The views expressed by the business participants are their own.
The future of customer experience (CX) is about growth. We recently asked our customers and our extensive contacts what they consider the most important thing in their CX programs and what they see as the No. 1 challenge. 1 or something that keeps them up at night – and some of the answers shocked us.
Many of them say that customer experience is critical to success and creates a significant competitive advantage — we expected that answer. Many have cut costs, leaving service and sales experience as key differentiators. These teams are focused on action and building capabilities and can demonstrate a direct link between improving CX results and business KPIs.
What we didn’t expect was what they told us about their number 1 challenges. Maybe you can relate to these pain points in your CX process.
We expected to hear that they have too much data, not enough action and not enough time to take the necessary action based on said data. These pain points are measured in the top five challenges, but they tell us that 1) involved customers to provide meaningful feedback, aka response rates, and 2) encouraging team members to take ownership of their results to the top of the list. Survey fatigue is real – customers are tired of constant requests, and employees often dismiss the feedback as irrelevant or out of their control.
So what are the top three strategies that help address these challenges and help you achieve what we call “the growth response?”
Related: The Only Way to Win Customers is to Be Their First Choice. Here’s How To Do It.
1. Use action-driven accountability
The first key strategy is to act responsibly, so it’s all about your team. Your CX approach should remove any guesswork as to the “why,” “what,” “who” and “how” of what happened with each experience. Each team member must know what action is required and how their behavior makes customers feel. To improve customer response rates and generate a minimum of 50 words per response, there are some important keys:
- Make sure it’s on brand and feels like a virtual conversation.
- Keep it short – it shouldn’t take more than three minutes.
- Ask only questions related to the purpose of the visit.
- Make sure the tone of your survey questions sound authentic, sensitive and value their time and opinions.
- Allow them to complete a survey or feedback when and how they choose.
The results you get by following these simple steps will help you understand how they really felt and you can measure the impact of each behavior on loyalty and representation. For one client (a specialty retailer with 400 locations), we identified seven key behaviors that created the ideal experience. The customer wanted the staff to recommend more suitable items. The top 20% of stores had 34% higher add value and achieved 143% higher year-over-year comparable sales growth compared to the bottom 20% group. Happy customers buy more — and love the service experience!
Related: 4 Secrets to Turbocharging Revenue Growth Every Manager Should Know
2. Involve your groups
As mentioned, growth feedback will only happen if your teams are motivated to keep improving. Customer feedback collected via video, voice or text will help you link results to specific actions of your team members, and improve e-learning opportunities. It also emphasizes why it matters. When employees see relevance to themselves and feel responsible for those results, they are more likely to take action.
For example, one international client in home furnishings presented a question asking “Based on the knowledge, friendship, experience and advice of a team member who served you, how much would you be willing to be served by them again?” We compared the results to sales conversion rates (ie how many buyers became buyers) and found that those who performed well on this question had a higher conversion rate of 36%.
The key to growth is addressing what may be standing in the way, be it skill, confidence or ability, and addressing issues that hold teams back from fully engaging.
Related: Business Growth From Getting Right Customer Feedback. Here’s How To Get It.
3. Enable holistic growth
The third recommendation is to move beyond tracking points to focus on the behaviors that drive results. Use your CX program to acquire new customers, retain existing ones, increase average spend per customer, improve conversion rates, increase referrals and improve positive reviews on social media to attract more new customers. If you can identify the key behaviors that directly affect customer loyalty or dissatisfaction, you can move from chasing points to focusing only on the actions necessary to drive improvement. You can learn and apply proven best practices, identify mid-range scores and see what’s missing from what others call “vanilla” versus your “Wow!” service, and you can deal with negative feedback successfully.
As an example of how this approach promotes growth, at one of our clients in the automotive industry, we compared the results of the top 20% and bottom 20% of their annual sales and found out where their new customers came from (the so-called “path to purchase”), their scores of NPS and Google ratings. The top 20% group achieved 24% higher annual sales, 78% of new customers came from referrals and said they saw a positive review. They had an NPS rating of 96 vs. 64 less than 20% and a Google rating of 4.8 out of 5.0.
The key is to focus on concrete feedback, make each person accountable for their behavior with the results of your program linked to coping skills resources and focus on what you want most – be aware of your best practices and focus on behavior more than points (which are results). Remember that the key to getting more customers to respond is about how you personalize the survey questions to the type of customer to make it conversational and give them a real voice to tell you what’s most important to them. Finally, growth is about understanding the impact of consistently achieving all the important values.
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