Best Practices

When starting your CX journey, the immediate focus is almost always on collecting customer data. After all, how can you assess your current situation without any customer feedback? So after scavenging social channels, physical surveys, and phone surveys, you have a mountain of data in front of you. This is a definite accomplishment, but it is also the beginning of another phase of careful deliberation.

You know you need to prioritize this mountain of data in order to avoid picking up more than you can carry, but the way you categorize your customer feedback is rarely obvious. In fact, the most obvious path to take can actually get in the way of your CX program’s ultimate goal: positively impacting your revenue.

In order to help you develop an approach to your data, I will explain the obvious path many businesses follow, why it can actually harm your customer experience, and which two ways you can prioritize your data to get the results you want!

Don’t Weight Your Data

Many businesses try to summit their data mountains by weighting their data, or in other words giving data from one specific channel president over others. Though this option may seem like a good one at first, in the long run these businesses miss out on the best opportunities. Why do I say this? Because in weighting your data, you are missing out on improving other experiences. Yes, one area may excel, but one out of many is still a minority.

When it comes to customer experience, every experience matters. Each touchpoint available to your customer is an opportunity for them to interact with your brand and is therefore an extension of it. By weighting data, you are disregarding several points in your customer’s journey, risking a potential revenue loss because of a disjointed experience or a failure to deliver on a brand promise (which is essential to develop customer loyalty).

In order to avoid these difficulties, weight all data the same regardless of channel. An omnichannel perspective delivers a more thorough understanding of your customer’s needs and how you can meet them. Once you’ve done this, I suggest trying a few other prioritization methods that will bring you more success with your customers.

Do Prioritize Negative Experiences

Everybody appreciates a good compliment, so it can be tempting to reach out to satisfied customers to find out what you did right. While this can be helpful, it is ignoring your most at-risk customers. These are the customers that need the most immediate attention as 91% of unhappy customers won’t return to your brand. Because unhappy customers are a reality for any business, this means that putting off responses to unpleasant feedback is a sure way to lose customers.

When you prioritize these customers, the opposite it true. In fact, you are more likely to gain loyal customers as 70% of the time, a person will become a repeat customer when a complaint is resolved in the customer’s favor. It simply makes good CX sense to prioritize the negative experiences.

Do Prioritize by Time Cases are Created

After singling out negative experiences, I have one more way for you to narrow down your prioritization strategy: Respond to those negative experiences by the time they were created.

Think of your plan of attack like a countdown. Give yourself a time limit for how long a case can remain unresolved. This will help you to close the loop with your customers in a timely manner and to retain customers. I would suggest your goal be 48 hours and, at the very most, under a week, as 50% of consumers give a brand only one week to respond to an inquiry before they stop doing business with them. When you respond to your customers as quickly as possible, you are letting them know that they are your priority, and as we all know, the customer is king!

When it comes to approaching your customer data, it is imperative that you first develop a plan of attack. By making sure that you are weighing all your data equally and prioritizing by negative experience as well as the time cases are created, you are setting yourself up for positive revenue impact!

You’ve been put in charge of designing your brand’s Customer experience (CX) survey (my heartfelt congratulations to you my friend!) Before you go and design your CX survey, take a deep breath and ponder the famous adage of “garbage in, garbage out.”

For your CX survey, this means starting off right by laying the necessary groundwork that will pay you dividends in the long run. If you do not take the time now, it may come back to hurt you. Here are three things that, if not handled properly, will destroy your CX survey before it even leaves your desk:

1. Forgetting the “C” in CX.

You may have heard that your customer is king. This is especially true when structuring your CX survey. In fact, you’ll have the most success if you see your CX survey through your customer’s eyes. This means keeping your CX survey short and engaging so it is not painful (or maybe even enjoyable) for your customers to give you feedback. Additionally, it means keeping your CX survey consistent with your brand’s personality so your customers will easily recognize it as coming from your brand. Above all, make it easy for your customers to give you feedback.

2. Survey design by committee.

Once you have crowned the customer as king, quickly appoint yourself as Survey Steward (yes, this is a thing. Go ahead and put this title on your resume and thank me later). As the Survey Steward, you own the survey on your customer’s behalf. This doesn’t mean that your CX survey will not need buy-in or approval from internal stakeholders. Far from it. What does mean is that for your CX survey be successful, it must have someone who ensures the survey remains an easy way for your customers to give you feedback.

As the Survey Steward, this means you must be able to distinguish between “must have” questions and “nice to know” questions. You must also have the autonomy to say “no” or “not at this time” to any request to add, remove, or modify any question in your CX survey. You have the final say to ensure you are asking what matters most to your customers (which may not necessarily be what every internal stakeholder thinks is important).

3. Having questions with no purpose.

As newly appointed Survey Steward, you now have the power to elect a co-owner for each CX survey question. (Just don’t let this power go to your head, all right?) Along with the question co-owner, you must ask yourself: What are we measuring by asking this question? How will we know when we are successful?

By asking these questions, you will ensure that the purpose of each question is met and you’ll know when the question has served its purpose and should be modified or removed. This may mean setting a future date when the CX survey question will be removed or at least reviewed for effectiveness.

Tackling these three things will lay the necessary groundwork to better help you design your CX survey.  My apologies for suggesting that your CX survey may be “destroyed” if you have already started your CX survey without solving these three potential issues. That may have been a little harsh (but I said it out of love). Regardless, start now by eliminating these 3 potential pitfalls as much as possible and setting up the guardrails for future success as you listen to your customers for years to come.

The ultimate goal of any CX effort is to create the experiences that in turn produce happy customers who then become enthusiastic brand advocates. However, just like any goal, this is not necessarily achievable all the time.

For any business, the reality is that from time to time there will be unhappy customers. A particular location could have an off day or maybe a customer is just in a bad mood. Regardless of the cause, negative experiences will happen. The measure of your CX strength then isn’t whether negative interactions happen or not, but how your organization responds to them.

One course of action is to simply write off the experience with a “we’ll do better next time,” but I would argue that this reaction is not enough. In fact, just leaving those unhappy customers be could have dire consequences. After all, 91% of unhappy customers won’t return to your brand.

You may not be able to go back in time and stop that negative interaction before it happens, but you can treat this unhappy customer as an opportunity. Why? Because 70% of the time, a person will become a repeat customer when their complaint is resolved in their favor.

With the right approach, an unhappy customer can actually become your best CX asset. Here are two ways that you can use a negative experience to shape CX success:

Identify Areas for Improvement

Every company has areas where they can improve, but knowing which areas to spend time and resources on can be difficult. For each industry, there are the standby areas for improvement, and across all businesses, there are standards for cleanliness, service, and product. It would be easy to just assess the most popular categories to analyze, but this can be a dangerous policy.

In many cases, the areas an organization sees as needing improvement often do not ally with their customer’s pain points. This discrepancy can cause an organization to waste resources on areas that will not make a difference. This is where unhappy customers come in. In the very act of voicing their complaint, they are identifying the areas they would most like to see improved. By assessing unhappy customer feedback enmass, you can prioritize true areas for improvement and make informed, effective business decisions.

Use the Personal Connection to Create Brand Advocates

So a customer has voiced their complaint and now you need to react. Before reaching out to the customer, it is important to acknowledge that if you go in blind, you can do more harm than good. If a customer service representative is not armed with data when they make a call, they enable the customer to re-live their negative experience and all the emotions that came with it, making the call meant to recover them an equally unpleasant experience.

It is imperative to be informed of the customer’s situation before reaching out not just to avoid this potential blow up, but also because that familiarity provides the potential for a personal connection. When a company representative knows a customer’s situation, is able to apologize, and can offer to make it up to them, a customer feels known and important. This is the most effective way to create a brand connection and even more to instill loyalty and advocacy in your customers. The negative experience then becomes a positive one, and that positive experience can do wonders for your CX reputation. On average, Americans tell an average of 9 people about good customer experiences. That means you have the potential to create nine new brand advocates by simply closing the loop with one customer.

Feedback from an unhappy customer can seem like an overwhelming negative at first glance, but when you take a second look, the potential is even greater than the initial difficulty.

Every second, vast amounts of information are transmitted across the globe. The number of Google searches, Facebook posts and WhatsApp messages sent in a mere 60 second time frame is truly phenomenal. Smart Insights recently revealed that approximately 3.3 million Facebook posts, 29 million WhatsApp messages and over 149,000 emails are sent every minute. In this fast paced digital environment, ‘data’ has thus gained considerable momentum and has become the lifeblood of the global information economy today. With this rise in data, data protection and privacy have become vital components of business practice. Recent cyber-attacks have further sparked an increase in these laws in over 100 countries according to Privacy International.

Data and the customer experience

The last 10 years has witnessed an upsurge in innovation, globalisation and digitalisation that has empowered people with advanced technology. This has caused a shift in global communication as more businesses move their dealings online. In fact, e-commerce has emerged a vital driver of economic growth around the world. A survey conducted by the Centre for Retail Research showed that the online retail sector is the main driver for growth in European retailing, achieving growth rates in Europe of 15.6 per cent in 2016, and expected increases in 2017 of 14.2 per cent and 13.8 per cent in 2018.

Alongside this revolution is a notable difference in customer experience (CX) strategies, and most organisations today consider it business critical. Personalisation strategies and functionality have become core components of many customer experience programmes today. Coca Cola’s ‘named’ bottles took the social media world by storm when they were first introduced. Amazon is also a prime example of a brand that provides customers with customised content and tailored messaging. Amazon’s commitment to personalisation has resulted in ownership of a whopping 16 per cent of UK’s online retail market. Suffice it to say, in order to meet the customer demands of today, businesses are collecting and analysing more and more customer data.

Importance of data protection and privacy laws

While the internet is recognised as critical for the majority of economic and social activities across the globe, policymakers are becoming increasingly aware of its ability to be a source of vulnerability. The only way citizens and consumers will have confidence in both government and businesses, is if there are strong data protection laws and regulations in place. Insufficient data protection can have long-lasting consequences as it may create negative market effects by reducing consumer confidence and overall customer experience. Today, consumer protection it is a fundamental right. Data protection is needed to protect consumers against deliberate acts of misuse or the possibility of accidental loss and misuse of data.

While there are common themes and similarities to the laws introduced by different countries, there are also variations in the levels of security, requirements, penalties and even interpretations by regulators and auditors. To effectively safeguard personal information across markets worldwide, global operating companies must understand all risks and legal responsibilities across a range of data protection laws.

Difference in global data protection laws

Among the many regions that have passed data protection regulations, the European Union (EU) has stood out for its comprehensive approach over the years. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), effective from early 2018, will impact many companies doing business globally. The law impacts any business selling goods and services in Europe specifically those that store, process or transfer any kind of personal data of EU citizens – including posts on social media, payroll processing and medical records. An organisation’s ability to transfer personal data outside of Europe is restricted under EU data protection rules. Those restrictions will remain in place under the GDPR. The regulation will revamp the way information is collected from customers and used by businesses. It is expected to cement privacy rights for 500 million EU residents and will impose substantial fines for misconduct (up to 4 per cent of annual global revenues) and a 72-hour breach notification requirement.

With Brexit around the corner, the British government has further announced that it will adopt the new GDPR while the country remains in the EU and echo it once it leaves.

Under the GDPR, Member States are given some flexibility to pass local laws and further specify the GDPR’s application. Germany, already known to have the most stringent data protection laws, is the first to do so, and more EU Member States are expected to follow soon. It is, therefore, becoming apparent that while harmonisation is the ultimate goal of the GDPR, there are still going to be some variations between member states.

In this context, the German Federal Parliament recently adopted the new German Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz – BDSG) effective from May 2018. This new law replaces the existing Federal Data Protection Act of 2003 and is intended to adapt the current German data protection law to the EU GDPR. The new BDSG intends to protect personal data from being processed and used by both federal public authorities and private bodies. It further imposes specific data processing requirements with respect to video surveillance, and consumer credit, scoring and creditworthiness. In addition to the high fines imposed by the GDPR, the BDSG imposes fines of up to EUR 50,000 for violations regarding German law exclusively. Companies will further be obliged to appoint a data protection officer (DPO).

The United States on the other hand, has over 20 sector specific or medium-specific national privacy or data security laws, with different laws functioning among its 50 states. Additionally, there are a large range of companies that are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. However, all the states within the U.S. follow a sectoral approach to data protection legislation, where the laws of data protection and privacy rely on a combination of legislation, regulation, and self-regulation rather than government interference alone.

France, however, protects data privacy of its citizens through The Data Protection Act (DPA) of 1978 (revised in 2004) and applies to the collection of information used to identify anyone. The rules apply to anyone collecting data located in France or those carrying out activities in an establishment in France. In 2014, Google France was fined for failure to comply with this and for violation of their privacy law.

China recently introduced cyber-security legislation banning the collection and sale of a user’s personal information. Firms within the country will have to store user data on servers inside China, and people will be given the right to have their information deleted. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement that the purpose is to safeguard China’s national cyber-space sovereignty and national security rather than to restrict foreign enterprises.

Less stringent laws in Australia are governed by Australia’s Privacy Principles (APP) – a collection of 13 principles guiding the handling of personal information. Companies are required to manage personal information in an open and transparent way, having an up-to-date privacy policy about how they manage personal information.

How can companies cope with global disparities in data protection?

A recent Veritas survey of over 2,500 senior technology decision makers, noted that individuals responsible for implementing a GDPR process also face a variety of risks if data is not handled properly. The survey showed that close to 40 per cent of companies were fearful of a major compliance failing within their business, and just under one-third (31 per cent) were concerned about reputational damage from poor data policies. Given already existing variations in implementation, companies will need to focus not only on the GDPR itself, but also on national law, as they prepare their compliance efforts. Given that the UK has one of the largest economies in the world, it is undeniable that these strict laws will have an impact on global business operations.

In order to continue executing superior customer experience strategies that mirror demands of personalisation today, decision makers must be wary of the differences in data protection laws in different markets. In practice, the first step towards successful compliance will be for businesses and their respective decision makers to know where their information resides and from where it’s being accessed. For companies with different office locations, the challenge will be working out which part of the data these changes apply to and determining which information currently residing in branches will have to be centralised to a geographical location compliant with the law.

Global and local businesses alike must ensure that any form of customer data is collected and stored in compliance with different country’s data protection laws. One example of this in practice is InMoment using cloud data centres to enable the secure storing of customer data for European clients.

Furthermore, it is important that businesses allocate resources and educate themselves on the steps needed to comply with future regulations. Conducting comprehensive risk assessments in 2017 can help companies identify and fill gaps in existing data protection programmes. It is important to understand that some may need a full year to remediate, implement and test compliant procedures and policies, which may even include the purchase of new technology.

Finally, companies marketing to customers and prospects across borders must use this year to look for continued global legislation, enforcement activity and litigation regarding the interplay between telemarketing, email marketing and text message marketing and data protection laws and regulations, particularly.

The journey to improve customer experience (CX) begins with identifying your business objectives, and recognizing the need to listen to your customers and analyze what they’re telling you. The steps forward from that starting point vary, but many organizations jump into comparing customer experience vendors right away.

Though researching is a critical step toward that ultimate goal, it should not be the first step you take. Let me explain why: By browsing the sites of various vendors, you get a great idea of what they have to offer you, but how do you know if they can fulfill your company’s needs?

The answer is you don’t!

This is why I am going to suggest an alternate first step for you. Before looking at vendors, it is pivotal to first plan your objectives. What does your company hope to gain with CX technology? What needs should be fulfilled? What areas of strength or weakness are you already aware of in your customer experience?

These questions should help to get you thinking, but I have also outlined three specific things you should do while planning your objectives.

Think Short and Long Term

Your ideal customer experience platform should be able to address all points on your business timeline, from the current state of your company and its immediate needs to your long-term goals. Outlining your big picture goals will help you to have your vision in mind when you look critically at potential CX technologies. This will also help you to determine which vendor best fits your company both now and down the line.

Include All Company Stakeholders

We are all familiar with the “it takes a village” saying, and more than likely, this is true of your company. When you are outlining your goals, be sure to include any decision makers, stakeholders, and influencers in the process. This will help you to gain a more comprehensive view of needs and requirements. Understanding expectations from all your company’s angles will help you to set clear requirements and guidelines for any CX vendor you choose.

Write It Up 

Once you have brainstormed, discussed, and specified your goals with your stakeholders, it’s time to put it all together. Consider creating a 1-2 page executive summary of your findings to use as a guide. This gives you something concrete to provide potential vendors as you research their solutions. From this document, they can more clearly communicate to you the areas of their program that will address your specific needs. Their response to this document will also give you a clear idea as to how the vendor will be to work with. If they respond with thoughtful questions and solutions, it is more than likely that they will prove to be an invested asset for your company in the future.

The CX journey is different for every organization, but planning objectives is a crucial step that will make selecting a customer experience platform that much easier.

So what are your next steps? If you would like more advice on where to go from here, check out our new resource, Customer Experience Buyer’s Guide: What to Know Before You Buy Software Promising to Improve the Customer Experience.

Download the full guide here.

Developing a customer experience (CX) plan that fits your organization is easier said than done. Navigating this new experience-based marketplace can be quite difficult, or even intimidating, but with the development of a purposeful CX plan it is very possible.

In InMoment’s white paper, How to Transform Your CX Program: The Art of Possible, I cover some basic concepts that help business leaders make that happen. If you lump those concepts together, they really boil down to these two things:

1. Get the Right People Involved

The first step to developing a CX strategy is to have universal buy-in from internal and external stakeholders. This means that everyone is on the bus, and is in agreement with where the bus is going. If people don’t understand where they are going, or why they are going there, it becomes very difficult to implement a strategy.

CX leaders of the most successful companies find ways to inspire the decision makers within their organizations to incorporate customer experience as a part of the corporate culture. Not only does this top-down approach allow for a more unified front, it also allows for a more effective implementation.

As you implement this executive-sponsored plan, it’s important that you bring together influential stakeholders from different teams, and that the customer experience doesn’t fall into the lap of just one person or department. At InMoment, we often advise our clients to create a CX “Special Forces” team with a variety of representatives, including dedicated leaders within the organization (not just figureheads) that are dedicated to making CX a way of life. It’s usually helpful to have representatives from operations, marketing, finance, HR, product, technology, and any other critical departments within your organization.

Successful CX strategy implementation also requires getting your hands dirty. Take the time to consider and experience first-hand what it is like to use your product or service, contact your customer support, search for your product, and use your website or mobile app. Encouraging others in your organization to do the same helps create a unique understanding and empathy for the customer—and a culture of customer experience stems from empathy. As you take the time to understand your business as your customers experience it, you can gather more information, which can be used to strategically drive major decisions and create positive impacts that lead to meaningful changes.

2. Get the Right Intelligence

CX leaders leverage many tools to gather information about the customer experience. The required tools and metrics vary based on the strategy, but the first thing to determine is what your organization wants to achieve. This end goal will be the north star that guides all other CX-related decisions and will help you know how to measure success.

Once you’ve identified what you want to accomplish, and how you will measure success, you’ll need a partner who can help you effectively execute on gathering CX intelligence. There are many Voice of Customer (VoC) vendors with various strengths and specialties, but few of them get the basics right. A good VoC vendor will always offer these five things as they help you gather the right intelligence:

• Multichannel Listening. Your customers want to share feedback, but they want to do it their way. A good CX partner will facilitate multiple types of surveys and feedback channels to allow for customers to share their opinions through mediums like voice, web, and video.
• Advanced analytics. Good analytics allow you to understand what’s driving customer behavior. Most vendors facilitate basic number crunching and scoring capabilities, allowing organizations to understand the “structured” data. However, much information is left on the table with “unstructured” data—comments, stories, etc. that aren’t easily categorized. Look for vendors with analytics advanced enough to allow you to capitalize on all of the information customers give you, instead of leaving something on the table for the competition to find.
• Flexibility. Strategic CX deployment is not one-size-fits-all. Each organization is different, with different clients and needs, which requires different approaches. When selecting a vendor, it’s critical to evaluate their ability to provide the flexibility to create the right solution while still allowing for advanced analytical capabilities that drive speed to insight. Vendors must have flexible platforms that are capable of accommodating your multi-client architecture and keeping the right people informed with accurate organizational reporting, regardless of complexity, while still handling changes in feedback mechanisms, channels, and methods—all without incurring high additional costs.
• Data integration. Rarely do CX strategies operate from one single program, so the ability to integrate across multiple systems—including multiple CRMs, social, transactional, financial, competitive, etc.—is important because it allows for deeper analysis and the surfacing of better insights. 
• Ongoing Support and Professional Services. CX strategies require ongoing maintenance. To accomplish your goals, you’ll need a team of knowledgeable, dedicated, strategically-minded consultants to help guide you to the best outcome. A VoC vendor who sells you and then disappears won’t give you long-term success.

To learn more about how to transform your CX program, take a look at the full white paper here.

We’ve all been there.

You login to any reporting app and waiting for you is a picturesque dashboard full of metrics colorfully displayed in pie charts, bar graphs, and heat maps. After several minutes of glancing through them, you realize the hard truth: You have no idea what you’re looking at, and can’t decipher what these charts and graphs are telling you.

How do you take action when you can’t make sense of the constant influx of customer experience (CX) data that’s pouring in? Here are four rules for uncovering insights in your CX dashboard.

1. Dashboards are a launch pad—use them that way.

Your dashboards give you a pulse on how your business is doing. They are diagnostic tools and are intended to be used that way. When something doesn’t look right, and you’re seeing downward trends, your dashboard is there to help you dive deeper into the data to find the cause.

A well-built dashboard allows you quickly see all your data at a high level and then easily dive in deeper to locate root cause and create action. A dashboard is your first step in navigating through your CX data, so keep it simple and use it as a guide to creating a great customer experience.

2. Don’t cram too much into one dashboard.

Each department and role has metrics that are relevant to them. Knowing which metrics you’re held accountable for can help you build a dashboard that works for you. With a proper dashboard built for your specific use case you’re able to control what you’re measuring and what you compare it against.

A dashboard can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution—each department or team should have their own that contains only their metrics. If you get too many metrics on a dashboard, you end up feeling overwhelmed and spend too much time looking for the ones that matter to you.

Your dashboards should be custom and purposefully built to meet not only your CX program, but your role within your organization.

3. Stop comparing apples and oranges.

One of the biggest downfalls of a dashboard is making a chart or graph just for the sake of making one. While they make look flashy, comparing metrics that aren’t comparable is a surefire way to clutter up your dashboard and leave you confused at what the data is trying to tell you.

For example, you don’t want to compare corporate locations to franchise locations. Both fall under the same organization, but measure things differently. This could lead to confusion and a misunderstanding of what the data is telling you. Instead you want to compare metrics that fall under the same category, and that have the same values or units.

4. Structured and unstructured data belong together.

A successful dashboard consists of a mix of perception- and performance-based metrics that are pulled from both structured and unstructured data. Having only one of these data sets only gives you a small piece of the CX puzzle.

In the past, structured data was all you had to compare. But now, with today’s technology and vast amount of CX data available, you can begin drawing insights from unstructured data in ways that can have a huge impact on your business. Bringing together all types of CX data—including transactional, financial, contact, and demographic—next to your typical Voice of Customer data can provide the next level of actionable insights your business needs.

Your customers don’t care how you measure and track their interactions with your brand—but they do care how you act upon the insights that they give to you.

It’s no secret that telecommunications companies have a difficult time pleasing their customers.

In fact, in a new study by InMoment, Customer Experience in the Telecom Industry, we found that no line of service (internet, mobile, etc.) ever fully bounces back from the customer satisfaction levels of the pre-one-year honeymoon phase. In other words, after year one, satisfaction goes downhill and never recovers.

So why aren’t telecoms meeting customers’ long-term expectations?

I recently sat down with my good friend Graham Tutton, the VP of Customer Insights at Comcast, to discuss what telecoms like Comcast are doing—or should be doing—to improve the customer experience (CX).

Make CX a strategic priority.

Graham acknowledged that Comcast is the 800-pound gorilla in the room of the legacy cable business. With a stock price that has tripled since 2010, it’s been a big winner on Wall Street. Yet, while Comcast has been winning in many ways, the leadership team recognized the importance of improving its brand image around the customer experience.

In 2014, Graham and others started making a deliberate shift in strategy to focus on CX. Comcast has a Chief Experience Officer and board-level support for prioritizing this focus, which is a keystone for any telecom that wants to make a significant improvement for its customers.

With this support in place, the question was, “How do we get scientific and strategic about moving the needle on CX?”

Give customers more control through transparency.

Telecom customers are notoriously disloyal. Millennials, in particular, are very fickle and cost-conscious. Even more so, they are value conscious. Telecoms must have the rational table stakes in place (price, quality, reliability, etc.) before customers will even consider sticking around.

Comcast discovered its customer churn was strongly correlated to its Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS), so the company performed an analysis to see what drivers were impacting that score. As Comcast looked at various stages of the relationship, from awareness to purchase to onboarding, they asked questions like, “What are the drivers during the onboarding process?” or “What are the drivers when issues like billing come up?”

Comcast found when it gave customers more visibility into things like prices, speeds, etc. that the customers felt more in control. That transparency was key to building customer trust and longer-term relationships.

If telecoms can set expectations up front, communicating both the positive and the negative (e.g., rate increases and the timeline for promotions)) the customer feels like they have enough control to make educated choices. Gone are the days when companies can hike up prices and send the customer a notification in the mail. The more explicit telecoms are in managing expectations, the happier customers will be, and the less they will have to call in about down the road (saving the customer time and the company money).

Consequently, over the past year, Comcast has seen a massive decrease in call volume—to the tune of around 20 million fewer calls. That’s improvement.

However, as telecoms educate and become more transparent with their customers, their employees will be required to resolve more complex issues.

Empower your employees.

It’s impossible to talk about comprehensive CX improvement without including employee engagement and feedback.

Moving closer to a people-first culture is a mammoth task in any company, let alone one like Comcast with 130,000 individuals working in the organization. Comcast went about changing its hiring practices at every level of the organization, and have made real improvements on learning from its employees and acting upon employee feedback. In fact, the NPS for Comcast’s employee engagement is up 20 points on average.

While call center employees may not be privy to the strategic business of high-level executives, they should be informed enough to be able to talk relevantly to customers about their situation, as well as feel empowered to make choices that will resolve the issues that come up.

At the end of the day, customers want reliable service and competitive pricing from a company they can trust. Telecoms should not feel like an enemy, but a partner in technology for consumers. When issues arise—as they will in any industry—employees must be empowered to make things right in a timely manner.

When this employee empowerment is combined with a transparency that gives greater control to the customer, telecoms have a mutual ground for resolving roadblocks to customer retention and satisfaction.

If you would like to learn more about improving CX in the telecommunications industry, download our new study here.

Implementing a customer experience strategy can impact your business almost instantly, but the true benefit lies in the long-term results.

With CX, measuring short-term post-transactional surveys only shows you a glimpse into “how we are doing now.” While there is value in measuring these short-term, point-in-time surveys, they’re only giving you just that—a snapshot into the customer’s experience.

Instead, we want to look at the benefits of a long-term CX roadmap and how it allows you to broaden the scope and look beyond single interactions, giving you a more in-depth look at your customer’s experience.

Here are three reasons you should implement a long-term CX roadmap:

1. It will help you measure and track the ROI of your CX program.

Proving ROI, for some companies, can be one of the most difficult aspects of their CX strategy. Business leaders expect results, and they want to know if their investment in CX is paying off.

In order to track the ROI on your CX program, you’ll need to first set a benchmark. Having a Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS) benchmark, for instance, will help you tie efforts to revenue.

This fundamental piece of your roadmap will help you create goals that are easy to track and achieve. Knowing where you fall now will help you gauge where you want to be in 3 months, 6 months, and even years from now.

2. You can visualize and implement quick wins and long-term fixes.

Improving your CX doesn’t happen overnight. Some improvements can be implemented quickly, while others may require changes that impact the business as a whole and take months, or even years to roll out.

Creating a roadmap that strategizes how to attack the long-term issues in the future gives you a guide for improving experiences and touchpoints that take more buy off or time to implement than some of the quicker, easier fixes. Having a list of quick wins and a roadmap gives everyone visibility into how your organization is prioritizing putting the customer first. It shows that as a business you’re listening to the feedback from not only the customer, but the employees that interact and shape the experience with your brand.

3. You will stay ahead of the always-changing landscape.

Your commitment to provide an excellent customer experience may not change, but your customers and the landscape they live in always will. New products, technologies, competitors, and increasing customer expectations mean that your strategy must be constantly evolving and improving. What is relevant today isn’t necessarily going to be relevant tomorrow.

As mentioned in Forrester’s recent report, “How to Build the Right CX Strategy,” there are both obvious reasons and more subtle cues that signal it’s time to revisit your CX strategy. When creating your long-term plan, it’s important to be flexible. Plan for the future but prepare for the unexpected. Allow your long-term CX roadmap to flex and grow with your business and customers. Make changes and improvements as you go by measuring, tracking, and predicting what your customers expect.

Transitioning from a short-term outlook to a long-term roadmap will help you better understand your customers and how they interact with your brand beyond a single transaction.

At InMoment, our CX Architects are here to help you visualize and build a CX roadmap that will help you create longer customer life cycles and more repeat customers.

According to Bain & Company, leaders in customer loyalty achieve revenue growth of more than twice the market rate and enjoy, on average, a roughly 15% cost advantage over their competitors.

Sounds pretty good—but how do you get there?

I recently had the pleasure of hosting a webinar with Phil Sager from Bain & Company. Bain, as you know, invented the concept of Net Promoter® more than a decade ago to help business leaders gauge the loyalty of customer relationships. NPS has since evolved from a score to a management system, and has gained much-deserved popularity over the years.

Still, while many businesses start on the NPS journey, few of them actually succeed in becoming leaders in customer loyalty. Here are nine of the most common pitfalls, in no particular order, according to Bain:

1. The leadership team is not aligned and not committed.

It’s trendy to say you focus on customer experience, but often “implementation” is a fuzzy realm living in somebody else’s responsibility.

2. Metrics are not reliable, sufficient, nor trusted.

A whopping 88% of companies that are struggling to achieve success with their Net Promoter System do not have confidence in the reliability of their NPS data.

3. The case for change—head and heart—is missing.

The data will bring the “head,” but it’s up to you CX advocates to bring the “heart” by being able to tell compelling stories that inspire people to change and buy into NPS.

4. NPS is not tailored to day-to-day routines.

Beware of treating NPS as “more work” instead of “how we work.”

5. You focus on the score instead of behaviors.

This has been the anthem of InMoment for years.

6. Incentives are linked to customer feedback too early.

If you tie compensation directly to your NPS, you will start polluting the quality of your data. Focus instead on outcome metrics.

7. There is a failure to prioritize and focus on initiatives to “move the needle.”

Roughly 70% of companies struggling to succeed with NPS do not have a systematic process to identify and act on initiatives. Remember, it’s what you do with the data that counts.

8. There is insufficient early momentum.

It’s important to establish trust early through training, support, and quick wins.

9. You’re not measuring or managing critical experiences with a cross-functional episodic lens.

In order to effectively design end-to-end experiences, Bain suggests creating owners who can own a specific experience from the top of the purchase funnel down to the difficult problem-resolution call when something goes wrong.

The root causes of most of these pitfalls are broken data, frontline learning issues, not fixing the executive-level obstacles, or not planning sufficiently for the journey. If you really want to tackle NPS, start there.

Better yet, start with watching the full webinar here.