Author: Kiersten Lopez

For a lot of companies, the phrase “experience programs” brings careful management and lots of metrics to mind. Both of those things are important components of any experience effort, but they can’t bring about meaningful change and improvement. Experience programs can revolve around so much more than scoreboard-watching and reacting to challenges only as they arise—we’re going to go over how much more these programs can be and why brands should adjust their ambitions accordingly.

Movement Over Metrics

Conventional wisdom holds that if an experience program is returning great measurements, that must mean it’s really working for a brand. However, this isn’t necessarily true. Metrics are effective for highlighting a brand’s high points and weak spots, but that’s about it. A true experience program’s job doesn’t end with better metrics—that’s actually where the work begins.

Companies can create a fundamentally better experience for their customers (and thus a stronger bottom line for themselves) by taking action on their program’s findings. This means sharing intelligence throughout an organization rather than leaving it siloed, as well as encouraging all stakeholders to own their part of the process. In short, taking action is what makes the difference between being really good at watching scores roll in and actually fixing problems that might be muddying up the customer journey.

Narratives Over Numbers

The phrase “program findings” from the preceding paragraph can also mean more than just numbers. It can also denote customer stories, employee reports, and other, more abstract forms of feedback. Many experience programs pick this information up as a matter of course, but it can be difficult to take action on that intel without a concrete action plan.

One reason why many companies encounter this difficulty is because their programs don’t acknowledge a simple truth: some customer segments are worth more to listen to than others. It doesn’t make much sense to try to listen to every segment for feedback on a loyalty program that only long-term customers use or know about. This is why it’s important for brands to consider which audiences they want to gather feedback from before even turning any listening posts on.

Once brands have matched the audiences they want to listen to to the goals they want to achieve, that’s when they can turn their ears on and start gathering that feedback. Companies that take this approach will find feedback significantly more relevant (and helpful) than intelligence gathered through a more catchall approach. They can then perform a key driver analysis on those customers and put their feedback against a backdrop of operational and financial data for further context, which goes a long way toward the goal of all of this: meaningful improvement.

Experience Improvement Over Experience Management

Experience improvement is not a goal that can be reached just by reading metrics. It demands more than turning listening posts on and hoping that a good piece of customer intel comes down the wire. Rather, experience improvement demands action. Much like water molecules, the forces that drive customer expectations, acquisition, churn, and other factors are in constant motion, and thus demand constant action to stay on top of it all.

Desiloing intelligence, motivating stakeholders, and expanding program awareness to customer stories instead of just higher scores and stats is what makes the difference between an industry-leading experience and everyone else’s. These actions create better experiences for customers, compel employees to become more invested in providing those experiences, and creates a marketplace-changing impact for the brand.

Click here to learn more about how to take your program from simple metric-watching to meaningful improvement for all.