I love the ability to make successful recommendations.  When I love a product or a service or an idea, I can’t wait to share it with my friends, family and colleagues.  And when that recommendation is equally well liked and received, then I feel great.  Surely I can’t be alone in that, right? 

Where am I going with all this?  Well, I am an avid reader, when I say avid, I mean that in actual definition of the word – I have read pretty much every day of my life since I was seven.  A day that goes without reading a book is a sad, sad day for me.  I read at least two to three books a week, sometimes more.  I am also the queen (self-proclaimed) of reading multi-tasking.  Some examples - while eating (easy), while blow drying my hair (a little harder but easy with practice) and while watching TV (harder but still possible).  My family has many stories of the unsuccessful attempts I have made over the years to combine reading with other activities but that should be a different post, I think.

So I thought that I would never convert from the comfort of the paper in hand to an e-reader.  But I have converted and done it wholeheartedly.  I received a Kindle for Christmas and fell in love with it.  I have shared it with dozens of people (even numerous strangers who have asked after it out in public).  I rave about it because it turned out to be perfect for me.  See… there I go again, recommending.  Can’t help it.

Being a fan of Apple and being married to an Apple fanatic, I was looking forward to the iPad.  I thought to myself, “Wow, will this be even better than the Kindle and my iPod Touch combined?”  I’m sorry to say but from all I have seen, I just can’t feel the love on this one.  This from a woman who has a Kindle, an iPod, an iPod Touch and a Flip in my purse at all times.  I’d have an iPhone too if I didn’t have a company Blackberry instead.  I wanted to like it, really I did.  I think it could be great but I don’t think it’s there yet.  Certainly not as an e-reader.  I am not getting the “magic” or the “revolution”.  Maybe I will when it improves in future generations.   What do you think?

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?

In discussing a customer touchpoint mapping project recently, I was asked this question, “Have you formulated your ROI for this project yet?”  Well, no… at the beginning stages of this type of project (touchpoint mapping, customer expectations capture, gap analysis) you simply don’t know what your ROI is going to be, mostly because you have no idea what problems you’ll identify.  All of the ROI glory goes to the projects that come out of a customer touchpoint mapping project. 

I think this is the reason why so many companies don’t make the effort to do it.  Because it’s hard to quantify up front.  Because some people have that little voice sing-songing “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, never realizing that we might not think it is broken, but our customers might.

Having done these types of projects before, I know they can have tremendous positive impact (increase revenue, improve cusotmer loyalty, even attract more customers).  But the patience and willingness to invest (time, resources and money) for the currently unquantifiable gain, that’s hard to find.  What do you think holds companies back from doing these types of projects?

Customer experience is a growing specialty field.  It goes by many names and titles but the disciplines are quite similar.  As a member of this growing group of practitioners, I’m fascinated with the backgrounds where my colleagues come from.  Many are from market research backgrounds (since getting the customer feedback  is where you start a program) but mine is a different path.  I come from an improvement background (project management, Lean Six sigma, program development, etc).  I believe the heart of a customer experience program is identifying and driving customer fed improvements.

Measure – analyze – act – measure.

I’ve had the pleasure to work in this specialty for ten years now.  I continue to be fascinated and challenged.  I wonder where this career path will go.  I’ve heard some say that it doesn’t have “legs to grow with” as a career path or that it is limited in executive potential but I don’t agree.  I believe that the growth of social media highlights the potential need for even more people to participate in this discipline and more companies to adopt it.  Customers are demanding to be heard.  Customer experience professionals are here to listen and learn, using that customer voice to help companies grow and make customers happier at the same time.  What do you think?  Where is this field going?

Few things will kill the development of a successful program designed for change than unengaged stakeholders.  For many, the desire to get things done quicklycauses the elements of communication and engagement to fall by the wayside.  If you have been in that situation, you know how easily you end up wondering at the end why your new or improved process isn’t going as well as planned. 

I have found that it saves a great deal of time and work if you spend the up front time engaging key stakeholders across the business.  This process is critical, yes, I said it, CRITICAL, to ensuring change is successfully enacted.  It helps on several levels, for example:

• You identify your internal supporters and detractors.  Listening to them helps you develop their WIFM and ensure you are able to overcome obstacles.
• The stakeholders feel a part of the change.  Their voice is heard and thoughtfully understood.
• The initial stakeholders identify other people you need to add to the list.

This is a process I teach my team and advocate for every new program or process.  When you have stakeholder interviews up front, you get great ideas to help you be even more successful and identify the obstacles to overcome.   Having this group on your communication list for ongoing updates also helps keep your improvement top of mind.  Do you engage your stakeholders at the beginning of every new project or program?

In the next part of our series, we’re going to talk about how what to with the results you get back from NPS.  You’ve completed your survey design and fielded it to your customer and/or partner base.  At last, you have your data.  Now what do you do with the results?  If you are anything like me, you could spend a lot of time reading the open ended responses and analyzing them.  And don’t get me wrong, this is important but in my experience, it’s not the next step.

The next step is connecting NPS results to customer data to determine lifetime values.  Our data showed conclusively that the more likely a customer is to recommend, the longer they tend to stay with us.  Showing this proves the value of NPS.  It ties the results to dollars, which is key in determining which improvement issue to go after first. 

A simple ranking of the number of customer mentions without an attachment to dollars makes it very difficult for your key stakeholders in the business to develop ROI scenarios.  But ranking them with the addition of lifetime value makes a significant difference.  If you can also add in the reasons why customers cancel and the reasons why customers choose not to buy, you have a powerful business case for change that is built in lifetime value (dollars of potential revenue) and is anchored in NPS results.   How many of you are connecting your NPS results to customer lifetime value?

I had a call with a colleague in the customer experience field today.  He had some very good questions about how to decide the focus of your NPS survey.  It was an interesting discussion and I thought it worthwhile to share with you in my blog, perhaps as a series.  I’m going to tackle the survey design questions in this blog.

First subject – how detailed do you focus the survey?  A key decision early on in the program.  There are three levels you can measure NPS and each has varying degrees of impact. 

• At the top level, you have the brand NPS.  If your brand has strong recognition and powerful ties to decision making this can tie NPS.  This can be valuable to get a sense for your share of word of mouth but may not get you sufficient detail by itself to help you drive improvements. 
• The mid-level view or as I like to call it, the actionable level is the product NPS.  This is specific to the product they own and would they recommend it.  This helps a great deal because it can get you several why’s down in five why analysis within the survey itself and helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of each product.  It also ensures that the data is not skewed by a strong influencer (negative or positive), which can happen in the top level measure.
• The tactical level or operational view is really about areas such as service or training.  If you sell this in addition to the product, it can be quite valuable to measure at this level, in conjunction with what product the service or training was delivered on.  Because these are heavily customer facing, they are strong driver elements.

It’s important to look across the business you serve in from the view of customer.  This helps immensely when designing what levels to survey and how frequently to survey.  At the heart of any NPS program, in my opinion, is driving improvements in your customer’s experience, which results in a stronger company from a longevity and revenue perspective.  Ensuring that each survey point is purpose designed and driven towards gaining you actionable data is core to your survey design.  When you have that purposeful leveling structure, you know how detailed your survey needs to be, which means you get to keep it short and focused.  How do you structure your NPS survey?

A dear old friend of mine wrote to me today and reminded me that distance from friends and family means they keep up with me via things like my blog, Facebook and Twitter.  So when I have times like I have had lately, when my small team is short staffed, there is never enough time to write.  Which also means there is a backlog of ideas that I would like to share and get your thoughts on but somehow never seem to actually touch keys to keyboard.  Know what I mean?

So here I am, honoring her gentle nudge and making the room to write.

I’m fortunate that after months of searching, my team and I have found a new program manager.  We get to have a new set of skills and experience to add to our small team.  It gives us the ability to add even more value to our organization and delve deeper into understanding our customer experience.  I believe passionately in the service we provide to the business.  I love being able spend my days thinking about our customers.  Part of the search for a new team member means finding someone who has a similar passionate view. 

What’s most interesting to me about this process is how important company culture fit is to the discussion.    How many times have you been on an interview (or interviewed candidates) and found the focus being all on skills and experience – with little or none on that important “fit”?  That fit is more than just do you like this person and think you can work well with them.  It’s an important concept because I don’t want it confused with homogenisation.  Having diversity is equally key.  So how do you define your company or team culture?  How do you find that right fit for your team?

Our way was thoughtful, open discussion and decision consensus across the interviewers.  What works for you?  What hasn’t worked for you?

Setting aside time to reflect gives you the opportunity to see how things fit together and identify gaps.  This nothing new, right?  You know this, have experienced it, whether it was in your personal life or work life or both.  So if we know it, have felt the benefit of it, why is it so hard to do?  Why do we feel compelled to fill up every precious waking minute with a task?  How many of you feel the impulse in an idle moment to pick up your Blackberry or iPhone (or similar item)?  Do you ask yourself why?  I do.

I’m a big fan of reflection and thinking time.  I am also an unrepentant and inveterate multitasker (yes, I’m doing it now – picture me listening to music, checking email, Twitter, blogging and researching chi square testing).  I find that I have to remind myself of how much I can get done by taking the time to step back from it all and reflect.  Even given that, some of my best insights and ideas have come from when I am doing some mindless task instead of doing nothing at all but thinking.  Knowing that, I seek out that form of reflection and integrate it into the flow of my life.  Don’t think I’m all successful at it though – it’s an ongoing practice.  And although it doesn’t come naturally, I do the quiet, non-task version of reflection too… just not as often.

I can tell you that I have learned that if I don’t have this time on a regular basis, I’m less happy, less productive, less creative, less insightful – more restless, more stressed and more easily distracted.  There’s an inner warning bell that goes off when I start to feel like this.  I know it’s time to step back.

How have you found the power of reflection working for you?  Do you make time for it?  How does your life feel when you don’t make time for it?  Share your stories with me because I’m really interested in learning how it works for others.

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?