Everyone knows that without the Customer, there is no business. It simply would not exist.
So, riddle me this Batman. Why do so few companies know what the key drivers of Customer Experience are for their business? Why do so many companies rely on lagging indicators such as satisfaction surveys and net promoter scores to tell them how happy, sad or just plain frustrated their customers are? Why are so many companies surprised when they get the results of the survey, or worse yet, dread the outcome of the survey because they know, in their gut, bad news is coming?
Could the reason for this obvious management gap be caused by the over-use of financial metrics as a proxy for customer satisfaction? i.e. If revenue looks good and is increasing, customers must like our stuff! My guess is YES, it’s probably true, but I also wouldn’t bet on using that mentality.
Measuring Revenue and Costs is easy. Measuring the Key Drivers of Customer Experience is hard. However, even though it is difficult, developing and operating a management system for customer experience should be as important, and likely more important, than a financial management system, especially if you can tie, with data, the Key Performance Indicators of Customer Experience to the financial performance of the company.
I suggest you MIMIC your Customer
- Manage Customer Experience by:
- Identification; Identify all customer touch points and put a process in place for collecting experience data. This includes conducting VOC projects specific to the identification of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of Customer Experience.
- Measurement; Measure by translating that data into a KPI Scorecard including current performance against the Customer’s Requirements
- Improvement; Improve by having leadership identify and select projects focused on specific KPI and by utilizing a robust improvement methodology such as Lean or Six Sigma.
- Communication; Communicate what you are doing to your customers and employees frequently. Customers don’t always feel the results of your work so it is important to let them know what you are doing to improve, why you selected that specific imitative for improvement and when the can expect to feel the difference. Think of this communication the same as the financial reporting you execute for stock holders or owners.
Beside, “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery”
WmM