Part 1: Measuring Your Success
Just when we thought we could see the light at the end of the dark and scary Coronavirus tunnel, the goal posts have been shifted again with the implementation of another national lockdown. With morale low and tempers high, customer experience is more important than ever to consumers and it’s imperative to ensure that your customers’ needs are met and exceeded during any and all interactions with them.
A challenging start to 2021 doesn’t mean that gaining and retaining customers need to be a challenge. In this two-part series, we chatted to two leaders in the CX industry about simple ways on how to gain and retain new and existing customers this year. Here are few insights from Chloe Woolger, Commercial Director – Customer Experience at Kantar on measuring customer service.
DECIDE HOW TO MEASURE CUSTOMER SERVICE
According to Chloe there are many CX metrics out there to utilise, but their strengths and weaknesses vary depending on the brand using them. “A key thing is to ensure that you have a clearly defined metric structure, as it is really critical for any CX programme. Typically, when looking at metrics used to track performance within CX programmes, they sit across three levels:
- Key Customer Metric
Chloe says: “Key Customer Metric provides an overarching basis for understanding how customers perceive their interactions with your brand and the impact of this in their behaviours. Be that based on a single interaction or across the whole relationship.” Examples of ways to track this understanding are: Net Promoter Score (NPS), C-SAT (customer satisfaction), and Customer Effort Score (CES).
“NPS is obviously the most widely used, and it serves a very good purpose, but for me, it can’t be the stand-alone metric, you need other top line metrics to support it, don’t put all your eggs in one basket!” states Chloe.
- Top Line Metrics
These help to understand the key outcomes of the interaction or relationship and whether customers got what they wanted from the brand – both rationally and emotionally. Examples here are Emotional Outcome, Preference and Purchase retention.
- Operational Metrics
The most granular level of detail, says Chloe, Operational Metrics provide insight into both the drivers of customer experience as well as indicators of its impact on customers. For example: Financial Metrics and Closed Loop Metrics.
To gauge success, consistency is key! It’s important to ensure that this is done in a structured way. Be certain to have a metric framework which will help provide consistency in how CX is measured in your business. The rule of thumb on how many customer and /or top line metrics to include? Ideally, no more than two to four, according to Chloe.
When faced with challenges in business and the ever-changing environment we are all currently operating in, it is important to acknowledge that there is always room to improve and refine how we interact with our customers. Having an agile approach to customer service is key in order to continually meet and exceed customer expectations.