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Author: Mike Henry

What Is a CSAT Score? How to Calculate and Utilize a CSAT Score

CSAT Score

A CSAT score is a commonly used customer experience (CX) metric that helps a company build a relationship of trust and understanding with its customers. A successful organization knows that a key element of success is a loyal foundation built within its customer base.

On paper, it may seem simple, but in reality, many companies struggle with building a customer-centric foundation within loyal customer relationships. One way to build and maintain solid relationships is to establish a channel for customers to communicate experience feedback to the company. 

The goal of a successful organization is to fully grasp what customers value—as well as dislike—regarding their experience with a business. A proven channel to understand customer sentiment is by implementing customer satisfaction surveys.

What Is a Customer Satisfaction or CSAT Score?

CSAT is short for customer satisfaction score. It’s a commonly used measurement tool that acts as a key performance indicator for customer service and product quality. CSAT is a general term understood, recognized by, and beneficial to a wide variety of industries. 

While customer satisfaction as an idea is a general one, CSAT is a more defined and specific metric that is expressed as a percentage. These more defined metrics can present as any of the four types of CSAT surveys:

#1: Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

#2:  Net Promoter Score (NPS®)

#3:  Customer Effort Score (CES)

#4:  Milestone Surveys

In this blog, the spotlight stays on what CSAT is, but it’s beneficial to have at least a brief understanding of the three other types of CSAT surveys to have a full grasp of the entire concept and how customer satisfaction can play a major role in organizational decision-making processes.  

Net Promoter Score:

Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is a metric that indicates the willingness of customers to promote a company’s product or services and separates customers into promoters, detractors, and passives. While NPS is a valuable indicator of customer satisfaction, it also can surface pain points that can lead a company to revise, shift or fix friction points in the customer journey to encourage positive customer experience that leads to customer promotion. 

Customer Effort Score:

Customer Effort Score, or CES, is a specific customer experience survey metric that enables companies to track the ease of or effort required within the customer interaction with a product or service within the duration of the customer relationship with the company. In measuring CES, organizations gain insights and data that enable business improvements in and around the customer experience to uncover laborious friction points that act as roadblocks to customer interactions.

A Milestone Survey: 

A Milestone Survey is a questionnaire sent out at specific moments throughout the customer journey to help organizations better understand the customer experience over time. A milestone can either be triggered by time (after 30 days) or by experience (after onboarding).

What Types of Questions Would a Customer Satisfaction Survey Include?

When drafting a CSAT survey, it is wise to consider including a variety of questions that explore the different aspects and relationships surrounding the customer’s journey with a product or service. 

The five most beneficial and key question types that provide a wide and valuable range of insight that will likely benefit any organization are:

  • Product Usage Questions
  • Demographics Questions
  • Psychographics Questions
  • Satisfaction Scale Questions
  • Open Ended Text Questions

Product Usage Questions:

Product Usage Questions explore when and how, and why customers are interacting with your product; they will be critical in identifying customer expectations and needs that lead to product engagement. Product usage questions point to the value or lack thereof that a product provides. Listening to the voice of the customer regarding our product will provide clarity and insight beyond what controlled studies can provide. With product usage data, companies can get a more complete picture regarding functionality and value its product provides. 

Demographic Questions:

Demographic Questions can help you determine a variety of components within a population’s characteristics that may influence a customer’s decisions surrounding your product. It’s common within demographic questions to gather information about customers’ income level, marital status, gender,  identity, and geographical location. With product usage segmented data, companies are better informed to make wise business decisions on how to target a specific demographic by utilizing the data from their customer feedback. This data-based information may help you develop products and or services that relate more specifically to customers.

Psychographic Questions: 

Psychographic Questions will give valuable insight into the customer lifecycle by providing you with information about unique customer specifics. Psychographics describe human traits that could include: hobbies, interests, likes and dislikes, goals, values, lifestyle, or physiological tendencies. Psychographic survey questions may help measure the personality traits and tendencies of a customer’s preferences regarding a company’s products and services.

Satisfaction Scale Questions:

Satisfaction Scale Questions may promote feedback and curb survey fatigue as the structure of the question can be an easy way for customers to give an overall sentiment of their experience with the company or product using a single click. The satisfaction scale asks, on a scale of 1-5, or 1-10, how satisfied a customer is. This scale can be as general or specific as the feedback a company would like to receive and can provide companies direction on who their promoter and detractor customers are and allow them to target them according to their overall satisfaction sentiments. 

Open-Text Questions:

Open-Text Questions allow customers more freedom to share and expound upon unique experiences and assist in gathering highly valuable responses not available in other forms of questioning. Open-text questions are relatively harder to analyze as data sets and require text analysis, but they help capture subjective and individualized experiences regarding the customer journey better than other forms of questioning. 

How Do You Calculate and Measure a CSAT Score?

CSAT score is a customer feedback metric measured via one or more variations of this question: “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the products or service you received?” Respondents use the following or similar 1 to 5 scale:

  1. Very Unsatisfied: ( Where a customer would be considered a detractor)
  2. Unsatisfied: (Where a customer would be considered at risk of churn)
  3. Neutral: (Where a customer would be considered a slight risk of churn)
  4. Satisfied: ( Where a customer would be considered a promoter)
  5. Very Satisfied: ( Where a customer would be considered a promoter)

CSAT scores are usually developed into a percentage scale, with 100 percent representing complete customer satisfaction. The results of a CSAT survey can be averaged out to give a Composite Customer Satisfaction Score by taking the number of satisfied customers and dividing them by the number of surveys received. CSAT Surveys remain the most successful way to elicit customer feedback and come in a variety of forms and templates. Customers may be accustomed to a traditional questionnaire or website form, but more and more, the less traditional format, such as a popup, an app, via text message, or other unconventional methods, are being adopted as users can easily navigate these methods within the comfort of their touchscreen devices.  

Why Are Customer Satisfaction Surveys Important?

When customers feel their voice is being heard, they are more likely to communicate their unique and personal experiences with a product or service. In the event of negative experience feedback, customers are more likely to stay if they can see their experience remedied. Unsatisfied customers have the potential to become loyal promoters after being retained from negative feedback, and a well-timed customer satisfaction survey can hone the customer journey and improve satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and likelihood to repurchase.

Moving Forward with CSAT Surveys

Occasionally customer satisfaction feedback will provide a descriptive experience, especially if open-ended questions are included, but most customer feedback will be brief, concise, and to the point. Whatever form the feedback takes, the notion that any feedback is better than none remains, and the CSAT score is the best way to receive,  sort, and take data-based action to improve. 

Utilizing CSAT scores and insights wisely can lead to a positive influx of new customers and contribute to well-maintained relationships with existing ones. 

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Simple Random Sampling: Definition and Method Guide

Simple Random Sampling

If you are an organization with thousands of customers, surveying your entire customer base can seem like a daunting task. The likelihood of all of your customers (whether they number in the thousands or in the hundreds) answering a survey is slim to none. But, customer feedback is critical to driving Experience Improvement and growing your CX program. So, with such slim odds, how are you supposed to trust the customer feedback you do get? 

Simple random sampling is the perfect solution to this problem. Sampling methods such as simple random sampling allow businesses to get the data they need to make decisions without having to go through any unnecessary work. The goal of using simple random sampling is to get a small group that is unbiased representative of a larger population.

What is Simple Random Sampling and Why Is It Important?

A simple random sample is a selection of participants from a population. What makes this sampling method different is that each participant has an equal probability of being selected.   

Simple random sampling is important for many reasons. First, the subgroups from your population will be unbiased. Since they were chosen at random, they do not have any predisposed bias as participants, and they do not suffer from researcher bias. 

It is also important because these unbiased groups allow businesses to get data that is reflective of the entire population, without actually having to survey the entire population. 

What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Simple Random Sampling?

Many businesses prefer simple random sampling for its simplicity and lack of bias. It is also the easiest form of sampling. You don’t need to be a data analyst in order to perform this sampling method; and the data you receive can be applied to the whole population. 

The biggest disadvantage to be aware of is researcher bias. Researcher bias occurs when the researcher conducting the sampling selects participants to be in a subgroup based on their personal biases. This can be easily avoided by including multiple forms of random selection in your sampling. 

How Do You Perform Simple Random Sampling?

Simple random sampling is the perfect tool for a company looking to get an idea of how its entire customer base feels about a certain subject. Let’s say that you work for a nationwide retailer, and are interested in finding out how your loyalty members feel about a new selection of loyalty perks that you are considering to develop. 

You could go into the database that has a list of all of your loyalty members or, in this case, the list of your population. After assigning each member a number, you could use a random number generator to randomly select the number of participants you have chosen for your sample size. 

This subgroup of members, chosen at random, can now be surveyed. Their responses can be analyzed and can also be viewed as being representative of your entire member base. 

Sampling With InMoment

If you’re interested in understanding your customer base without having to survey each and every customer, then simple random sampling may be your answer. But understanding that data, what it means, and what to do with it moving forward can be difficult. 

InMoment, the leader in people-oriented text analytics, can help. Built on industry-recognized metrics and real-time intelligence, InMoment provides the tools and support you need to find hidden insights in your data. For more information on data gathering and analysis, visit our Learning Hub and look at how our data studios can be beneficial to your business. 

Watch the Video – Get More Out of Your CX Program

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Unlock Expert Guidance on Today’s CX Challenges & Opportunities

From proving ROI and navigating budget constraints to adopting AI and creating seamless omnichannel experiences, these challenges are shaping the future of customer experience. In this report, discover actionable insights and recommendations from our CX experts to help you overcome these obstacles and drive growth.

2025 Consumer Trends Report

The One Report You Don't Want to MIss: The way customers interact with brands is evolving faster than ever. Our free 2025 Consumer Trends Report highlights the key shifts transforming customer experience (CX) and what your business needs to stay competitive.

Your Top 3 ROI Questions, Answered

ROI Questions

Imagine if you were still operating your business in the same way you were in 2019. Total nightmare, right? Your customer experience (CX) program, like your business, needs to be able to grow and evolve to prove a return on investment. If you’re like the majority of CX practitioners (CX Network’s “Global State of CX” report shows that it is the second highest concern for CX practitioners), you likely have quite a few ROI questions.

In our over two decades of experience helping the world’s best brands positively impact their bottom line with Experience Improvement, we’ve heard quite a few of these ROI questions, and have determined the strategies at the heart of a profitable program. In order to achieve true ROI, you need to take an integrated approach to experience by breaking down data silos and creating one ecosystem of data. 

All of your customer data needs to exist in one place, where it can be accessed from anywhere in the organization, meaning that the game changing insights you need to acquire new customers, keep the old ones, expand customer lifetime value, and cut inefficient or costly processes are all in one place.

InMoment recently held a webinar with representatives from Forrester, an independent market research firm, to give you the answers you need about your top CX ROI questions. InMoment’s Principal CX Strategist Jim Katzman and Forrester’s Senior Analyst Judy Weader discuss showing the value of your CX program, designing digital experiences that make your business stand out, and setting your brand up for success. Let’s dive in! 

Your Top 3 ROI Questions

ROI Question #1: Why Is Showing the Value of Customer Experience So Difficult?

Showing the value of your CX program can be a daunting task. How are you supposed to link improving experiences back to financial gain? Well, the truth is, most CX professionals don’t know the right mechanics they need to perform in order to show ROI through their CX program. 

In order to showcase the ROI of your CX program, there are going to be calculations involved. But, don’t be intimidated by that. It isn’t as complicated as it may seem. 

Let’s take a look at a call center for an example. At every call center, there is an average cost per call. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say our call center has an average cost per call of $5. If this call center receives 100 calls per day about an identified pain point (let’s say it’s a confusing process), you would be able to take that customer feedback and turn it into an actionable insight which would clarify the process, thus relieving the pain point. 

By taking action, you may be able to turn 100 calls per day into 80 calls per day. 20 less calls per day at $5 average cost per call is a $100 of daily savings. Just like that, we have proved that having a CX program that creates actionable insights provides a return on investment to the organization. 

Showing the value of your CX program is easiest when you are able to turn actions into numbers. By making decisions based on customer data, are you increasing revenue? Decreasing costs?

ROI Question #2: How Are Business Designing Digital Experiences That Make a Difference?

When developing a digital product or service, it’s important to think about the context that your offering will be used in. Think of your favorite airline, or an airline that has developed a “good” mobile application. The reason these apps succeed are because they were designed with the knowledge that when you check-in for a flight, you aren’t going to haul out your computer. These airlines knew it would be easier and more convenient for their customers to be able to check-in for a flight when they were on the go. 

When you develop your products and services around your end customer, you’ll be able to create digital experiences that enrich peoples’ lives and generate more adoption, engagement, and advocacy.  

When designing and developing your products, you also need to remember to design for accessibility. If you aren’t thinking about accessibility in your products, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. There are over a billion people in the world that are disabled. Whether it be different font sizes, text-to-speech options, or modified touchscreen shortcuts, designing for accessibility is something that needs to be done throughout the design process. It is not something that can be bolted on after the launch date. 

ROI Question #3: What Three Things I Can Do to Set My CX Program Up for Success?

  • Have a Good CX Vision

The optimal CX vision for your organization should be derived from your brand vision. Your brand vision should answer the question “What do I want my brand to be for the market?” Consequently, your CX vision should answer the question “What do I want my CX program to be for my customers in order to support my brand vision?” 

  • Build Out a CX Strategy

Developing a CX strategy can seem like a long, intimidating process. But, it is important to remember that the goal of your CX strategy is to bring your CX vision to life. If we take one more step back, your CX vision should reflect your brand vision. So, at its core, your CX strategy should align with your business goals in order to bring that brand vision to life. Using your business goals as a base, you will be able to develop an effective, focused CX strategy. Your motto should be to “design with the end in mind.”

  • Align Your Priorities

You want to make decisions that are grounded in customer understanding and current business initiatives. When thinking about which initiatives to go after first, take a moment to think. What matters most to the business? What are the goals that your business is trying to achieve now versus what they hope to achieve later? By prioritizing your CX initiatives with your business goals, you will create an effective CX program. 

Moving Forward

As you look forward and adopt these principles into your own ROI strategy, don’t stress about being perfect. CX programs are ongoing, ever-changing, and constantly evolving assets to your business. There is no set “right” way to utilize your CX program. 

Our recommendation? Start with a quick win—a straightforward project you can measure the success of. 

An ROI Example from an InMoment Client

A few years ago, one of our clients, a national chain restaurant, was looking for a new way to get in touch with their customers. They already had an internal assessment system that was used as a comprehensive assessment of performance in front- and back-of-house operations and policies related to Food Safety, company standards, and guest experience (e.g., quality, order accuracy, speed of service, staff friendliness, cleanliness, and team engagement). 

With more than 13,000 of these assessments completed each year, the results helped drive continuous improvement in quality, operations, and brand standards—but they lacked a view into the guest perspective. 

This company chose InMoment as its CX optimization partner based on its ability to interface audit data with CX data. By bringing audit and guest feedback data together, InMoment’s prescriptive analytics automatically generated two improvement priorities for each location. The integration model takes into consideration both guest experience and audit score, and creates priorities tied to the greatest return on investment: where this organization should put more time, energy, and effort. 

After implementing these data-driven improvements using the InMoment and internal audit correlated system, the organization’s restaurants saw a significant increase in all key metrics in just eight months:

  • 34% in OSAT
  • 33% in Friendliness
  • 22% in Product Quality
  • 22% in Cleanliness and Facility 
  • 19% in Speed of Service
  • 12% in “Make it Right” (if an order had a mistake, was it corrected?)
  • 3% in Order Accuracy 

By focusing on just two improvement priorities at each location, this organization was able to completely transform its relationship with its customers. Starting with small, measurable initiatives is a great way to kickstart your CX program. These small initiatives might even have results that expand further across the organization than you would expect. 

If you want to learn more about extracting ROI from your CX program, watch the full webinar here! 

Watch the Video – Get More Out of Your CX Program

Watch this demo video to see how InMoment’s award-winning AI tech does the heavy lifting on analysis so you can spend more time lifting CX results.

Unlock Expert Guidance on Today’s CX Challenges & Opportunities

From proving ROI and navigating budget constraints to adopting AI and creating seamless omnichannel experiences, these challenges are shaping the future of customer experience. In this report, discover actionable insights and recommendations from our CX experts to help you overcome these obstacles and drive growth.

2025 Consumer Trends Report

The One Report You Don't Want to MIss: The way customers interact with brands is evolving faster than ever. Our free 2025 Consumer Trends Report highlights the key shifts transforming customer experience (CX) and what your business needs to stay competitive.

CX 101: What Is a Cluster Analysis? 

Cluster Analysis

Math and numbers are the ultimate in ‘exact science.’ When we work within the confines of mathematics, we can expect absolute precision in our results. In data analysis terms, this can be a real advantage, giving us clear, definite numbers on which to base future decisions. Unfortunately, sometimes the real world being represented by the data is anything but exact. And when it comes to grouping objects based on a somewhat nebulous idea of similarity, traditional statistical tools may fall short. 

Cluster analysis is an answer to this problem. With cluster analysis, data analysts can construct data groups (or clusters) based on a range of similarities and differences. The end goal is to distinguish data points in such a way that those within a group are as similar as possible and completely distinct from the data points belonging to separate groups.

Here, we take a closer look at cluster analysis, how to perform one, how to interpret the data, and what potential disadvantages you should be aware of before you get started. But first, let’s define the term itself.

What Is Cluster Analysis?

At its most basic, cluster analysis is a statistical methodology designed to allow analysts to process data by organizing individual objects into groups defined by their similarity or association. Also called segmentation analysis or taxonomy analysis, cluster analysis exists to help identify homogenous groups with a range of items when the grouping is not already known or defined. In other words, cluster analysis is exploratory; data scientists who apply cluster analysis don’t begin with any predefined classes or expectations.

Instead, cluster analysis takes a collection of data items and attempts to organize them based on how closely associated each one is with the others. Visually, this is often represented using a multi-axis graph to more accurately identify which data points are similar and which are not.

One common example of clustering is the arrangement of items within a grocery store—products are classified and grouped based on how similar they are in purpose.

Cluster analysis is an essential aspect of modern artificial intelligence (AI) and data mining, and businesses often rely on clustering to segment customer populations into different marketing or user groups. Cluster analysis may be used in a range of business and non-business applications.

Steps for Making a Cluster Analysis

There are nearly as many ways to cluster data points as there are groups to segment them into. As such, there is no single process that represents the standard mechanism of cluster analysis. The following process, however, is a reliable set of steps you can use when clustering data:

1. Confirm the Metricality of the Data

For effective clustering, your data needs to have actual numerical values. This is because you will need to define the ‘distance’ between data points. So even if you are working with non-metric data (such as people’s names), you still need to define the similarities in a numerical way (such as by saying that individuals with the same name have a distance defined as 0 and those with different names have a distance defined as 1). 

2. Select Variables

Selecting the right variables is essential to producing relevant, usable cluster data. Perform exploratory research beforehand so that you have a clear idea of which variables to use. 

3. Define Similarities

As with selecting your variables, choosing and defining similarity measures to chart the ‘distances’ between your observations is key to producing a usable cluster analysis. You can define similarities in hundreds of different ways, so be aware of your options as you work with your data. 

4. Visualize Pairwise Distances

With the correct variables in place and your similarities fully defined, you can now begin to visualize your cluster analysis data. You can plot individual attributes as well as the pairwise distances on a histogram chart, with your classes represented as columns on the horizontal axis. Peaks within those columns may represent potential segments.

5. Choose a Method and Number of Segments

Again, there are many different methods one may use to cluster data. You may wish to try a variety of approaches until you find one that clearly represents actionable information in a clear and robust way. Cluster analysis is iterative, so be willing to work with the data until it starts to work for you.

6. Interpret the Segments

With your chosen method and number of segments, your next step is to get a clearer idea of the data points themselves and how they relate to one another. Make note of how the segments differ based on your variables. It can be extremely helpful to visualize these clusters using graphing techniques. 

7. Perform Ongoing Analysis 

With your core data visually represented and your individual data points more fully understood, the final step is to dig down deeper with increasingly robust cluster analysis. This may include subjecting your data to different subsets, distance metrics, segmentation attributes, segmentation methods, or numbers of clusters. By exploring multiple variations, you should be able to see how well your data holds up, how much overlap you have between your clusters, and how similar your segment profiles are across different approaches.

How to Interpret and Measure Clustering

Cluster analysis is based on the assumption that the lower the numerically-represented distance between items, the higher the similarity level—provided that you have a reasonable number of clusters to work with. You can use a silhouette coefficient score to calculate how healthy your clusters are by determining the average silhouette coefficient value of each of the objects in the data set. 

Measuring your clusters also heavily depends on the questions you ask regarding your initial data. Important cluster analysis questions include:

  • How will you measure the similarity between objects?
  • How will similarity variables be weighted?
  • Once similarities are established how will classes be formed?
  • How will clusters be defined?
  • What conclusions can you draw regarding the clusters’ statistical significance?

Advantages and Disadvantages of Cluster Analysis in Sampling

A key application of cluster analysis in cluster sampling. Cluster sampling divides an entire study population into externally homogeneous but internally heterogeneous groups, with each cluster acting as a miniature representation of the whole. The groups must be divided randomly, and then individual groups are randomly selected and every individual in that group is sampled. 

For example, cluster sampling allows researchers to study certain types of communities within the country without having to acquire subjects from hundreds or thousands of different locations. Instead, these communities are divided into similar groups and a random sample of communities is assessed. In this case, the randomly-selected subset represents the whole population. Another example might be an airline that chooses to survey all of the passengers on several randomly-selected flights every day to infer conclusions about their passengers as a whole population. 

Cluster analysis as a sampling methodology offers some clear advantages over more traditional random or stratified sampling. For one, cluster sampling tends to demand fewer resources and is more cost-effective. For another, cluster analysis may be more feasible while still providing a comprehensive view of an entire population. 

That said, there are also certain disadvantages that you should be aware of. Perhaps the biggest drawback is that cluster sampling is prone to higher error rates than many other sampling techniques; the results obtained are not always fully reflective of the population as a whole. Additionally, unconscious biases may seep into this sampling methodology creating biased inferences about the entire population.

Better Analysis with InMoment

If you’re interested in getting a clear picture of the similarities and differences across a data set, then cluster analysis may be the answer. But ensuring that your cluster data accurately represents your sample group and clearly expresses valuable information can be difficult. Understanding cluster analysis and cluster sampling methodologies and how best to interpret the resultant data will provide you with the insight you need to understand the associations between your objects. 

InMoment, the leader in people-oriented text analytics, can help. Built on industry-recognized metrics and real-time intelligence, InMoment provides the tools and support you need to find hidden insights in your data. For more information on data gathering and analysis, visit our Learning Hub.

Watch the Video – Get More Out of Your CX Program

Watch this demo video to see how InMoment’s award-winning AI tech does the heavy lifting on analysis so you can spend more time lifting CX results.

Unlock Expert Guidance on Today’s CX Challenges & Opportunities

From proving ROI and navigating budget constraints to adopting AI and creating seamless omnichannel experiences, these challenges are shaping the future of customer experience. In this report, discover actionable insights and recommendations from our CX experts to help you overcome these obstacles and drive growth.

2025 Consumer Trends Report

The One Report You Don't Want to MIss: The way customers interact with brands is evolving faster than ever. Our free 2025 Consumer Trends Report highlights the key shifts transforming customer experience (CX) and what your business needs to stay competitive.

3 Necessities for Seamless, Stand-Out Retail Experiences

Seamless Retail Experiences

It is no secret that today’s retailers are faced with unique challenges. The rapidly-changing, ever-evolving retail landscape continues to present questions, roadblocks, and pain points that retailers need to address. These tribulations can take many forms; defining customer loyalty in emerging consumers, creating seamless retail experiences across channels, tracking a customer base that seems to be in multiple places at once, and keeping up with a digital landscape that changes as frequently as the Cleveland Browns change quarterbacks. 

In such a fast-paced environment, how are retail brands expected to succeed? The keys lie in your customer data—and how you leverage it. 

3 Necessities for Stand-Out, Seamless Customer Experiences in Retail

  1. Integrate Data From Everywhere Into Your CX Platform
  2. Increase Experience Awareness
  3. Encourage a Culture of Commitment 

#1: Integrate Data From Everywhere Into Your CX Platform

One of the most important keys to deliver seamless customer experiences is to have seamless data integration from everywhere into your CX platform. In order to form a holistic view of your customer’s experience, you need to be able to analyze every data point you can. 

Your customer’s data comes in many different forms (you can learn more about customer data in this article from InMoment Customer Insights Expert Jessica Petrie). Whether it be surveys, review sites, or social media. If you only look at one or two of those data sources, your view of the customer is incomplete, and it may cause you to make decisions for a customer base that you don’t fully understand. 

To continue to provide stand-out experiences, you need to view the customer experience from every angle, and across every channel. This is done by making sure your CX platform is capable of ingesting all of your data and displaying it in an easily accessible, centralized location so that you can access holistic customer insights whenever you need. 

#2: Increase Experience Awareness

Across the hundreds of brands and partners we’ve worked with here at InMoment, we have learned what works, formed a cohesive and proven approach, and can now guide our clients toward a successful CX governance strategy. This strategy will look different depending on the size and structure of your organization. 

Regardless of what you call it or where it lives, you need to have a plan for how you will make your CX program an organization-wide, customer-centric initiative—and keep it that way. It has to be more than just saying you are customer-centric, or having the word “customer” in your mission statement. 

Every department should have a window into the insights you gain from your CX program—and be able to leverage them in their decision making. The information you receive from customers needs to be shared with all other departments and teams, not siloed in different departments, otherwise, you could be sitting on insights that could make a huge difference in your bottomline. When you break down those silos and create channels of communication across departments, your business will see more success in the areas that matter most!

The first step to creating that kind of organizational support and buy-in for your CX program is to create a cross-functional council. This council, made up of representatives from every part of the organization, should be chaired by the CEO or a high-level CX champion. 

This council should aim to manage the activities of the tactical working teams that are striving to improve the customer experience as well as communicate expectations throughout the company and particularly to the customer-facing associates. 

For example, many large organizations have a Chief Customer Officer, an executive professional in charge of the company’s relationship with the customer, who reports to the CEO.   

Truly best in class CX companies will often have what we call CX Champions, Ambassadors or Champions scattered throughout the company that are championing or spearheading efforts within each of the silos we discussed.

#3: Encourage a Culture of Commitment 

A “Culture of Commitment” is the ultimate goal of any customer experience program. In a company with a true Culture of Commitment, every single employee is invested in making experiences better for customers. Whether it be in store, over the phone, or online, these employees are the face of your CX program, and they understand the impact they are making on customer experiences every day. 

When your employees are engaged in the experience, your organization will benefit. Did you know that 70% of the time, a person will become a repeat customer when their complaint is resolved? And that engaged employees can increase an organization’s sales by up to 20%? 

By having engaged, customer-centric employees, you will see an increase in the frontline metrics that matter to your organization. Frontline employees are the biggest customer facing assets your organization has. While executive sponsorship is important, your CX program needs buy-in from everyone in the organization in order to be successful. 

How a Global Footwear Retailer & InMoment Client Started with Customer Data, Fostered CX Governance, and Inspired a Culture of Customer Commitment

One of our clients, a global footwear retailer, leveraged all three of these strategies to move toward a fully customer-centric approach to business. 

It started a few years ago, when an operations team leader, who was passionate about his team being customer-centric, started using customer data points as supporting points in conversations with his team. 

These conversations would look like “Did you know that when our associates offer additional merchandise at the point of purchase, there is a 17% average transaction size uplift.” or “Did you know when our associates are successful helping a customer try on a shoe, they are 3x more likely to make a purchase.”  

This CX champion was able to leverage these customer insights to socialize this information, and make other departments and employees aware of how they could improve the customer experience. Through these actions, a small cross-functional CX governance committee was formed. 

This team was able to get the attention of the executives with their data-driven decision making and were therefore able to help the c-suite realize that factors such as employee behavior, customer behavior, and customer insights are all important factors that drive sales and increase the bottom line. 

After the C-suite executives realized the importance of a CX program, they invested more into it. The CX program adapted and started to utilize an integrated approach to customer experience, where they combined insights from different areas of the organization. And with that approach, they are set to set off the same cycle of success over and over again!

So What? 

Based on our expertise and the lessons we have learned from all the CX programs we have helped grow, we have formulated a list of next steps that will help you make progress towards integrated CX!

Step #1: Go Beyond Surveys

Integrated CX isn’t just about surveys. Find other signals in your organization, and integrate them into your program. 

Step #2: Understand Emerging Customers

Continue to understand your customers. But, you also need to listen to the non-purchaser. Having a deep understanding of your future or potential customers will help you make business decisions. 

Step #3: Get Ahead, Stay Ahead

Having a plan in place is key to your CX success. At InMoment, we often talk about designing with the end in mind. Knowing where you want your CX program to go and what you want to accomplish is key for starting out in a CX program. 

Step #4: Action, Action, Action

Go to work. Identify the initiatives that will have an economic impact. All action taken should be tied back to a specific outcome. 

If you want to learn more about leveraging customer data to craft seamless, differentiated experiences in store & online, watch the full webinar here!

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Survey Methodology

Survey Methodology

When it comes to collecting data, one of the best ways to do so is a survey. Most companies put out surveys of some kind for customers and employees at different points. But there’s more to a survey than just a series of questions. In fact, surveys typically have a method behind them to gather specific types of data and to make them as effective as possible. But what is a survey method? What is survey methodology? Read on to learn about survey methodology and why that matters.  

What Is Survey Methodology? 

What is survey methodology? To begin, it’s important to distinguish between a survey methodology and a survey method. A survey method is the process or tool you use to gather information via a survey. For example, you might create an online survey with multiple choice questions, and that would be your survey method. A survey method can be qualitative or quantitative. We’ll talk more about survey method options and their pros and cons later on. 

Survey methodology, on the other hand, is the study of survey methods. It’s looking at all of the survey methods available and using applied statistical information to determine what methods give certain errors and where accuracy can be improved. Essentially, survey methodology studies sampling techniques and practices and determines the accuracy, so researchers of all kinds can improve their methods and get more accurate results. 

What Is the Purpose of Survey Methodology? 

So what is the purpose of survey methodology? Why do we have an entire field of applied statistics working on surveys? It’s important to understand why survey methods matter first. Survey methods are designed to help researchers and companies get information as accurately as possible. After all, the data you gather isn’t worth much if it’s completely inaccurate or riddled with errors that make it difficult to use. Survey methods are how you get data. 

Survey methodology exists to support survey methods. Survey methodology is all about studying the ways to improve the accuracy of survey methods, so researchers and companies can get the most accurate results from their surveys. It’s a field that exists to minimize errors—any deviations from your desired outcome—and help create data that’s as accurate to a population as possible. 

Think about it this way. The common stats phrase for setting up a survey is, “Garbage in, garbage out.” That means that if your method gathers bad data, you’re going to get bad results. The bad data can come from a variety of sources, but one major source is that your tool for gathering the data isn’t very accurate. Survey methodology’s purpose is to make those tools as accurate as possible. It’s what helps researchers and companies get great tools or methods to gather reliable data and get accurate results. 

Types of Survey Methods

Now that it’s clear what the difference between survey methods and survey methodology are, we can look at common types of survey methods available. 

Quantitative and Qualitative

Methods can include both qualitative and quantitative data, but what’s the difference? Qualitative data is descriptive data and more conceptual data. For example, if your survey is gathering qualitative data, you would want to collect quotes from respondents and try to look at the emotions and sentiments of your potential customers, rather than performing a statistical analysis. Qualitative data is the heart of data. 

Quantitative data is data that’s numerical—or quantifiable. When you perform a quantitative survey, you’re gathering information you can do a statistical analysis on; you want to know numbers. While qualitative data is the heart of your data, quantitative data is the bones and muscles; it’s what gives your data structure and support. 

Both quantitative and qualitative data are incredibly important. When you’re choosing to collect data, think about what you hope to accomplish with your data and whether you’re collecting qualitative data or quantitative data. That’s an important part of your survey methods. 

Structured and Unstructured

Another important part of your methods is the structure you choose. Some surveys are very particularly structured while some or more unstructured and allow respondents more liberty with how they answer and where the conversation goes. To determine how much structure you want, think about what kind of data you want at the end. If you want very specific types of data and quantitative data, you would probably choose a structured method that has people responding to exactly what you’re exploring. 

If you’re looking more at qualitative data, you might find it beneficial to take either route. On paper, a structured survey might be easier and get you the information you need. In an interview survey, you could go either way—or even strike a balance between the two—depending on if you’re interested in seeing where the conversation ends up going or in gathering data on something specific. 

Open Ended or Closed Ended Questions

Now it’s time to think of the methods for questions. In general, you can gather information from open ended or closed ended questions. Open ended questions are ones without answer options, a yes or no response, or a true and false response. These kinds of questions are typically geared toward qualitative data (but can be flexible, of course). Closed ended questions typically have respondents choose from some kind of option or require a one-word or one-number kind of answer. These questions are common for quantitative methods. 

Ultimately, a great survey may combine both open ended and closed ended questions to get a variety of data. 

Survey Collection Methods

The final aspect of your survey methods is the method of collection. There are many ways to collect data, but these are a few common ways with their advantages and disadvantages: 

  • Face-to-face
    • Pros: very personal, allows you to see non-verbal nuance, flexible for both structured and unstructured questions
    • Cons: can be time consuming to set up and takes resources to make happen
  • Online
    • Pros: easy to organize, can be easy to get large amounts of data at once, digital responses that are easy to analyze
    • Cons: could be subject to survey response bias, respondents may not complete the entire survey
  • Observations
    • Pros: simple to do and doesn’t require expert design, great for testing hypotheses
    • Cons: could affect the accuracy, no controlled variables
  • Focus groups
    • Pros: easy for qualitative and unstructured data gathering, get a variety of perspectives, may lead to salient ideas you haven’t considered
    • Cons: participants might not reveal their true thoughts, opinions of the respondents could be influenced by other participants

As you can see, there are so many survey methods to choose from to consider. And survey methodology is all about how to make these methods more effective. 

How to Write a Survey Methodology

When you’re going to use a survey, you can write out your methodology—or all the components of your methods and how effective they may be. Here are the steps to writing a survey methodology: 

  • Define your sample group and size (evaluate for accuracy against the population)
  • Decide on your methods and data collection method (while evaluating the effectiveness of those choices)
  • Design your survey questions and remember to keep in mind: 
    • The approach
    • Your time frame
    • Your method of collection
    • The wording of questions
    • Biases
    • (Evaluating each of these helps determine the accuracy of your methods)
  • Collect data
  • Organize and analyze your results

At the end of it, your methodology is all about thinking about and evaluating your accuracy with your chosen survey methods. 

The Bottom Line

Surveying can be a lot—especially when you not only have to consider your methods but also your methodology. There’s a lot to consider for data collection and analysis. But you don’t have to do it alone. InMoment—a leader in survey creation, collection, and analysis—is here to support you. Contact us today to see how we can help you with your survey methodology. 

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5 Things We Learned from EMEA Customer Experience Experts at XI Forum Europe

EMEA Customer Experience Expert

After nine EMEA customer experience experts, 200+ delegates, eight workshops, and hours of fun and networking at the colourful evening reception, it’s safe to say the XI Forum Europe was a success! 

We heard from award-winning CX speakers from some of Europe’s biggest brands—TRUMPF, ASOS, Brakes, Primark, Solus, BD Medical, NatWest and Euro Car Parts, as well as thought-provoking keynotes from InMoment Global Leader, CMO Kristi Knight, and Stan Swinford, CEO and Founder of NPSx by Bain & Company. Hosted over two days, attendees learned practical tips and best practices they can implement immediately into their experience programmes to elevate their experience programmes.

If you missed out on the event, don’t worry—here are five key takeaways you can use to apply to your experience programme today! 

5 Pieces of Advice from Our EMEA Customer Experience Experts

#1: Managing Experiences Is Not Enough—The Future Is Experience Improvement

Customer experience started out in the golden age of advertising, market research, and understanding consumers. Then, the internet was born, and online surveys were created to collect customer feedback in a timely manner. Next, we started managing experiences, and we recognised that the total experience a customer has is a collection of moments and interactions along their journey. 

The idea of simply “managing” metrics tells your business where you are and where you’ve been, not necessarily where you’re going. The future of customer experience is moving past managing experiences, to actually improving them through Experience Improvement (XI). 

#2: Create a Culture of Customer-Centricity by Adopting a Customer-First Mindset

EMEA customer experience experts from Brakes, Solus, BD Medical, and NatWest all noted the importance of building an internal culture within your company to educate your employees on the importance of putting the customer first. Providing colleagues with valuable insight and giving them recognition leads to better employee experience and engagement, which in turn leads to a greater customer experience. Frontline employees need strategic communication.

Changing cultures and mindsets to be more people focused can be tricky in certain industries, however, it’s important to keep everyone in the business updated on your CX efforts so they can truly see the difference you are making in the wider business. Through a customer-first mindset, cross-functional collaboration and silos can be broken down. Customer experience doesn’t belong to one team, it’s an organisational initiative that needs an aligned vision.

#3: Actions Speak Louder Than Words—Data Means Nothing Without Outcomes

The importance of closing the loop with customers and gaining actionable feedback was mentioned in nearly every presentation we heard! Put simply, “closing the loop” means following up with each dissatisfied customer to try and mitigate their negative experience. 

A closed feedback loop is not only important to the business, but also your customers; to the customer, not only are you letting them know you are listening, but you are also building a better relationship with them. For the business, you are resolving real-time issues by taking immediate action and creating positive change. 

#4: Understand and Predict Your Customers’ Behaviour by Utilising the Right Data, in the Right Way

Primark, Euro Car Parts, and TRUMPF touched on the subject of knowing your customer beyond just a score. In an omnichannel world, this can become increasingly difficult. However, by pulling in data from everywhere—such as social reviews, survey feedback, or demographical data—into one place, you are able to gain a clear picture of who your customer really is and how they feel about their experience with your brand.

And with this clear picture comes actionability—you will clearly understand which stages of the journey need improvement. Journey mapping allows you to identify all the behaviours and feelings throughout the entire customer journey. Not only does this allow you to identify areas for improvement, but also understand what’s working well to make experiences become more seamless and consistent in every touchpoint.

#5: Enrich the Lives of Your Customers—Great CX Doesn’t Need to be Complicated

In the last keynote of the day, EMEA customer experience expert Stan Swinton of Bain & Company left us with insightful advice. He noted that in today’s world, the best companies are creating shareholder value, delighting customers, and energising employees through a strategy of enriching customer lives. 

Great experiences are memorable ones which create an impact. When someone has a memorable experience, they will want to share it with others, and it will also stick with them when it comes time to purchase again. 

Think about your value proposition and what you can offer. Is there anything different that makes you special in the lives of my customers? Get to know your customer, understand what they like, what they don’t like, their history and who they are buying for. This way, you can also anticipate their needs. Spend time with your customers and experience what they experience for yourself.  

Great customer experience doesn’t need to be complicated. Every aspect of your business should reflect the purpose of your organisation and what you are trying to accomplish and solve for your customers.

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5 Challenges Facing Your Customers and Brands, and What They Mean for Your CX Program

Price Increases

A great deal of customers and the brands that serve them are facing unprecedented uncertainties; understanding them is key to organizational success, delivering Experience Improvement (XI), and ensuring that your customer experience (CX) program is operating optimally. All of these obstacles affect both customers and brands to some extent. Because half the Experience Improvement process is knowing what these challenges are, today’s conversation addresses five of the most prominent ones that I’ve observed in my work as an experience program designer:

  1. Price Increases
  2. Efficiencies
  3. Off-Price/Discounts
  4. Shrinkflation
  5. Skimpflation

 Challenge #1: Price Increases

A plethora of international events, crises, and phenomena has produced steep inflation throughout much of the world, and no part of the supply chain has been spared these upticking costs. Brands have had to pay more to produce, transport, and store their wares, which means passing that cost burden onto their customers. I’m sure you can guess how that’s affecting customer experiences the world over.

Challenge #2: Efficiencies

This is another customer experience woe that affects both parties in CX interactions. Many companies have struggled to stay fully staffed amid the job market churn often called The Great Resignation, which translates directly to everything from longer customer wait times to reduced item availability. For brands, this has become an employee experience (EX) challenge that is formidable, but not insurmountable.

Challenge #3: Off-Price/Discounts

The events of the last few years (and their lingering effects) have resulted in a consumer demand collapse for many goods and services. This is an especially adverse problem for the brands that sell these goods, as they now have to offload them at a significant discount. For example, I discussed in a prior article how reduced demand for patio furniture left these goods gummed up in the supply chain. About a year on, a combination of sluggish demand and eventual delivery has resulted in a deluge of patio furniture that brands, frankly, have no room for. Steep discounts can benefit customers, of course, but on this scale they leave a brand’s bottom line weakened.

Challenge #4: Shrinkflation

You’ve probably seen this word plastered all over your local news recently; if not, it’s the media’s new favorite term for paying the same price for a good that is reduced in size or amount. Multiple brands have taken this approach to their customer experiences as a means of attempting to prevent cost increases, but as you can imagine, most customers aren’t thrilled that the same amount they paid yesterday yields less for them today.

Challenge #5: Skimpflation

This one is similar to both shrinkflation and the staffing woes I mentioned earlier. In essence, even when brands manage to keep employee churn low, they must still contend with the possibility that the service their retained employees provide has lost some of its quality. This results in an underwhelming customer experience much like the amount reductions discussed with shrinkflation. 

The Path Forward for Customers and Brands

It’s helpful to understand the territory your brand operates in, and these challenges constitute just that for many organizations in these strange times. However, there is more to the story: what are customers doing to cope with these and other challenges, and just as pertinently, what can brands do to respond in a meaningful way? How can they ensure that they’re displaying that empathy mentioned at the beginning of this discussion?

Click here to read my full-length point of view article on customer coping strategies and what your organization can do to address them. I’ve spent a great deal of time researching both of these CX elements over the last few years and am confident that those learnings can help you on your own Experience Improvement journey.

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Unlock Expert Guidance on Today’s CX Challenges & Opportunities

From proving ROI and navigating budget constraints to adopting AI and creating seamless omnichannel experiences, these challenges are shaping the future of customer experience. In this report, discover actionable insights and recommendations from our CX experts to help you overcome these obstacles and drive growth.

2025 Consumer Trends Report

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5 Ways Retail Banks Can Leverage Customer Data Effectively

Retail Banks

Collecting data with no way to use it is like learning to drive without a car; it just doesn’t make sense. For retail banks, and most organizations, collecting data is only half the battle in the world of customer experience. Whether it be transactional surveys, online reviews, or a market research report about your customers, the data you collect needs to not just be analyzed, it needs to serve as a road map of future business decisions.

Using customer data to influence your business decisions will lead to a more streamlined, profitable banking organization that actively engages customers. Don’t just take our word for it, research shows that companies who adopt data-driven marketing are six times more likely to be profitable year-over-year. 

Every day, your customers produce data across a vast amount of touchpoints, whether that’s on your banking app, in your call center, or across any of your other channels. That data is there to help you understand their behavior, their needs, and even predict their future behavior. But, in order to do this, that data has to be in a centralized platform in order to be readily available for evaluation and future strategic planning. 

Once you have this data at your disposal, there are a number of ways you can use it to improve experiences for your banking customers. With so many ways to use customer data, we have picked 5 strategies for retail banks looking to leverage customer data.

5 Strategies for Retail Banks to Get the Most Out of Their Customer Data

Strategy #1: Capture Meaningful Data

You need to capture data that is meaningful to your bank, and that is related to the current objectives you have in mind. If you run a local credit union, there’s no point in asking your members what their favorite flavor of ice cream is. This is a more extreme example, but you get what we’re trying to say. If your goal is to improve the digital experience, you don’t want to ask about the in-branch experience.

By designing an experience program with your end goals in mind, you’ll know what data you need to collect to achieve those goals. Knowing what data you need to collect will outline what questions you need to be asking your customers in order to get that data, and consequently, achieve those goals you originally planned. 

Retail banks already have access to critical customer data. Age, gender, geographic location, and spending habits are data points that can already be leveraged. But, mixing these data points with structured feedback via social media or surveys, as well as meaningful data captured in order to achieve a desired goal, will allow retail banks to get a holistic view of their customer and their customer experience. 

Wondering how you can refine your data-gathering strategy to leverage the right listening methods at the right time? Check out this quick article.

Strategy #2: Master Omnichannel Experiences

Retail banking customers today demand consistent, intuitive omnichannel experiences that are personalized and accessible anywhere. However, most retail banks fail to deliver this and are unable to monetize customer data through their products and services. 

Research shows that online banking has increased by 23% and mobile banking has increased by 30%. This means that customers are stepping away from the teller, and toward the chat assistant on your bank’s website or app. Although the medium is changing, customers still expect the same experience that they received inside a branch to be consistent with the one they receive online. 

By mastering omnichannel experiences, you will set yourself apart from the competition, and keep your customers coming back time and time again, whether they are on their phone, computer, or visiting you in person. 

Strategy #3: Break Down Data Silos

Breaking down data silos and combining data from multiple sources across a banking organization can increase efficiency and control in a fast-changing and demanding environment. 

Retail banks receive data from multiple sources and departments. If these various pathways of customer data do not converge on a central location, retail banks risk having a distorted view of the customer experience and risk an increase in customer churn. 

By having all of your customer data in one place, you can easily access multiple data points from different locations across your organization. This will provide you with a 360-degree view of a customer’s activity and engagement with the bank and will allow you to make well-informed decisions with your customer base in mind. 

Strategy #4: Collect Data Across the Entire Customer Journey

Retail banks can achieve their goals by tracking the customer journey, and finding areas of improvement. When doing this, it is important to track the entire customer journey. While a traditional bank may track the customer journey as opening an account, transactions, and borrowing, you should be tracking the steps it took for a customer to open an account, such as their first visit to your website. Where other banks track transactions, you should track specific spending habits in order to know your customer and personalize their experience. 

Retail banks must keep the customers at the heart of the journey by tracking key moments in their experiences and improve these moments in the customer journey.

Strategy #5: Analyze Behavior and Emotions

Throughout the data collection process, it is important to remember that your customers cannot be reduced to just a mix of data points. Your customers have emotions, and they make emotional decisions. Without cultivating positive emotions in customers, banks risk being forgotten. You need to know your customers behavior, so that you know where to focus to make the biggest impact on them. 

According to J.D. Power, Customers in the retail banking industry are not happy with the level of personalization they experience in their transactions—but the customer feedback you collect could help change all that! Designing experiences to create positive emotions increases customer lifetime value and reduces risk of customer churn. Learn how retail banking giant Virgin Money analyzed customer emotions across the journey to create specific improvements and positive emotions in this video!

Leveraging Your Customer Data

Your customer data should be one of your biggest assets. It can be used to solve problems, and make decisions with your customers’ needs in mind. But remember, data alone cannot make those changes—you need to make sure you’re leveraging the right technology, taking the advice of experts, and taking action based on the insights you derive from that data. Put in place a framework that ensures that type of continuous experience improvement, and you are sure to attract new customers, retain old ones, and, ultimately, make your customer experience program a key part of your retail bank’s success!

For more information about how retail banks can leverage customer data effectively, checkout this white paper on how to stand out in your industry!

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3 Areas of Customer Experience Where Human Expertise Is Absolutely Vital

Human Expertise

Customer experience (CX) measurement has become a priority for most large organizations. Systematically gathering and analyzing data from online surveys and other sources such as product reviews, customer complaints, etc., is viewed as an imperative. And for good reason.  21st century business is won and lost based on who can deliver the best customer experience.

However, as we become more comfortable and rely more heavily on intelligent systems to collect and interpret data for us, there is still an opportunity for a human element to play an important role in customer experience programs.  

This is a belief I’m incredibly passionate about. My name is Len Ferman and I am a senior consultant at InMoment. In 2019, I published a college textbook, “Business Creativity and Innovation: Perspectives and Best Practices”, which is now being used at several universities including in my classes as an adjunct professor at the University of North Florida. In my role at InMoment, I work with brands to generate and evaluate ideas to attract new customers, delight existing customers and identify strategic initiatives.

In this article, I’ll discuss three areas in which human expertise can make a valuable contribution. Let’s dive in!

3 Areas Where Human Expertise Makes a Valuable Contribution to Customer Experience

  • Qualitative Research
  • Customer Journey Mapping
  • Ideation to Improve the Customer Experience

Qualitative Research

In 2021, the Wall Street Journal ran an article titled, “Why Companies Shouldn’t Give Up on Focus Groups.” The premise was that in this era in which big data is running the show, taking the time to listen to live customers can still be hugely beneficial.

Qualitative research can take on many forms including live or online focus groups, in person interviews or phone interviews. The distinguishing feature of qualitative research is that a trained interviewer is interacting live with an engaged respondent. 

As a qualitative researcher with 30 years of experience, I consistently find that there is no substitute for gaining a complete understanding of a customer’s story than by talking to customers live, whether it’s in person, on the phone, or via video conference.    

The value that qualitative research brings to a customer experience program is in being able to definitively probe with customers about why they respond and behave the way they do. Only in live, qualitative research can you fully leverage the “5 Why’s” technique to drill down to the root cause of a customer’s behavior.

The “5 Why’s” technique was developed by Sakachi Toyoda, the founder of the Toyota Industries in Japan. The technique is a simple but powerful method of questioning. For any problem that you hear the customer describe, you ask, “why?” And then when you have the answer, you ask, “why?” again.  The idea is that by asking “why?” five times you are likely to drill down to the root cause of a problem. This method can only be effectively deployed in live, qualitative research.

Customer Journey Mapping

Understanding the experience a customer has, from their perspective, across their end-to-end journey with your company, products, services or processes is what customer journey mapping is all about. Customer journey maps can be a simple yet powerful tool to enable your employees to empathize with and fully understand the customer experience.

The best customer journey maps are produced when there is a human element involved in the core data collection and final map development.  

Qualitative research is necessary for the foundation of a customer journey map since it is necessary to hear customers describe their journey. And the creative design of the final map to adequately portray and communicate a visual depiction of the customer journey remains a uniquely human endeavor.

Well developed customer journey maps have multiple benefits for a customer experience program including stronger customer experience survey design and a common understanding of the customer journey among all employees. One particular benefit is the ability of customer journey mapping to help identify the key moments of truth a customer has in the journey.

Ideation to Improve the Customer Experience

Ideation to generate and evaluate ideas to improve the customer experience is a process that every organization can benefit from. Experienced ideation facilitators can leverage processes that guide a team through creative exercises. 

These creative exercises use data generated in customer experience programs as a starting point. And they also tap into the expertise of your own employees to generate ideas that leverage the core competencies of the company. A second set of evaluative exercises provides the team with the discipline to narrow down and select the optimal ideas for development.

Leveraging Human Expertise

These three areas, which all require human expertise, can enhance your overall customer experience program and provide you with an advantage over your competition.

At InMoment, our consultants are available to perform these three types of human-led services. Contact your client success director to inquire about how you can engage with InMoment for qualitative research, customer journey mapping, or ideation to improve the customer experience.

Watch the Video – Get More Out of Your CX Program

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Unlock Expert Guidance on Today’s CX Challenges & Opportunities

From proving ROI and navigating budget constraints to adopting AI and creating seamless omnichannel experiences, these challenges are shaping the future of customer experience. In this report, discover actionable insights and recommendations from our CX experts to help you overcome these obstacles and drive growth.

2025 Consumer Trends Report

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Closing the Outer Loop with the Six Sigma Methodology

The Six Sigma methodology utilizes data analytics to identify areas for business optimization. This can be useful for CX leaders looking to improve operational performance and customer satisfaction.
Outer Loop

Customer feedback is critical for helping your customer service agents tackle problems—whether closing the inner loop directly with customers or closing the outer loop with issues that keep surfacing repeatedly.

Organizations are typically quite comfortable tackling inner-loop programs. If you have agents that review and action customer feedback, and enough resources to contact unhappy customers, you’re off to a good start. 

However, closing the outer loop means addressing structural issues, and this is where it gets a bit harder. Here is how the Six Sigma methodology can be used as a template to help CX leaders close the outer loop and address systemic issues.

What Is Six Sigma? 

Six Sigma is a methodology that uses data analytics and statistics to analyze business processes and services to understand how they’re performing and how they can be optimized. The objective is to increase business outcomes, such as the customer experience, by reducing defects and improving services and processes.

Since collecting and analysing data is at the core of both Six Sigma and CX programs, it struck me that they seem like a natural fit.

What Is the Six Sigma Methodology?

The Six Sigma methodology is a combination of two underlying processes: DMAIC and DMADV. 

DMAIC process is define, measure, analyze, improve, control. 

DMADV process is define, measure, analyze, design, validate. 

The latter process is only used whenever a business has undergone optimization but is still not meeting metrics. When this happens, Six Sigma professionals will utilize the DMADV process as a means of redesigning processes within a business. 

The DMAIC process is the standard and most utilized process. Because of that, it will be what is used when providing a deep explanation of the Six Sigma methodology.

The 5 Steps of the Six Sigma Methodology

Six Sigma follows the DMAIC process made up of the following steps:

  1. Define
  2. Measure
  3. Analyse
  4. Improve
  5. Control

We’ll go through these one by one:

Define

The first step is to prioritise the pain points that you want to tackle as a business. With Six Sigma we typically ask 3 questions:

  • Is there a gap between the current process and the customer expectations around that process?
  • Is the cause of the issue understood?
  • Is the solution known?

The gap between current processes and customer expectations should be found in your voice of the customer data. By analyzing this data along with measuring the key drivers of your main business metric, you will be able to identify what issues are causing the most dissatisfaction across your customer base.

Key business drivers dashboard

After analyzing your VoC data and key drivers, you may come across issues where you already have the solution. For example, you may have tried to understand why your business wasn’t doing well with 18-28-year-old customers anymore. But, after digging deeper into the data, you discovered that those customers weren’t invited to sign up for a revamped customer loyalty program. This is an issue you have a solution for, and it can be fixed quickly. 

On the other hand, if you uncover another issue not meeting customer expectations in which you do not have a solution or do not know the root cause, you can utilize the Six Sigma Methodology.

Measure

The measurement step is where a baseline is established. You can do this by using your existing customer experience metrics. If you have the data to identify the problem, you can use the same data to create a baseline on which improvements can be compared. 

Analysis

This is where it gets interesting—the analysis phase involves identifying the root cause, which is critical if you want to find an effective solution. We typically start with brainstorming different ideas and then once we settle on some hypotheses we can test, we can then check if we have the data available to us to check this hypothesis or if we need to collect more data in order to test it.

It’s important to understand the true root cause. It’s quite easy to find correlated themes that do not directly cause the issue. Driver analysis on both structured and unstructured data can help with this process.

Improve

Once you have identified the root cause, it’s time to come up with solutions to address it. This is where customer experience consulting can be useful. Customer experience consultants will help you compare and contrast ideas to fix your problem.

Once we’ve settled on the most promising ideas, it’s time to start A/B testing the concepts, which involves trialing the solution(s) with test groups and then comparing the performance against a control group.

In the end, there’s typically a cost benefit analysis to understand which action would have the most impact. This needs to be contrasted against the relevant investment.

Control

Once the best course of action has been identified, it can be implemented. Once it is implemented you can track the improvement. InMoment’s reporting studio makes this easy by giving you the ability to track changes in your customer metrics, create and share reports, and identify the most important actions that need to be taken to improve your business. 

Utilize the Six Sigma Methodology with InMoment

Often companies struggle with putting a framework in place to tackle the outer loop in an effective manner. Six Sigma is one method that can be utilized to put a structure in place that can be used to root cause structural issues, identify potential solutions and identify the most effective one. InMoment’s services will help you close the loop most effectively while using the XI Platform. With the guidance of our Strategic Insights team and the tools within the InMoment platform, no CX problem cannot be fixed. To see what we can do for your business, schedule a demo today!

Watch the Video – Get More Out of Your CX Program

Watch this demo video to see how InMoment’s award-winning AI tech does the heavy lifting on analysis so you can spend more time lifting CX results.

Unlock Expert Guidance on Today’s CX Challenges & Opportunities

From proving ROI and navigating budget constraints to adopting AI and creating seamless omnichannel experiences, these challenges are shaping the future of customer experience. In this report, discover actionable insights and recommendations from our CX experts to help you overcome these obstacles and drive growth.

2025 Consumer Trends Report

The One Report You Don't Want to MIss: The way customers interact with brands is evolving faster than ever. Our free 2025 Consumer Trends Report highlights the key shifts transforming customer experience (CX) and what your business needs to stay competitive.

How to Overcome Declining Survey Response Rates

Declining Survey Response

Of all the unicorns that brands and organizations chase with their customer experience (CX) programs, higher survey response rates are one of the best-known… and sometimes the most elusive. This is especially true right now, when survey response rates are declining due to a litany of new and unprecedented causes. Today, we’re going to go through those causes, how their impact goes far beyond surveys, and what brands like yours can do to respond to this continuous drop in numbers.

Why Survey Rates Fall

There are a myriad of reasons why you may be experiencing declining survey response rates. One of the more common ones we see when working with clients is that their transactional surveys, which are meant to be quite short, are considered too long by too many customers, leading to high rates of survey abandonment. Another factor that comes into play here with fair frequency is the client’s survey invitation design, which can repel customers from your survey altogether. 

However, while these problems frequently pop up in survey design, the good news for brands that encounter them is that survey length and invitation design are fairly addressable challenges. An Experience Improvement (XI) platform that can digest unstructured data for actionable sentiments will let you know more about your customers’ survey preferences. You can then apply those insights to your survey design and see a bump in response rates.

Many organizations have spent years putting their experience programs to great use fixing superficial problems like these, but a few trends have emerged in recent years that take more than a freshened up survey invite to address. The most prominent of these trends and a chief cause of declining survey completion rates is Generation Z shoppers’ reluctance to complete them. This problem has become more pronounced as more of this generation becomes old enough to independently shop, and it creates a few blind spots that brands can’t illuminate through surveys alone.

Left in the Dark

While the problem of declining survey rates is most pronounced with this younger demographic of shoppers, a few other survey shortcomings became apparent as brands scrambled to remedy this completion shortage. Namely, that as customer needs and expectations have grown more complex, so too has the amount of disparate data sources that organizations need in order to truly understand not ‘just’ why their customers shop with them, but also why customers visit competitors and enact the purchasing trends they do.

None of this is to say that surveys have become irrelevant or unimportant. They remain a vital tool for gathering feedback and the time brands invest to continuously improve them is well spent. That’s where those other data sources come into play—they exist outside of surveys, but are just as needed for creating true Experience Improvement (XI). They include:

  1. Location-tracking data
  2. Purchasing data
  3. Web search data
  4. Social media & online reviews

Painting a Full Picture

These four sources of information aren’t just nice-to-haves; they’ve become essential to completing a profile of your customer and creating a holistic, 360-degree view of their preferences, their journey with your brand, and who they are as people. These more fundamental aspects of the customer experience are essential for meaningfully improving all of your experiences, which means that it’s essential you set yourself up for data collection success if you haven’t already.

Click here to read my full-length point of view document on data sources and to take the next step in your data collection journey. I go in-depth about what each data source is, why it matters, and how best to capitalize on it to create bold, human experiences for your customers and employees. Good luck!

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