The Corporate Woman

So tell me, is your customer experience deliberate?  That was one of the questions posed last week at the NPS conference and it made me think – what do you mean by deliberate?  Does that mean written down?  Does that mean everyone in the company knows it?  I think that you have to be both – every employee should know it, feel it really, and it should be written down.  Because if no one writes it down, everyone believes we all have the same idea… and I would bet that isn’t the case.  It may be shades of grey close but still, is that deliberate enough?  This is beyond mission statements and core values – this is what you want your customers to see, think and feel when they interact with you and your products/services.  Right?  What do you think?

Tags: customer exprience

I know that I am going to be in the midst of competing views here but I use NPS where I work and have built a previous NPS program as well – I like it and it works.  Say what you will of the method (and believe me, there is much that has been said/written/blogged on it, good and bad), the core of it comes down to really listening to your customers, taking action on what you learn and letting them know they are heard.  For me, that’s the key.

I’ve often said that the NPS question itself (and the resulting score) are the least important parts of an NPS program and survey.  Before I anger anyone, please note that I said least important, not that they aren’t valuable at all.  What is more important, in my view, is the “why” for the score given and “what would it take to improve”.  This is where the listening gets good.

Once you have all that great data from your customers, it’s time to turn it into actionable information.  That’s done by taking the NPS data and tying it to other key data.  That’s going to vary for your business but it could be market channel, customer value, number of customers, retention, country, product, brand… well, I think you see where this could go, right?

Customer feedback that’s just a number that everyone watches and argues about is not really all that helpful, is it?  The real power comes from the program you build around the NPS data you collect and the tools you develop as a result.  Taking action on customer feedback and letting your customers know they are heard.  And who doesn’t want to buy from a company like that?

Tags: action, customer loyalty, listening, Net Promoter Score, NPS

I’m going to try and avoid my soapbox here but I will warn you in advance that I may not be successful.  You be the judge…

In my experience, most surveys I’ve taken and seen (includes both those I’ve been asked to provide input on as well as those I couldn’t bear to actually complete), don’t really get actionable information as a result.  I get the sense that most people think surveys are easy to do and really, how hard can it be to come up with a bunch of questions?  In a way, they are right.  It’s not usually the questions that trip you up (although there are those and we’ll get to that in a bit).  The hard part, the tripping point, is really purposeful information.

1. If you had the answer to this survey question, what action would you take with it? 
2. Pretend you’re the opposite of a lawyer and don’t ask any questions when you already know the answer. 
3. Would you take this survey if you got it? Really?
4. Avoid conjunctions.  I don’t know why this comes up so often.  Conjunctions don’t conveniently shorten your survey by grouping concepts, they cloud your results.  (And, but, or, yet, for, nor, so).  “Please rate your satisfaction with the cleanliness and quality of our bathroom.”  Really, is cleanliness the same as quality?  Perhaps it was clean but the toilet paper was of poor quality… but I digress to another potential blog here.
5. Don’t be so wordy.  Overdone corporate speak, really long questions and acronyms are the usual culprits here.  Keep it short and simple to get the best results.
6. Have at least one open text/feedback question.  Instead of trying to cover every possible base, leave the customer the chance to share what they want to share, the way they want to share it.

And my last thoughts on the manner – keep the whole survey short and focused on your point.  Tell me how long the survey is or will take in the invite.  There’s always more but these are the things that always seem to come up in one form or another.  Now you tell me – how many times have you seen these simple rules violated?

Tags: best practices, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, design, suggestions, survey

I was recently asked the question about how do you prove that measuring NPS is worthwhile (or any other loyalty metric).  It was an interesting and good question but it is sort of like asking how do I prove that love is better than not having love.  I know, I know… an odd example perhaps but also ephemeral to prove or disprove.  Here is what I think about that (NPS not love – I’ll save that for another post):

Customer loyalty (or even the power of recommendation) itself is not what needs to be proven, we know it exists and operate on it many times when we make purchasing descisions, whether they are business or personal choices.  What needs to be proven is how you can use measuring customer loyalty to actually drive positive change that not only results in growing your business but also in an improved customer experience.  This actually comes down to the ability to monetize the value of score because money really does talk in this case.  You have to be able to link the lifetime value, likelihood to recommend, frequency of recommendations and repurchase together to build a financial and customer focused picture of how your customers behave and what engages their loyal behavior.  It can be done and I have done it, so I know it works.  The interesting thing to me is how many times companies don’t take it this extra step, which enables you to make actionable business cases for change that benefits both customers and the business.  Food for thought…

Tags: Communication, Customer Experience, Loyalty, Net Promoter Score

I’ve been reading a great deal on customer satisfaction this and customer loyalty that here lately.  Working on a reimagining (so to speak) of my function and purpose within the customer experience realm.  Here is a challenge for you – how do you inspire a company to become more customer centric?  It’s the holy grail right now – a new version of the field of dreams.  I see it as two things – inspiration and engagement.  You can inspire but if action doesn’t follow (and shortly) then engagement drops off and you have less credit than when you started the whole thing.  I say… let’s break the mold and stop worrying so much about the numbers and start worrying far more about the people – our people and our customers as people.

Tags: Customer Experience, Customers

It’s been an interesting year for those of us in the customer experience realm.  Lots of passion on both sides of the fence regarding the Net Promoter Score has resulted in positive good overall – it has raised awareness of the era of customer choice.  The more aware a company and its leaders are regarding their customers and their customer needs, the better opportunity that company has to grow organically.  Having used a number of the methods espoused by the various experts, I can see the pros and cons of each of the methods.  What I find the most interesting is not what method but why they choose the method.  Surprisingly, many times that choice is made without actually looking at how their market works and how their customers behave.  Looking their first really helps narrow down the field of what methods will work best for measuring and driving customer loyalty.

Tags: Customers, Loyalty