Insight Networks A New Approach To Enhance Customer Experience Management

Networks have always been a way for people and businesses to gain synergies, they are a means to create and add value. In creating Insight Networks, CX Index brings the benefits associated with networks to the world of Customer Experience Management.

When setting out to capture feedback to measure customer experience, standard practice is for a company is to use survey software or engage an EFM vendor to capture and analyse customer feedback.

CX Index is a software application with a back-end architecture designed on the premise that the customer journey within each sector is essentially the same. It maps out the customer journey(s) within a sector, and then sets up the appropriate metrics or questions for those journeys. When this is done an insight network for that sector is live.

For example, looking at the hotel industry; in broad terms, the journey will consist of making the reservation, check-in and in no particular order sleep, eat breakfast, and check-out. Some customers will have dinner and use a range of facilities. Save in exceptional circumstances, this journey doesn’t deviate from hotel to hotel or from guest to guest.

When CX Index has mapped the journey, sector specific metrics are set up, and businesses from the sector for which the network has been set up may join. An Insight Network has been created.

Instead of setting out without knowing when or where to start with measuring and managing Customer Experience; network members may simply select from a menu of sector specific questions / metrics, and they are good to go to capture the data. Simplifying the process of setting out to manage customer experience is one of many advantages.

By being part of a network, businesses gain synergies and much deeper insights through understanding customer experience in the context of the competitive landscape. This is simply because everyone that is part of the Insight Network is selecting from the same menu of metrics to measure the experience, and as a result of this they can now compare like with like performance. Note, unless they elect to, they don’t share their identity.

Until now, capturing customer experience performance in the context of the competitive landscape has often required 3rd party research. Insight Networks eliminate this requirement and make it easy for businesses to capture this information.

Advantages of being part of an Insight Network

1. Makes it simple to set out on a CEM programme; simply join a network, select from a menu of carefully designed sector specific questions and go.
2. Reduces the requirement for in-house CX expertise and the need to hire external consultants.
3. Because all businesses on the network choose from the same menu of metrics, more meaningful decisions can be made, for example, the comparative analysis facilitates much smarter decisions about resource allocation.
4. By measuring performance in the context of the competitive landscape; businesses can pin-point market positioning and augment marketing activities.
5. Opens up wider possibilities for data analysis.
6. Saves significant money on external research, e.g. mystery shoppers and focus groups.

Who this approach works for:

• Multi-Unit businesses
  The CX Index architecture works with retail chains, hotel chains, franchisors and large businesses with multiple business units and locations.
• Ready-Made networks
  There are many networks in business, for example trade associations, franchisors or businesses that sell into market segments have their own networks of customers. Because of the approach of centrally uploading feedback metrics, these readymade networks are an ideal market segment for CX Index. It is in this context where the CX Index platform excels, as the benchmarking functionality kicks into action.

Insight networks set up to date:
Since its launch in 2012, CX Index has created networks for the following sectors:

To get wider reach in some of these markets and leverage the synergies that arise through use of networks, CX Index often enters markets through channel partners, with ready-made networks.

Additional Features
The use of networks and the platform architecture designed around gaining benefits associated with networks is a key differentiating feature that brings with it unique features and benefits. That said, these additional benefits alone are not enough to enable a business to fully manage the customer experience. Understanding this, CX Index has been designed to work as a robust tool for standalone businesses, not part of any network, with a vast range of additional functionality to capture and analyse feedback data and drive more profitable customer centric decisions.

Tools include:

• Customer Loyalty Management Functionality:
  Alerts notifications: To enable quick response to customers that are less satisfied.

• Social Advocacy:
  CX Index’s Social Advocate™:
  CX Index integrates with a limitless number of social media platforms to promote social advocacy.
  Oct 2012 3.8 vs. Oct 2013 4.3
  TripAdvisor average score, year on year for CX Index hotels (in 2012 they weren’t using CX Index)

• Predictive Analysis:
  A key theme of CX Index is the ability to help businesses channel resources in the right direction; this may be by comparative analysis on the insight network, or through predictive analysis.

• Unstructured Data Analysis:
  CX Index uses a range of algorithms to within their unstructured data mining tool. Uniquely, unstructured data too, because of the architecture, can be analysed in the context of the competitive landscape.

Conclusion
Insight networks represent a clever twist for capturing customer insight, ideal for businesses that are just setting out to manage customer experience for the first time, Not only this, for businesses already along the way, decision making capabilities in critical areas such as market positioning and resource allocation are significantly enhanced through the Insight Network approach.

Further information