State of the Industry

Although 80% of companies believe they offer a superior customer experience, only 8% of their customers agree. Why the disconnect?

The disconnect stems from the way the vast majority of organizations measure the customer experience. Many organizations still don’t measure customer experience at all, preferring to rely on anecdotal reports from customer support or from other customer interactions. For those organizations that do take the time to gather customer feedback, many of them measure customer satisfaction and not customer experience. For the small percentage of organizations that have customer experience management programs, most of those measure themselves using internally-created yardsticks.

This approach is flawed because the customer is rarely consulted about what is important to them. Consequently, the real issues that impact the customer experience are rarely identified. Organizations that create the best customer experiences measure themselves using a combination of internal metrics and customer-driven metrics. They ask their customers what’s important to them – in essence allowing their customers to define what and how they would like to rate their experience. They combine the customer view with their own internal yardsticks to create highly effective means of understanding how customers perceive their experience.

Once they develop these metrics, successful organizations relentlessly measure their performance and track progress against key indicators to make sure they’re moving the needle in the right direction. By looking at things through the customer’s eyes, organizations can avoid the disconnect that most companies experience.

What are the key steps to developing a comprehensive enterprise feedback management (EFM) program?

Recently Vovici conducted a primary research study of more than 200 companies around the globe to determine best practices in enterprise feedback management. The Customer Experience IQ report (CEIQ) found that there are six key components for developing an effective EFM program:

1. Implement a formal Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty program and gain buy-in across the organization
   Too many organizations have no formal program to measure the customer experience. This results in well-meaning business units and departments conducting individual feedback efforts without a coordinated approach. To be successful, organizations must decide what they’re going to measure (ideally with customer input in the process), and then get the buy-in of key internal stakeholders that the program will be given the resources, and most importantly, the management commitment to succeed.
2. Implement a common data collection platform
   Too many organizations are unintended victims of “disconnected listening”, a situation where they use multiple tools to listen to the voice of the customer. This results in uncoordinated efforts, a lack of a consolidated view into customer feedback, and dramatically increased costs. Successful organizations consolidate their listening efforts onto a single platform through which they manage all of their interactions and data collection efforts.
3. Utilize a common set of metrics and measure against them
   Once an organization has a plan, management commitment to execute against that plan, and a platform that enables consistent data collection, they need to create a common set of metrics and measure themselves against those metrics. But to be truly successful, they must also take advantage of the management commitment to the program to make positive change based on the feedback they’re receiving. Listening to the voice of the customer is the first step in the process, but at some point, listening has to turn into action. If it doesn’t, customers will stop providing feedback.
4. Use known data to personalize customer interactions and maintain response rates
   Customers have an expectation that they’ll be treated with respect, and a big part of that is showing them that you know how you’ve interacted with them in the past. Show them in your interactions that you know the products or services they use, how much money they spend, and any other data that’s relevant. Re-using this known data in your EFM efforts is critical because you respect their time, focus your feedback efforts, and show customers that you respect the relationship.
5. Share data with customers, employees and internal groups
   If all an organization does is listen and put the information learned into nice PowerPoint presentations, but doesn’t share the data with the people on the front lines, then a significant opportunity has been squandered. Customers will continue to share data freely with organizations that acknowledge their voice has been heard and is being acted upon. In addition, successful EFM programs also allow easy information sharing with front-line employees who interact with customers, as well as all functional organizational groups. Even those who don’t interact with customers on a daily basis can benefit from understanding what customers are saying.
6. Engage customers in an ongoing dialogue to co-create products and services
   Organizations that ask for their customers input into product and service offerings, report back on what they’ve heard, and then incorporate those ideas into future offerings consistently have the highest degrees of customer loyalty. The reason is simple: if you demonstrate that you have taken the time to listen and have incorporated customers’ ideas into future offerings, you create a sense of shared ownership. This co-creative environment is one of the most powerful loyalty-building tools you can create because it trumps competitive threats such as price wars, feature/function battles and other tactics by strengthening your bonds with customers.

As the speed and volume of information continues to grow exponentially, systematically integrating feedback based on a common goal across all customer touch points is essential to fulfilling customer expectations.  What is the most effective way for companies to achieve this?

Organizations can achieve this goal most easily by implementing an enterprise feedback management system that allows integration of all touch point data. Too often, feedback efforts are highly fragmented, with dozens of independent listening posts that don’t share data with one another, don’t coordinate feedback efforts, and collect data that can’t be compared and trended over time. EFM systems allow widely disparate groups within the organization to understand what feedback activities are taking place, what data has already been collected, and the timing of feedback activities. In addition, EFM systems can enable consistent data collection by allowing the creation and re-use of survey questions and response scales across an enterprise. Finally, EFM systems also protect your brand identity by ensure consistent adherence to brand standards in all feedback efforts.

What are some ways to apply EFM to social media to most effectively gain additional insights into customer preferences?

EFM works in conjunction with social media to engage customers in ongoing conversations and co-creative activities. Before the advent of social media, those of us in research used focus groups and one-on-one interviews to learn the needs and motivations of customers. Now the same qualitative information we used to obtain via traditional methods is available on a 24/7 basis through message boards, suggestion boxes, and a whole variety of other capabilities of online communities. This allows you to easily and continuously listen to conversations to understand what’s on your customers’ minds. As valuable as the information gathered is, it’s still not projectable because it’s virtually all qualitative data.

Qualitative data gathered from social media is made valuable when integrated with the quantitative data gathered from surveys. After listening to (or even participating in) conversations with customers, an integrated survey capability allows you test whether what you’ve heard is a projectable trend, or merely the opinions of a few highly active members. The integration of social media and EFM allows organizations to connect qualitative and quantitative data rapidly, efficiently and cost effectively.

Vovici recently conducted a survey of more than 400 people and determined that an overwhelming 95% of American consumers are concerned about their privacy on the Internet.  How do you see this impacting their relationships with brands? 

Vovici’s survey clearly shows that brands must treat their customers with respect. A big part of respecting customers is to ask for their permission to gather information and interact with them. In the past, seeking permission was an option; today customers are demanding that they explicitly provide that permission up front.

While this may seem like it presents roadblocks to organizations seeking to gather data, in reality, it lowers barriers to obtaining highly coveted information. When a customer provides you with permission to interact with them, in many cases it will ease the process of gathering data because they’re doing so in a permission-based environment. Brands have a responsibility to set rules around their behavior so that customers feel that they are providing information in a safe environment. The most successful brands inform customers what they plan to do with the data they gather, they adhere to those rules, and they respect the customer. Respect is a concept that plays heavily in this brave new Web 2.0 world.