides businesses with a quantitative and standardized way to assess overall customer satisfaction and loyalty. By asking the ultimate question – “How likely are you to recommend our website to a friend or colleague?” – organizations can distill complex customer sentiments into a single, actionable metric.
SMS Surveys
Engaging customers through SMS surveys taps into the immediacy and ubiquity of text messaging. This method leverages the personal nature of text messages, prompting quick responses and enabling businesses to capture real-time feedback. The concise format encourages customers to share their opinions on the go, providing a snapshot of their sentiments. Incorporating SMS surveys into your strategy allows for a direct and immediate channel to connect with customers, fostering a more dynamic understanding of their experiences.
Customer Interviews
Conducting one-on-one quantitative interviews with targeted customers allows for a deeper exploration of individual experiences. By tailoring questions to specific demographics or usage patterns, businesses can gain nuanced insights into the factors influencing customer satisfaction. These interviews provide a qualitative depth to quantitative data, offering a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs, preferences, and pain points. This personalized approach enables businesses to address individual concerns while identifying overarching themes that may impact a broader customer base.
Live Chat
Leveraging live chat for capturing customer commentary in real-time is a powerful way to uncover recurring themes and immediate concerns. Chatbots facilitate instant interactions, allowing businesses to identify emerging issues, challenges, or opportunities. Monitoring these conversations provides a valuable window into customer sentiment, enabling timely interventions and improvements. By analyzing the patterns in live chat interactions, businesses can proactively address common pain points, enhance customer experiences, and showcase a commitment to responsiveness.
Focus Groups
Engaging specific customer segments in focus groups goes beyond surface-level feedback, offering a rich source of qualitative insights. By inviting targeted groups to share their experiences, businesses can delve into the intricacies of individual journeys and preferences. This method provides a platform for customers to express nuanced opinions, uncovering aspects of their interactions that may not be apparent through broader surveys. The in-depth nature of focus groups enables businesses to tailor strategies to meet the unique needs of distinct customer segments, fostering a more personalized and customer-centric approach.
Indirect Feedback Methods
Indirect feedback methods involve gathering insights from various sources that may not involve direct interaction with customers. These methods offer a more observational and nuanced understanding of customer sentiments, preferences, and challenges. Indirect feedback provides valuable context, uncovering trends, patterns, and public perceptions that may not be immediately apparent through direct channels.
Call center recordings
Analyzing call center recordings provides a direct window into customer interactions, allowing businesses to gauge call frequency and identify pain points experienced by customers. These recordings not only reveal the volume of inquiries but also shed light on common challenges faced by customers. By understanding the nature of customer concerns and the frequency with which they arise, businesses can optimize call center processes, allocate resources efficiently, and implement targeted improvements to enhance overall customer satisfaction.
Social media commentary
Utilizing review management to mine social media commentary unveils unfiltered opinions about your brand’s reputation and customer advocacy. Publicly available comments on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram serve as a rich source of insights into customer sentiments, recommendations, and criticisms. By understanding how customers express their opinions in the public domain, businesses can tailor strategies to amplify positive sentiment, address concerns, and cultivate a positive brand image.
Product or location reviews
Monitoring product or location reviews provide a valuable indirect feedback channel, offering insights into the comparative standing of your offerings in the market. Reviews not only reveal customer satisfaction levels but also highlight areas where your product or location excels or falls short compared to competitors.
Web chat transcripts
Examining web chat transcripts provides a detailed record of customer inquiries, offering valuable insights into the topics that matter most to your audience. From queries about product details to inquiries about stock levels or product quality, these transcripts reveal customer priorities and concerns. By analyzing the frequency and nature of these interactions, businesses can tailor their communication strategies, optimize website content, and address common customer queries proactively. This method not only enhances customer satisfaction but also contributes to a more informed and responsive customer support system.
Employee Experience
Employees, often on the frontline of customer interactions, possess a unique perspective that can indirectly reveal common issues and roadblocks customers encounter. Focusing on employee experience not only fosters a positive workplace culture but also unveils critical information about the challenges employees face in providing optimal customer support.
Inferred Feedback Methods
Customer behaviors on your website
Use this data to see behaviors such as if customers are abandoning items in their cart, or perhaps there are web pages that are visited less often than others and have room for optimization.
CRM data
Whether your brand uses Salesforce or another brand, it can be helpful to overlay operational feedback with CRM elements like purchase history, a loyalty program, or a customer’s store account, which will show an important operational and segmentation piece of the puzzle.
Common Examples of Voice of Customer Questions
When crafting a Voice of Customer (VoC) survey, the customer survey questions you ask play a pivotal role in unveiling valuable insights. Here are three common questions to consider incorporating into your survey to capture a comprehensive understanding of customer experiences:
1. “On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service?”
This Net Promoter Score (NPS) question provides a quantitative measure of customer loyalty. It not only gauges overall satisfaction but also offers a clear indication of the likelihood that customers will advocate for your brand.
2. “What aspect of our product/service do you value the most, and why?”
This open-ended question encourages customers to articulate specific features or aspects that resonate with them. By understanding what customers find most valuable, you can focus on enhancing and promoting these key attributes.
3. “Can you share a recent experience with our customer support team? How would you rate the service received?”
This question delves into the customer’s interaction with your support team, providing insights into the effectiveness of your customer service. The combination of qualitative feedback and a quantitative rating allows for a comprehensive evaluation of customer support experiences.
These common VoC questions are designed to elicit specific, actionable feedback that can guide strategic decision-making and drive continuous improvement. You can tailor these customer survey questions to align with your business goals and the unique aspects of your customer journey for maximum impact.
What is the Voice of Customer Process?
At Pearl-Plaza, the VoC process is called “Continuous Improvement,” and can be broken down into five easy steps: design, listen, understand, transform, and realize.
Step #1: Design Your Program
In this stage, you have the opportunity to set up a strong foundation for your program; a strategy that aligns with the overall business values, financial objectives, and brand promises. This is one of the most important stages that is often overlooked, as you have one shot upfront to invest the time, energy, and resources into getting your program right from the start. You will thank us later throughout the process!
Step #2: Listen To Your Customers
Over the years, listening to customers has dramatically evolved. What used to be limited to sending out surveys through direct feedback, the industry has evolved to include indirect and inferred customer data sources as well. This can include listening posts like customer support interactions, emails, live chats, direct surveys, online product reviews, social media comments, and more!
Step #3: Understand Your Customer Data
For any data to be useful, of course you need to take the time to dig in and understand what your customers are actually saying. Most brands with a VoC or experience improvement program will centralize the data streams and use advanced analytics and behavioral science experts to identify what customers are actually saying. In the modern experience landscape, we have AI machine learning tools that can take your data even further, enabling you to look into customer emotions, intent, and sentiment. This understanding of the customer data stage is critical, and will set you up for the next step.
Step #4: Transform Through Taking Action
In the transformation stage, this is where you’ll thank us that you took the time up front to design your program and identify what success looks like. Now, you have the opportunity to take action on customer data.
Here’s a voice of customer example in action: maybe you can see customers are purchasing lots of one specific product, but the repeat purchases are extremely low. This is an opportunity to figure out the drivers of repeat purchases for your specific brand and its products, and apply those across the board. Can you lower the price? Can you rebrand or repackage the product to match more successful ones?
Step #5: Realize Business Value
This is where voice of customer and experience improvement programs shine. After you pull the necessary triggers in the transformation process, you’ll get the opportunity to evaluate and demonstrate real and tangible results for your business. Whether it’s reducing costs, avoiding customer churn, acquiring new customers, or something else—voice of customer programs will help you get there.
Bringing Voice of Customer Examples to Life
Pearl-Plaza clients who have strategically implemented the data collection strategies discussed earlier to enhance both customer and employee experiences have continuously realized success. Take a look at these customer experience case studies to see how they have improved their organizations through voice of customer programs.
Foot Locker
As you can imagine, Foot Locker had a ton of data points on their hands. The brand had loads of customer behavior intelligence, but this data was coming from so many sources that it was hard to see the big picture. Using the Pearl-Plaza XI Platform, this brand was able to consolidate all of its operational data sources and listening posts into one platform, giving it the intelligence needed to create a unique experience for every customer. The result? Foot Locker reduced customer listening costs, added new listening posts across video and social media, and experienced faster and more accurate resolution to its business challenges.
Docusign
Signing a digital agreement is now table stakes for most companies. That’s in large part thanks to DocuSign, a brand where growth is driven by customers who share the easy, secure e-signature experience with colleagues and clients. To listen to its customer feedback, the DocuSign product team uses in-app NPS microsurvey feedback to continually optimize end user experience. This Net Promoter Score program, powered by Pearl-Plaza, also identifies brand enthusiasts who are the engine of a robust customer advocacy program.
Glassdoor
This brand uses the Pearl-Plaza Platform to capture a unified view of employer experience, and now thousands of cross-industry employers across use the Glassdoor website to help them recruit and hire quality candidates.
Putting the five phases of continuous improvement to the ultimate test, Glassdoor monitors and improves the entire customer journey using microsurveys to capture sentiment at moments that matter for employees. Integration with Salesforce enables front line teams to close the loop with customers in real-time. Advanced text and sentiment analytics empower Glassdoor teams to analyze feedback, and customized dashboards ensure that each team can quickly see what is important to them and prioritize improvement efforts.
Elevating Your Business with Voice of Customer Examples
Voice of customer and experience improvement programs have dramatically evolved over the last few decades—what used to be limited to direct survey feedback has extended to include indirect and inferred feedback methods too. The power of a VoC program is in the five elements of achieving continuous improvement: design, listen, understand, transform, and finally, realize business value. We truly believe it’s improving experiences that turn customers into lifelong brand advocates, helping your business achieve its objectives at the same time.
Pearl-Plaza has been a trusted partner for numerous businesses on their journey to harness the power of Voice of Customer (VoC). Through a proven track record of providing comprehensive VoC solutions, Pearl-Plaza has empowered organizations to gain deep insights into customer experiences, preferences, and expectations.
We encourage you to take the next step in elevating your customer understanding. Schedule a live demo with Pearl-Plaza to witness real-time VoC examples in action and engage with a representative who can share tailored insights and case studies specific to your industry. By leveraging Pearl-Plaza’s expertise, businesses can not only listen to their customers but also transform these insights into strategic actions that drive meaningful improvements and long-term success.
A well-designed customer experience strategy can be the main aspect that helps you attract and retain your customer base, so you don’t want to leave anything up to change. Instead, your brand needs to have incredibly intentional customer experience management techniques in place. In this article, we’ll cover the customer experience, what your customer experience strategy needs, how to overcome challenges, and how to get started.
What is a Customer Experience Strategy?
A customer experience strategy stands as a pivotal guide for organizations seeking to create meaningful and lasting connections with their customers. Unlike traditional approaches that focus solely on transactions, a customer experience strategy is a holistic plan designed to enhance every touchpoint a customer has with a brand.
Defining Customer Experience
Customer experience (CX) itself encompasses the entirety of a customer’s journey with a brand, from the initial interaction to post-purchase support. It goes beyond the product or service itself, delving into the emotional and psychological impact of every interaction. CX is the sum of all perceptions, feelings, and responses a customer develops throughout their engagement with a company.
Distinguishing Customer Experience From Customer Service
While customer service is a crucial component of the overall customer experience, it represents just one facet of the entire journey. Customer service typically involves addressing specific issues or inquiries, often reactive in nature. It’s the assistance provided when a customer has a question, concern, or problem.
On the other hand, a customer experience strategy takes a proactive and comprehensive approach. It involves pre-emptive measures to understand and cater to customer needs and desires at every stage of their journey. It encompasses not only resolving issues but also creating positive, memorable moments that foster loyalty and advocacy.
What Are the Components of a CX Strategy?
By incorporating these key elements into your customer experience strategy, you can create memorable, personalized, and enjoyable experiences that foster customer loyalty and advocacy.
Customer Segmentation and Persona Development
Customer segmentation involves dividing your customer base into distinct groups based on characteristics such as demographics, behavior, preferences, and needs. Persona development takes it a step further by creating fictional representations of your target customers, including their goals, motivations, and pain points. These techniques help businesses tailor their experiences to specific customer segments, delivering personalized and relevant interactions.
Designing a Seamless Omnichannel Experience
In today’s digital age, customers expect a seamless experience across multiple channels, whether it’s a website, mobile app, social media, or physical store. Designing an omnichannel experience ensures consistency and continuity throughout the customer journey, with both online and offline channels. It involves aligning messaging, branding, and interactions across all touchpoints, allowing customers to switch between channels seamlessly.
Mapping the Customer Journey
Customer journey mapping involves visualizing and understanding the various stages, touchpoints, and emotions a customer goes through when interacting with your business. It helps identify pain points, areas of opportunity, and critical moments where businesses can make a significant impact on the customer experience. Mapping the customer journey enables companies to proactively address customer needs and provide solutions at every step, meaning that you are being intentional with all of your resources and data.
Implementing Effective Communication Channels
When people connect with your brand, how do they contact you? How are their questions answered? What does their interaction look like? Effective communication channels are crucial for delivering a positive customer experience. Businesses should offer multiple channels such as phone, email, live chat, social media, and self-service options—this helps reach all members of your audience, no matter their preferred communication channel.
These channels must be easily accessible, responsive, and integrated to provide seamless communication and support to customers. When they do connect through one of your channels, customers should receive prompt and personalized responses whenever possible.
Empowering Employees for Superior Service
The first impressions your brand makes usually start with employees and how they deliver customer service, so it’s important to hire and train employees that can offer customer-centric interactions. Empower your employees by providing them with the necessary training, resources, and authority to address customer needs effectively. You can also encourage and empower employees to foster a sense of ownership and accountability to resolve any customer issues. The employee experience is an important part of your customer experience strategy that cannot be overlooked!
Leveraging Technology for Enhanced Experiences
Just like every other part of your business, technology can significantly enhance the customer experience, too. Utilize customer relationship management (CRM) systems to store and analyze customer data, enabling personalized interactions. Leveraging automation tools for streamlined processes and self-service options is also a great way to reach multiple audiences and make their experience more helpful. Explore emerging technologies like chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analytics to gain insights and improve the customer experience.
Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Perfecting your customer experience strategy is an ongoing process, and it’s essential to foster a culture of continuous improvement so you can grow with your clients and customers. Regularly collect and analyze customer feedback, measure key performance indicators (KPIs), and monitor customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics. Use these insights to identify areas for improvement, make data-driven decisions, and continually evolve your customer experience strategy.
How to Create A Customer Experience Strategy
Creating an effective Customer Experience (CX) Strategy involves a meticulous process of understanding, analyzing, and identifying areas for improvement. Here’s a step-by-step guide to kickstart the creation of your CX strategy:
1. Customer Research and Data Gathering:
Start by gathering comprehensive data on your customers. This includes demographics, preferences, feedback, and pain points.
Utilize surveys, interviews, and analytics tools to gain insights into customer behaviors and expectations.
2. Journey Mapping:
Map out the entire customer journey, from the initial touchpoint to post-purchase interactions.
Identify critical touchpoints and moments that significantly impact the customer experience.
3. Identifying Pain Points:
Analyze customer feedback and data to pinpoint areas where the customer experience is currently subpar.
Prioritize these pain points based on their impact on customer satisfaction.
4. Setting Clear Objectives:
Establish specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives for your CX strategy.
Define what success looks like and align your goals with the overall business strategy.
5. Employee Involvement:
Engage employees at all levels in the process. Gather insights from front-line staff who directly interact with customers.
Foster a culture that prioritizes and values the customer experience.
How to Build A Customer Experience Strategy
With a foundation in place from the creation phase, building your Customer Experience (CX) Strategy involves refining goals and establishing the framework to achieve them. Here’s how you can progress to the next level:
1. Goal Finalization:
Refine and finalize the goals identified in the creation phase. Ensure they align with the overall business objectives and customer expectations.
2. Strategy Development:
Devise a comprehensive strategy that addresses the identified pain points and enhances positive touchpoints.
Consider technological solutions, process improvements, and employee training to support the strategy.
3. Customer-Centric Processes:
Align internal processes with the customer journey. Ensure that every department contributes to a seamless and positive experience.
Implement changes that prioritize customer needs and convenience.
4. Communication and Feedback Loops:
Establish clear communication channels for customer feedback.
Implement regular feedback loops to measure the effectiveness of the strategy and make adjustments as needed.
5. Training and Empowerment:
Provide ongoing training for employees to enhance their customer service skills.
Empower employees to make decisions that prioritize the customer experience.
By systematically creating and building upon your CX strategy, you not only address current pain points but also establish a framework for continuous improvement, ensuring that your customer experience remains exceptional over time.
Common Customer Experience Strategies by Industry
Tailored customer experience strategies are crucial to meeting the unique needs of various industries. Here’s a glimpse into common customer experience strategies across different sectors:
Automotive: In the automotive industry, enhancing the customer experience often involves improving both the driving and purchasing processes. Implementing cutting-edge technology for an intuitive and enjoyable driving experience, as well as streamlining the purchase process at dealerships, can significantly elevate customer satisfaction.
B2B: For B2B (Business-to-Business) enterprises, personalized and streamlined interactions are paramount. Customizing communication channels, providing dedicated account management, and offering solutions that cater to the specific needs of each business client contribute to a positive B2B customer experience.
E-commerce: In the realm of e-commerce, a seamless online checkout experience is a game-changer. Streamlining the purchase process, minimizing friction points, and ensuring secure transactions contribute to building trust and loyalty among online shoppers.
Financial Services: When it comes to financial services, transparency, and personalized services are key. Implementing user-friendly online banking interfaces, offering personalized financial advice, and ensuring clear communication about fees and policies contribute to a positive customer experience in finance.
Food Services and Restaurants: An equal focus on both in-person and digital experiences is incredibly important to success in the food service industry. Here, a CX strategy may include optimizing the ordering process, enhancing the dine-in ambiance, and providing personalized recommendations based on customer preferences.
Insurance: In the insurance industry, simplifying complex processes and improving communication can greatly enhance the customer experience. Providing clear policy information, offering digital claims processing, and incorporating proactive communication on policy updates contribute to customer satisfaction.
Healthcare: In healthcare, the emphasis is on patient-centric care. Implementing digital appointment scheduling, improving communication between healthcare providers and patients, and utilizing telemedicine options contribute to a more positive and convenient healthcare customer experience.
Retail: For retail, creating an omnichannel shopping experience is crucial. Integrating online and in-store experiences, providing personalized recommendations, and optimizing inventory management contribute to a seamless and enjoyable retail customer experience.
Travel & Hospitality: In the travel and hospitality industry, personalization and convenience are of the utmost importance. Implementing mobile check-ins, offering personalized travel recommendations, and providing excellent customer service during every stage of the journey contribute to a memorable travel and hospitality experience.
Challenges and Solutions in Implementing CX Strategies
Overcoming Internal Resistance and Silos
Even when you know what your strategy should be, it isn’t always easy to get the green light from your internal teams. Gaining buy-in from stakeholders and breaking down departmental barriers can be one barrier to overcome, but you can work to eliminate those silos by creating a shared vision and aligning with the organization’s overall goals.
Encourage open communication and collaboration among departments, fostering a culture of teamwork and understanding. Also, make the benefits of CX initiatives crystal clear with data-driven decision-making, which can also help you overcome resistance and gain support across the organization.
Ensuring Data Privacy and Security
Gathering and utilizing customer data for CX initiatives raises concerns about data privacy and security. Customers expect their personal information to be handled responsibly, and any data breaches or misuse can damage trust and harm your customer experience strategy.
You should comply with data protection laws and regulations by safeguarding customer information. You need to be a trustworthy brand if you want to earn loyalty from your customers, so start with security.
Comply with relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR or CCPA, and ensure proper consent is obtained for data collection and usage. Invest in secure data storage and transmission protocols, conduct regular security audits, and provide transparency to customers regarding data handling practices. You should also establish a strong data governance framework and train employees on data privacy best practices.
Balancing Automation and Human Touch
We just discussed how helpful and innovative automation is, but you do need to strike a balance between efficiency and personalization. Leveraging automation without compromising customer experience is all about preserving that human touch in your brand, advertising, customer service, etc. You can utilize automation to handle repetitive and transactional tasks and leave more complex customer interactions to employees.
For example, you can implement self-service options and chatbots to provide immediate assistance for routine queries. However, ensure that there are opportunities for customers to engage with human support when needed. Create a seamless handoff between automation and human support, ensuring a smooth transition without frustrating the customer.
Measuring the Success of Customer Experience Strategies
When you have a strong handle on how to reach your target audience, you also need to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty via customer experience analytics to determine how effective your marketing efforts are. The best way to measure and improve upon the customer experience strategy is to go right to the source and gather feedback from customer satisfaction surveys, online reviews, social media, and NPS scores.
You should also set key performance indicators (KPIs) for CX so that you can gather useful data and use that data to drive your marketing decisions. Tracking customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics usually involves KPIs like this:
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT):CSAT measures overall satisfaction through surveys or feedback, providing a snapshot and improvement areas.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS gauges the likelihood of customer recommendations, categorized as Promoters, Passives, or Detractors, indicating loyalty and advocacy.
Customer Effort Score (CES):CES measures the ease of accomplishing goals, minimizing customer effort, with lower scores indicating efficiency.
Customer Retention Rate: Measures the percentage of customers continuing business, reflecting CX strategy effectiveness in retaining satisfied and loyal customers.
Repeat Purchase Rate: Measures the percentage of customers making repeat purchases, showing CX impact on loyalty and positive experiences.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Quantifies a customer’s total value over their lifetime, considering factors like frequency, order value, and longevity, indicating positive experiences and long-term value.
Customer Churn Rate: Measures the percentage of customers discontinuing business, helping identify dissatisfaction or CX issues, with lower rates indicating satisfaction and loyalty.
Online Reviews and Ratings: Monitoring feedback on review platforms provides insights into customer sentiment, with positive reviews and ratings indicating satisfaction and improvement opportunities.
Level Up Your Digital CX Strategy
A customer experience strategy is a vital part of your marketing as it enables businesses to proactively shape and optimize every customer interaction. Doing so ensures consistent and exceptional experiences for those customers, which is great for your customer base!
By understanding customer needs, preferences, and pain points, and aligning internal processes and resources accordingly, organizations can cultivate loyalty, increase customer satisfaction, and drive revenue growth. The future of CX strategies includes embracing artificial intelligence, prioritizing personalized experiences, having a seamless omnichannel integration, leveraging data analytics, and creating effective feedback loops. This is the only way to evolve with the times and deliver great services and experiences for your customers.
A well-crafted customer experience strategy ultimately fosters customer retention, positive word-of-mouth, and differentiation in a competitive market, leading to sustainable business success. To create such a strategy right now, you need resources like surveys and other feedback tools to learn more about what your customers really need. Pearl-Plaza can help you craft feedback tools and perfect your marketing with our extensive CX management platform. Schedule a demo today to see our platform in action!
As e-commerce becomes increasingly global and competitive, business leaders understand that technology can be a valuable tool in reconnecting with consumers.
In particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool, revolutionizing the way companies understand and enhance the customer experience. As we delve into the realm of AI in Customer Experience (CX), we will explore how this technology is reshaping the customer-business relationship.
What is AI in CX?
AI in CX stands for artificial intelligence in customer experience. It involves harnessing advanced technology, specifically artificial intelligence and machine learning, to enhance the way businesses connect with their customers. It goes beyond the traditional methods of customer feedback analysis, offering a sophisticated approach that enables brands to stay ahead in an intensely competitive landscape.
At its core, AI in CX is about leveraging technology to gain a deeper understanding of customer experiences. It empowers businesses to make informed decisions that drive positive change, all while significantly reducing the time and effort spent on analyzing vast amounts of unstructured data, such as customer feedback.
How AI can improve Customer Experience (CX)
Artificial Intelligence for Customer Experience is the use of technology and machine learning to enhance customer experiences. With AI, brands spend less time analyzing text-heavy analytics and more time making smarter decisions to drive change. AI-driven insights provide consumer behaviors and preferences, as well as uncover new trends and overall a more personalized experience.
With these findings, brands can convert data to real actionable change. Customer retention rates and customer service can be improved by using AI to actively listen for qualitative feedback and elicit more valuable responses.
Another way AI is changing the customer experience realm is the detection of customer feedback themes to condense the main issues facing customers and present them back as valuable insights to improve.
The Benefits of AI Customer Experience
The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Customer Experience (CX) strategies brings forth a multitude of advantages for businesses and their customers. Here are five key benefits that illustrate how AI is reshaping the CX landscape:
1. Enhanced Customer Insights
AI-driven CX analysis enables businesses to gain a profound understanding of their customers. It goes beyond traditional methods of data collection and offers real-time insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and sentiments. By processing vast amounts of unstructured data, such as social media interactions and customer reviews, AI extracts valuable information that can be used to tailor products, services, and marketing campaigns to meet the evolving needs of the customer base.
2. Personalization at Scale
One of the standout benefits of AI in CX is the ability to deliver personalized experiences to customers on a large scale. Machine learning algorithms can analyze individual preferences and behaviors, allowing businesses to recommend products or services tailored to each customer’s unique interests. This personalization not only enhances customer satisfaction but also drives sales and fosters brand loyalty.
3. Improved Customer Retention
AI’s ability to actively listen for qualitative feedback and identify pain points allows companies to proactively address customer concerns. By resolving issues before they escalate and offering tailored solutions, businesses can significantly enhance customer satisfaction, leading to higher retention rates. Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal and continue their engagement with the brand.
4. Operational Efficiency
AI-powered CX platforms can streamline the analysis of vast amounts of data and provide actionable insights in real time. This efficiency reduces the manual effort required for data analysis, freeing up resources and enabling teams to focus on strategic decision-making and customer interactions. In addition, AI can automate routine customer service tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions, which enhances efficiency and reduces response times.
5. Predictive Analytics
AI’s predictive capabilities are a game-changer for CX. By analyzing historical data, AI can anticipate customer trends, identify emerging issues, and provide recommendations for future strategies. Businesses can stay one step ahead by proactively addressing potential customer concerns, adapting to market shifts, and optimizing their offerings, ultimately leading to improved customer experiences and long-term success.
Incorporating AI into CX strategies offers businesses the opportunity to unlock these benefits and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving global marketplace. The ability to harness technology for deeper customer insights, personalization, enhanced retention, operational efficiency, and predictive analytics positions companies to excel in delivering exceptional customer experiences. In the following sections, we’ll explore how Pearl-Plaza, as a pioneer in AI-powered CX, is leveraging these benefits to empower businesses and set new standards in the realm of customer satisfaction.
The Benefits of AI in Customer Service
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing customer service in profound ways, streamlining and enhancing common interactions to benefit both businesses and their customers. Let’s look at some of the key advantages of AI in the realm of customer service, where it is proving to be a game-changer.
1. Decision Making
AI-driven decision-making tools are transforming the way consumers choose products and services. Smart recommendation engines analyze vast amounts of data to provide tailored suggestions, making it easier for customers to make informed choices. These recommendations consider factors such as previous purchase history, browsing behavior, and even customer reviews, ensuring that decisions align with individual preferences. By enhancing decision-making processes, AI not only improves the overall shopping experience but also contributes to higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
2. Shopping Experience
The shopping experience itself is undergoing a significant overhaul thanks to AI. Chatbots and virtual shopping assistants provide real-time guidance and assistance to customers. They can answer questions, offer detailed product information, and even assist in finding the right sizes or styles. Additionally, AI is making in-store experiences more interactive through augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications, allowing customers to visualize products before purchasing. As a result, the shopping experience is becoming more engaging, informative, and convenient, leading to higher customer retention rates and increased sales.
3. Customer Interaction
AI is taking customer interactions to new heights. Chatbots and virtual assistants can engage in natural language conversations, making customers feel heard and understood. These AI-powered entities are capable of resolving routine inquiries, managing complaints, and even assisting with returns and exchanges. The use of AI in customer interactions ensures consistency and quality in every interaction, regardless of the channel customers choose. AI also empowers human customer service agents by providing them with relevant information and insights, enabling them to deliver a more personalized and effective service.
4. Checkout/Transaction
The checkout and transaction process is a critical moment in the customer journey. AI simplifies this stage by streamlining the payment process and enhancing security. For instance, AI can enable frictionless checkouts by automatically filling in payment details and addresses for returning customers. It also plays a vital role in fraud detection, flagging suspicious transactions to protect both customers and businesses. By making the checkout process quick and secure, AI reduces cart abandonment rates and fosters trust in online transactions.
5. Post-Transaction
Post-transaction engagement is often an overlooked but crucial aspect of the customer journey. AI ensures that customers feel valued even after making a purchase. Automated post-purchase surveys and feedback mechanisms gather insights to assess customer satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. AI-powered recommendation engines continue to engage customers by suggesting complementary products or services based on their recent purchases. This post-transaction interaction not only fosters customer loyalty but also contributes to additional revenue through upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Examples of AI in Customer Experience
Businesses across various industries are leveraging AI to enhance interactions, streamline processes, and provide unparalleled services to their customers. By integrating AI seamlessly into their operations, these forward-thinking enterprises are not only keeping pace with technological advancements but also setting new standards for customer-centricity, efficiency, and innovation. From personalized recommendations to predictive analytics, let’s look at a few AI customer experience examples:
1. Chatbots for Instant Support
One of the most recognizable implementations of AI in customer experience is the use of chatbots. These virtual assistants, powered by AI and natural language processing, enable businesses to provide instant and personalized support to customers. Whether answering queries, assisting with product selection, or guiding through troubleshooting processes, chatbots enhance the overall customer service experience by delivering timely and accurate information.
Example: Many e-commerce websites deploy AI-driven chatbots to engage with visitors, address queries, and facilitate seamless browsing and purchasing experiences.
2. Personalized Recommendations
AI algorithms excel at analyzing customer data to offer personalized product recommendations. Whether it’s suggesting similar items based on past purchases or showcasing products aligned with individual preferences, these recommendation engines significantly contribute to a more tailored and enjoyable shopping experience.
Example: Streaming platforms like Netflix use AI to analyze viewing history and provide personalized content recommendations, keeping users engaged and satisfied.
3. Predictive Analytics for Anticipating Needs
AI’s predictive analytics capabilities empower businesses to anticipate customer needs and preferences. By analyzing historical data, AI systems can forecast trends, helping businesses stay ahead of customer expectations. This proactive approach allows companies to offer relevant products or services before customers even express their requirements.
Example: Retailers use AI to predict inventory needs, ensuring products are available when customers want them, thus reducing stockouts and improving overall satisfaction.
4. Voice Assistants for Seamless Interactions
The rise of voice-activated AI assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, has transformed how customers interact with devices. These virtual assistants enhance convenience by allowing users to perform various tasks, from setting reminders to making purchases, using natural language commands.
Example: Smart home devices leverage AI voice assistants to provide hands-free control, creating a frictionless experience for users.
5. Sentiment Analysis for Customer Feedback
AI-driven sentiment analysis tools sift through vast amounts of customer feedback, including reviews and social media comments, to gauge sentiment. This valuable insight allows businesses to understand how customers feel about their products or services, enabling them to make data-driven improvements and respond to issues promptly.
Example: Airlines use sentiment analysis to assess customer feedback on social media, addressing concerns and improving overall customer satisfaction.
These examples showcase the versatility of AI in enhancing various facets of the customer experience. As technology continues to advance, the integration of AI will likely become even more sophisticated, offering businesses new and innovative ways to exceed customer expectations.
How AI Has Improved Customer Experience
Artificial intelligence has emerged as a driving force behind significant improvements in the customer experience industry. These technologies have enhanced the way businesses engage with customers, and have enhanced every step of the customer journey. Here are just a few areas where AI has contributed to creating a more seamless, personalized, and satisfying customer experience.
1. Personalization at Scale
AI has ushered in an era of hyper-personalization, allowing businesses to tailor their offerings to individual customer preferences at scale. Machine learning algorithms analyze vast datasets, including customer behavior, purchase history, and interactions, to provide personalized recommendations and content. This level of customization not only delights customers by offering what they want but also fosters brand loyalty and long-term relationships.
Example: E-commerce platforms leverage AI to analyze customer browsing and purchasing behavior, presenting personalized product recommendations that align with individual tastes and preferences.
2. Proactive Customer Service
AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants have redefined customer service by offering instantaneous and proactive support. These intelligent systems can handle routine inquiries, provide product information, and assist with problem-solving in real time. By addressing customer needs promptly, businesses enhance the overall service experience and ensure that customers feel heard and valued.
Example: Customer support chatbots on websites provide instant responses to frequently asked questions, guiding users through common issues and ensuring a swift resolution.
3. Streamlining Customer Journey
AI optimizes the entire customer journey by streamlining processes and reducing friction at every touchpoint. From browsing products to making a purchase, AI technologies analyze user behavior to identify potential pain points and optimize the journey for a smoother experience. This results in reduced wait times, faster transaction processes, and an overall more efficient and enjoyable customer journey.
Example: Mobile banking apps utilize AI to analyze user interactions, streamlining the process of transferring funds, checking balances, and completing other financial transactions.
4. Data-Driven Decision-Making
AI empowers businesses to make informed decisions by extracting actionable insights from vast amounts of customer data. Through predictive analytics, businesses can anticipate customer needs, identify trends, and tailor their strategies accordingly. This data-driven approach ensures that businesses stay ahead of market dynamics and provide services that align with evolving customer expectations.
Example: Retailers use AI to analyze purchasing patterns and predict future trends, enabling them to stock inventory strategically and offer products that are likely to be in high demand.
5. Enhanced Security and Fraud Detection
In an era where online security is paramount, AI has significantly improved customer trust by enhancing security measures. AI algorithms can detect and prevent fraudulent activities, protecting both businesses and customers from potential threats. This not only safeguards sensitive information but also instills confidence in customers when engaging in online transactions.
Example: Financial institutions deploy AI to analyze transaction patterns and detect anomalies that may indicate fraudulent activities, ensuring a secure banking experience for customers.
New AI Trends in Customer Experience
As businesses continue to embrace the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the landscape of customer experience is witnessing dynamic shifts driven by emerging trends. These trends not only reflect the ongoing evolution of AI technologies but also offer a glimpse into the future of customer interactions.
1. AI-Powered Visual Search
Visual search capabilities are on the rise, enabling customers to search and discover products using images rather than text queries. AI algorithms analyze visual data, allowing users to find products similar to what they capture with their cameras or upload as images. This trend enhances the efficiency of product discovery, making the shopping experience more intuitive and visually driven.
Example: Retailers incorporate visual search capabilities in their mobile apps, allowing users to take pictures of products and find similar items in their inventory.
2. Augmented Reality (AR) for Immersive Experiences
The integration of Augmented Reality (AR) into customer experiences is becoming increasingly prevalent. AI enhances AR applications by analyzing user interactions and tailoring augmented content based on individual preferences. This trend offers customers immersive and interactive experiences, particularly in industries such as retail, where virtual try-ons and product visualizations are gaining popularity.
Example: Furniture retailers use AR applications to allow customers to visualize how a piece of furniture will look in their homes before making a purchase.
3. AI Ethics and Responsible AI Practices
As AI becomes more integral to customer experiences, the ethical implications of its use are garnering increased attention. The trend towards AI ethics involves implementing responsible AI practices to ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability. Businesses are recognizing the importance of addressing bias in AI algorithms and adopting ethical frameworks to build trust with their customers.
Example: Companies are actively working on minimizing biases in AI algorithms to ensure fair and equitable treatment of all customers, regardless of demographics.
How Can AI Upgrade Customer Experience Analysis?
On a basic level, customers aren’t going to shop at or buy from a company if they don’t have a good customer experience. But the customer experience can be incredibly complicated, involving everything from the visual appeal of the product to the way a customer service representative walks them through a technical problem. Thus, a huge pain point is created for businesses in that they need to sort through the nuances and make informed decisions at the executive level that also positively impact the end user.
As an example, here is what Pearl-Plaza is able to pull from a simple review compared to our biggest competitor. While our competitors are limited to surface-level observations, Pearl-Plaza empowers your organization to delve deeper, unveiling richer insights that include uncovering customer intent. Whether it’s an intent to purchase or a potential churn, Pearl-Plaza equips you to promptly take the necessary actions.
Pearl-Plaza’s Award-Winning AI Technology for CX
Pearl-Plaza can give you the tools to utilize AI for customer experience, but it doesn’t end there. We have also helped customers like Foot Locker and La-Z-Boy manage loads of structured and unstructured data, uncover the voice of the customer, and improve their key metrics. You can see what Pearl-Plaza can do for your business by booking a demo today! But if you’re still curious to learn about the latest trends with AI in CX, read our latest consumer trends report.
Elevating Customer Experience Through Strategic Productivity Insights
In a recent workshop conducted at the XI Forum 2023 in London by industry experts Simon Fraser, VP, Insights and Consultancy at Pearl-Plaza, and Simon Hedaux, Founder of Rethink Productivity, the focus was on enhancing productivity to drive experience improvement within businesses. This hands-on workshop emphasised the significance of integrating customer and employee perspectives into experience enhancement strategies, whilst leveraging productivity studies and insights to make informed investment decisions.
The workshop gathered professionals from diverse sectors such as retail, travel, services, grocery, and healthcare. Participants delved into diverse dimensions of experience delivery, encompassing efficiency, role dynamics, design considerations, and customer journeys. Here are the highlights and takeaways from the session!
Understanding the Core Elements
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the situation, it’s important to conduct efficiency assessments. These assessments prioritise the identification of operational discrepancies, the reduction of non-value-added tasks, and the optimisation of resource distribution. An evaluation of roles within the organisation sheds light on various aspects, including customer interactions, management visibility, team composition, and potential upselling opportunities.
In addition, assessing the design element entails an examination of how the layout impacts both the employee and customer experience, with the aim of enhancing the overall environment. The exploration of customer journeys also allows you to go beyond surface-level observations, encompassing a thorough analysis of both front-end and back-end processes that significantly influence the quality of the delivered experiences.
Macro-Environmental Insights
The workshop started by contextualising businesses within macro-economic and social environments, considering factors like inflation, evolving consumer behaviours, and societal habits. These elements influence how businesses operate and make decisions.
Participants delved into specific customer touchpoints, such as the ‘Fitting Room’ and ‘Coffee Shop’ experiences. Through diverse lenses—customer, employee, and business perspectives—participants identified critical success factors, pain points, and optimisation opportunities.
Insights and Learnings
Rethink Productivity’s Simon Hedaux shared insights derived from global studies across varied industries and environments. The essence lies in the challenging trade-off between investing in time, cost, and quality, as very few businesses can simultaneously optimise all three. Strategic decision-making is pivotal to prioritising where to focus investments.
Key Strategies for Experience Enhancement
The primary takeaway emphasised the importance of a triangulation approach, aligning customer, employee, and business experiences for effective decision-making. Achieving harmony between signals, abilities, and expectations is crucial.
A systematic understanding and anticipation of customer and employee expectations, coupled with responsive processes, are vital for successful experience improvement initiatives. The importance of utilising multiple lenses for investment decisions, aligning them with ROI goals, was a focal point.
Listening to the voice of the customer and recognising their value emerged as a significant strategy. The necessity of an integrated CX data ecosystem, supported by the right organisational culture, was underscored as the ideal approach.
Practitioners need to consider this triangulation of experiences between customer, employee, and the business when making decisions on how best to invest, and support experience improvement transformation. To be successful there needs to be harmony between signals, abilities, and expectations.
The customers – what they take away from all their encounters with your brand, the signals they are looking for, and what they expect? How clear to them is the process, how easy it is to access and have privacy, and how easy is it to get help when needed?
The employees – what they can deliver, what they are trained to do, what is the culture, and what are their KPIs?
The business – what you say you do (the expectations being set / how this is marketed), and where the budget should be spent? What measures can be taken to prevent loss prevention? What are the staffing levels that are being provided for in the budget?
In conclusion, the workshop underlined the intricate balance needed between productivity, customer experience, and business success. By aligning strategies with the intertwined needs of customers, employees, and the business, companies can drive impactful improvements that lead to sustainable growth and enhanced customer loyalty.
The Australian financial services industry operates in a tightly regulated environment, with a myriad of compliance obligations that must be met. In recent years, the implementation of a Voice of Customer (VoC) program has emerged as an essential tool for reducing compliance risk, improving customer experiences, and addressing several regulatory requirements. Explore the ways in which VoC initiatives can assist financial services in ensuring compliance with regulatory obligations like RG 271 and DDO, and learn effective strategies for navigating these requirements.
RG 271—Closing the Inner and Outer Loop
One of the critical regulatory guidelines that financial firms must adhere to is Regulatory Guide 271 (RG 271), introduced by ASIC following the Royal Commission in 2021. RG 271 specifies that financial firms, including AFSLs, must have a fully functional internal dispute resolution (IDR) system in place. This system must acknowledge and record all complaints, respond to complaints within specified time frames, and include required information in responses.
A VoC program, along with closed-loop feedback activities, plays a pivotal role in meeting the obligations under RG 271. By capturing unsolicited feedback, identifying dissatisfaction, and closing the loop with unhappy customers, businesses can fulfill the requirements of an IDR system. Furthermore, VoC programs can help identify systemic themes behind recurring customer feedback, known as the “outer loop.” This deeper understanding allows firms to address underlying issues and communicate solutions back to customers.
Although survey responses are excluded from RG 271, many compliance teams find that providing an additional channel for member feedback supports overall compliance efforts.
Design and Distribution Obligations—Focusing On Customer Needs, Transparency, and Ongoing Monitoring
Design and Distribution Obligations (DDO) are another set of regulatory requirements aimed at ensuring that financial products are designed and distributed in a manner that aligns with the best interests of customers. This includes designing products consistent with customer objectives, financial situations, and needs, as well as monitoring customer outcomes to ensure product alignment.
VoC programs enhance the effectiveness of DDO implementation by focusing on customer needs, transparency, and ongoing monitoring. By involving customer experience experts in the product design process, financial institutions can align products with customer expectations, ultimately improving satisfaction. Additionally, robust feedback mechanisms allow customers to provide input on their experiences, helping firms identify issues and make necessary improvements to product design and distribution.
Best Interests—Gain Insights Into Member Preferences, Needs, and Expectations
Legislation within financial services mandates that advice and decisions be made in the best interests of consumers. To deliver on this covenant, financial services firms must gain insights into member preferences, needs, and expectations. VoC programs come to the rescue by capturing both solicited and unsolicited feedback from members and employer surveys at critical touchpoints in their journey. This information allows trustees to tailor fund offerings, investment options, and services to align with member values, ensuring that fund decisions and actions are in line with beneficiary interests.
Complaint Reduction—Reduce Business Costs While Reducing Complaints
VoC programs also play a pivotal role in reducing the number of industry complaints, ultimately cutting costs across the business. Here’s how:
Proactive Issue Rectification: VoC programs help organizations proactively address negative feedback early, preventing issues from escalating and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Root Cause Analysis: By providing insights into the underlying causes of complaints, VoC programs enable firms to address root issues rather than just symptoms.
Customer-Centric Improvements: Insights from VoC guide firms in making customer-centric improvements, preventing issues from arising in the first place.
Employee Training and Engagement: VoC programs help identify areas where employees may need additional training or support, leading to better-equipped employees and reduced customer complaints.
In summary, VoC programs are driving decision-making in technology within financial services firms. They address regulatory obligations, enhance customer experiences, minimize compliance risks, reduce costs, and strengthen customer relationships. Embracing VoC is not just about compliance; it’s about building a customer-centric financial services industry that benefits everyone involved.
As a customer experience (CX) professional, you’ve experienced the thrill of starting and growing the program in many forms whether it be: the beginning stage, getting those quick wins, and growing a reputation of excellence across your company.
But then there’s the dreaded plateau. This can happen after you’ve been steadily gaining momentum, then all of a sudden, it seems as if your initiatives are no longer moving the needle. That’s when you know it’s time to update your customer experience program.
Why Refresh Your Customer Experience Program?
Design with the End in Mind
Understand Successes and Shortcomings
Look at Short-term and Long-term Actions
Like most things in the world, your customers—and your market—are not stagnant. They’re constantly changing and adapting to world events, new trends, upgraded technology, and more. And that’s a good thing! It simply means that in order to meet the needs of your customers and your business, you need to consistently evolve your program according to new circumstances and objectives.
We understand it may seem intimidating, but over our 19 years of experience helping the world’s most popular brands ace their customer experience, we’ve learned a few things about how to systematically and strategically review your CX program, and pinpoint the actions you need to take for success. In this blog, we’ve gathered a few of the top tips from our experts to help guide your refresh efforts. You’ll find them all below!
Tip #1: Design with the End in Mind
We’ve said it before, and you’re about to hear us say it again: you need to design your CX program with your current goals for both your experience and your business in mind. Your experience-level goals may look like increasing your net promoter score (NPS) by a certain number in the next year, or launching QR codes surveys. On the other hand, your business goals may be to increase customer tenure or lower cost to serve. Your CX program can help you meet all of those goals, but first, you need to have those goals set in stone!
Tip #2: Understand Successes and Shortcomings
Every CX program has something it does well—and something that isn’t quite hitting the mark. It’s important that you understand current strengths and weaknesses when you start to update your customer experience program. The “current” part of this mandate is emphasized because you must recognize that just because an initiative was working before doesn’t mean it’s the best solution now.
For instance, one of our clients, Volvo, had a post-transaction survey that had served it well in the past. However, that survey was, in a few words, too long to maintain customers’ attention. That’s why we challenged the brand to take a critical look at each question and ask itself, “is this information already available to us?” The result was a significantly shorter microsurvey that asked intentional and open-ended questions which garnered more responses, more context, and more actionable intelligence. (You can read more about Volvo’s story here.)
Tip #3: Look at Short-term and Long-term Actions
Now that you’ve identified areas of opportunity, it’s time to come up with an action plan to implement successful initiatives more widely and remove points of friction across the customer experience. In order to prioritize (and avoid overwhelm), it’s important to break your action plan up into phases.
First, identify short-term goals or initiatives you can get started on immediately and implement in the next few weeks. These short-term goals can be something like updating a survey, pulling together a CX cross-functional team, etc. Next, you need to identify the more complex goals, such as proving the ROI of customer experience at your company, implementing employee training based on intelligence, and the like. These more long-term goals will require multiple steps, stakeholders, and approvals. But just because they’re long term doesn’t mean you should put them on the back burner. It merely means that you need to get the ball rolling and prepare for the long haul.
Still Unsure of How to Get Started?
Our Strategic Insights Team leads Pearl-Plaza clients through a service we like to call XI Blueprint, in which our experts help brands assess their existing CX blueprint and determine an action plan for both short- and long-term objectives that meet the current needs of their business.
Want to learn more about it? In this video, our Senior Director of Strategic Insights Funda Whitaker paints a clear picture of how XI Blueprint can get CX programs “unstuck.” Watch it here!
You can also hear our client, Harvard Pilgrim, discuss its XI Blueprint success story here!
In today’s competitive business landscape, understanding customer service metrics is paramount. These metrics not only gauge the effectiveness of your customer service initiatives but also shape your overall business strategy and customer experience. This article delves deep into the world of customer service metrics, offering insights and actionable takeaways.
The Importance of Measuring Customer Service Metrics
Customer service metrics are the backbone of any successful customer-centric strategy. They provide invaluable insights into customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and overall experience. By accurately measuring these metrics, businesses can transform their customer interactions, fostering loyalty and driving revenue.
What Exactly Are Customer Service Metrics?
Customer service metrics are not just numbers on a dashboard; they are the narrative of a customer’s journey with a brand, much like a customer journey map. These metrics delve deep, capturing the nuances of every touchpoint, from the initial inquiry to post-purchase survey. They serve as a mirror, reflecting the quality, efficiency, and impact of a company’s customer service initiatives.
But why are these metrics so pivotal? Because they translate the intangible aspects of customer interactions into tangible data. Consider a customer’s feeling of being valued or their sense of trust in a brand. While these emotions are abstract, metrics like the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS) can quantify them, giving businesses a clearer picture of their customers’ sentiments.
Furthermore, these metrics act as a compass. In the vast ocean of customer interactions, it’s easy for businesses to lose their way. However, by regularly monitoring and analyzing these metrics, companies can stay on course, ensuring they consistently meet and exceed customer expectations. If a particular metric indicates a dip in performance, it serves as an early warning sign, allowing businesses to recalibrate their strategies and realign with customer needs.
At Pearl-Plaza, we believe that the true power of customer service metrics lies in their ability to drive action. They are not passive observers but active catalysts for change. By offering a granular view of customer service operations and creating an omnichannel customer experience, these metrics empower businesses to make informed decisions, optimize processes, and craft experiences that resonate with their audience.
Customer Service Metrics vs Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
The distinction between Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and customer service metrics is paramount. At Pearl-Plaza, we understand that while both are essential for gauging business health and for building an effective customer experience strategy, they serve distinct purposes and offer varied insights.
KPIs, as the name suggests, are indicators. They are broad, overarching metrics that provide a snapshot of the overall health and performance of a business. Whether it’s sales growth, revenue, or employee performance, KPIs give stakeholders a bird’s eye view of where the company stands. They are the compass guiding the ship, offering direction and ensuring alignment with the company’s strategic goals.
On the other hand, customer service metrics dive deep into the intricacies of customer interactions. They are the magnifying glass that reveals the finer details of how a business engages with its customers. Whether it’s measuring the average response rate, the speed of response, the quality of resolution, or the overall satisfaction level, these metrics shed light on the nuances of the customer journey. They answer critical questions:
How efficiently are customer queries being addressed?
Are customers walking away satisfied or disgruntled?
Where are the bottlenecks in the customer service process?
The beauty of customer service metrics lies in their specificity. While KPIs might indicate that a business is thriving, customer service metrics could reveal areas of concern. For instance, a company might be hitting its sales targets (a KPI), but if the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is low, it’s a clear indication that while customers are buying, they might not be entirely happy. Such insights are invaluable. They allow businesses to delve into the ‘why’ behind the numbers, facilitating proactive measures to improve customer experience.
The Must-Know Customer Service Metrics
Customer service metrics are the compass that guides businesses towards excellence. They offer a quantifiable measure of performance, allowing companies to gauge the effectiveness of their customer service initiatives. Let’s delve deeper into some of the most critical customer service metrics that every business should be familiar with.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score
At its core, the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) score is a simple yet powerful tool. It provides businesses with immediate feedback on customer satisfaction levels. Typically, after a service interaction, customers are asked a straightforward question: “How satisfied were you with your experience?” Their responses, usually on a scale from ‘Very Unsatisfied’ to ‘Very Satisfied,’ are then aggregated to produce the CSAT score.
But why is CSAT so crucial? It’s because it directly taps into the customer’s feelings post-interaction. By assessing the quality of customer service through CSAT, businesses can pinpoint areas that might be lacking. Whether it’s the responsiveness of the support team, the clarity of communication, or the resolution provided, CSAT scores shine a light on areas needing improvement. This ensures that businesses can maintain a consistently high level of service, fostering trust and loyalty among their customer base. For a more comprehensive understanding of CSAT scores and how they can be effectively utilized, click here.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
While satisfaction is vital, so is the ease of the customer experience. That’s where the Customer Effort Score (CES) comes into play. CES evaluates how easy it was for customers to get their issues resolved or their questions answered. Did they have to jump through hoops, or was the process seamless?
A high CES indicates that customers had to exert significant effort, which is not ideal. In contrast, a lower CES signifies a smoother customer journey, often leading to increased loyalty and satisfaction. After all, in today’s fast-paced world, customers value their time. They appreciate interactions that are hassle-free and straightforward. To learn more about Customer Effort Scores, click here.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
If there’s one metric that has gained significant traction in the business world, it’s the Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is a reflection of customer loyalty and satisfaction. Customers are asked a single, potent question: “How likely are you to recommend our service/product to a friend or colleague?” Based on their response, they are categorized as Promoters, Passives, or Detractors.
A high NPS indicates that you have a large number of promoters, signaling strong customer loyalty. This often translates to increased revenue, word-of-mouth referrals, and robust customer retention. Given its direct correlation with business growth, NPS stands as a pivotal measure in customer service evaluation. To dive deeper into the workings of Net Promoter Scores, click here.
First Reply Time
Imagine sending a query or raising a concern and waiting endlessly for a response. Frustrating, right? That’s why the First Reply Time metric is so essential. It measures the duration between a customer raising a query and receiving the initial response.
Timely replies are not just about speed; they’re about valuing the customer’s time and showing them that their concerns are a priority. By monitoring and optimizing First Reply Time, businesses can significantly enhance satisfaction levels, setting a positive tone for the entire interaction.
Resolution Time
While replying promptly is crucial, resolving the customer’s issue in a timely manner is equally vital. Resolution Time, which is commonly used in case management strategies, measures the total time taken to address and resolve a customer’s query or concern. A short Resolution Time is indicative of an efficient customer service department, leading to increased satisfaction. On the other hand, a prolonged Resolution Time can lead to mounting customer frustration and dissatisfaction.
Ticket Reopens
No one likes revisiting resolved issues. That’s why tracking ticket reopens is so crucial. It ensures that issues are addressed effectively the first time around. A high number of ticket reopens can indicate a gap in the resolution process, signaling the need for more thorough solutions and better training for customer service representatives.
Social Media Metrics
We live in a digital age, where social media platforms have become the new frontier for customer service. These platforms offer real-time feedback, allowing businesses to address concerns promptly. Metrics like response time to online reviews, engagement rate, and sentiment analysis on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram provide invaluable insights into customer perceptions and service quality.
Data-Informed Decision Making
At Pearl-Plaza, we believe that the power of data, when harnessed correctly, can transform the very fabric of an organization, especially in the realm of customer service. Data exploration and data-informed decision-making is not just a buzzword; it’s a methodology that places the customer at the heart of every business move.
Interpreting customer service metrics is not just about understanding numbers; it’s about deriving actionable insights from them. Every metric, be it the Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score, or First Reply Time, tells a story. It sheds light on areas of excellence and pinpoints avenues that need improvement. But the real magic happens when businesses take these insights and translate them into actionable strategies.
For instance, a sudden dip in the CSAT score might indicate an underlying issue in the customer service process. Maybe the response time has increased, or perhaps the resolutions provided aren’t up to the mark. By diving deep into the data, businesses can identify the root cause and implement corrective measures, ensuring that such issues don’t recur. This proactive approach, fueled by data, ensures that businesses stay ahead of the curve, consistently delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Moreover, in an era where customer preferences and behaviors are constantly evolving, staying static is not an option. What worked a year ago might be obsolete today. That’s where data-informed decision-making comes into play. By continuously measuring and analyzing customer service metrics, businesses can stay attuned to changing customer needs. They can innovate, adapt, and evolve, ensuring that their customer service strategies are always in alignment with customer expectations.
Another pivotal aspect of data-informed decision-making is its ability to foster a culture of continuous improvement. When businesses adopt a data-driven mindset, every team member, from the customer service representative to the top management, becomes aligned with the goal of enhancing customer experience. They begin to view challenges not as roadblocks but as opportunities for growth. Every feedback, positive or negative, is seen as a goldmine of insights, driving the organization towards excellence.
Conclusion
Mastering customer service metrics is non-negotiable for businesses aiming for excellence. These metrics provide a roadmap for improvement, ensuring businesses remain customer-centric in their approach. With Pearl-Plaza’s expertise, businesses can measure and enhance their customer service metrics, setting the gold standard in customer experience.
A lot of customer experiences hinge on your contact center’s effectiveness, which is why it’s important to ensure it’s a resource your customers find helpful, professional, and expedient.
However, building an effective, consistent contact center experiences can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve taken everything we have learned by working with best-in-class brands and distilled those learnings into five simple steps you can follow to make sure you build a contact center that works for you, and works for your customers.
Utilize Automation
Explore Customer Issues to Create Self-Serve Content
Engage and Enable Employees
Data Is a Gold Mine
Closing the Loop
Improve Contact Center Experience Step #1: Utilize Automation
The term ‘automation’ can scare customers because they often associate it with navigating phone trees and having to repeat themselves to a robot listener, but the truth is that automation is incredibly useful when contact centers leverage it correctly. Using automation within online chats, online reviews, or survey feedback, for example, allows your brand to direct customers to solutions for smaller problems. This frees your call center agents up to deal with more complicated problems while also reducing call volumes, saving your brand both time and money.
Improve Contact Center Experience Step #2: Explore Customer Issues to Create Self-Serve Content
Utilizing customer feedback to guide them toward solutions is a valuable practice, but it’s only one part of the equation. This feedback becomes even more valuable when you can harness a data platform that utilizes unstructured data analytics and creates actionable insights. This approach proves incredibly beneficial for identifying recurring issues faced by your customers, escalating these concerns to your development team, and creating relevant self-service resources to empower customers in resolving problems independently. Also, it also serves as a proactive strategy for safeguarding your customer experience, addressing potential issues before they even arise.
Improve Contact Center Experience Step #3: Engage and Enable Employees
While it’s not uncommon for brands to provide training for their employees in customer interactions, organizations can unlock even greater potential by actively encouraging their staff to share their unique perspectives on customer problems. This approach not only equips brands with insights into issues that customers might not have formally reported but also empowers employees to proactively drive Experience Improvement (XI) initiatives. By fostering a culture of open communication, brands can tap into the collective expertise of their workforce and gain a deeper understanding of customer pain points, leading to more effective solutions.
This collaborative approach also sends a powerful message to contact center employees, demonstrating that the organization values their input and is genuinely committed to using an integrated CX approach to improve customer experience. By turning employees from mere service providers into valued contributors to the customer-centric mission, brands can effectively transform detractors into enthusiastic promoters. In doing so, they not only improve customer satisfaction but also cultivate a great employee experience that is also an engaged workforce dedicated to delivering exceptional service.
Improve Contact Center Experience Step #4: Data Is a Gold Mine
Your brand generates mountains of data every day. Having a lot of information is great, but in this day and age, having so much of it can make figuring out where to start difficult. We’ve found that contact center improvement hinges on three kinds of data: customer feedback, social media data, and web analytics. You can complete the puzzle of Experience Improvement by using this information as a foundation for unlocking your organization’s voice of the customer (VoC). Having all of this data in one place gives your brand a united, holistic perception of the customer, which is vital to knowing how you might make some fixes and refinements to your contact center.
Improve Contact Center Experience Step #5: Closing the Loop
The value of closing the loop cannot be stressed enough. It’s not actually enough to stop at solving the problem; following up with your customers afterward goes a long way toward making them feel cared about as people. In other words, a follow-up lets customers know you’re as interested in the relationship they have with your brand as the transaction. Follow up with employees, too! Not sure where to start? Check out this resource that outlines the 7 steps for implementing a closed loop system!
Gathering intel and opinions from all these folks will give you chances to improve both your contact center and your overall customer experience, strengthening human connections and your bottom line.
Click here to learn even more about these processes in our full-length contact center eBook. We take a deep dive into additional methods and best practices you can leverage to begin improving your contact center, customer experience, and employee experiences today!
