Eliminating the Subjectiveness of Customer Experience Metrics
First things first, to focus on customer experience metrics requires a good deal of focus. Hard to do when you’re in San Diego…
…And while my hometown team, the Royals are in the World Series (first time in 29 years, folks!). But, I prevailed in focusing on CX for three whole days – with only a few interruptions to enjoy the view and watch baseball.
Ironically on Wednesday I took a customer experience tour of Petco Park with my fellow CX professionals while wearing my Royals t-shirt under my suit jacket.
As a thought leader at Frost & Sullivan’s Executive MindXchange, I helped facilitate a small group discussion on “How to Eliminate the Subjectiveness of CX Metrics,” as part of a session designed to “Embed the Voice of Your Customer Across the Contact Center and Organization.” A great group of customer experience professionals, contact center leaders and strategists came together to share and discuss how we utilize metrics to move the needle in our organizations. In the spirit of sharing, I thought I’d share some of my key learning’s with you:
There are many valuable metrics and information sources from the traditional Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT), to the more sophisticated voice and text analytics, call center metrics and business metrics. Everyone agreed that a single measure is not enough. Comparing and analyzing a variety of data sources seems to work best. And, Customer Effort Sources are becoming a great Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
Having multiple sources for both quantitative and qualitative data reduces subjectivity in the organization. The group found my story about what we’ve done at Hallmark Business Connections to quantify open-ended comments both intriguing and actionable. You can read a little more about that.
Reducing subjectivity increases the actionable nature of the data. Being able to measure improvements in areas of dissatisfaction in a quantifiable way increases buy-in by the leaders who can create plans and implement changes in our organizations.
Data, charts, graphs and dashboards not only help our employees responsible for changes see their progress, but also are critical to communicate actions and successes with executives and gaining top-down support.
Finally, never overlook the power of communicating to employees in ways they can understand. Although acronyms, buzz words and industry terms may be normal for management, translating the lingo into common language is vital to explaining metrics and resulting initiatives to front line associates.
I always enjoy the opportunity to collaborate with true customer experience professionals and discuss some of the hot topics without industry at CX events. It gives me the opportunity to share my knowledge and pick up new tricks from the top minds in the business. With many customer experience initiatives being initially uncovered by a hunch, or gut feeling, it is critical to remove that subjective nature whenever possible, especially when it comes to defining success.