Best Practices

Don’t just experience the experience transformation: own it. And if real transformation is what you’re after, you’ll need to turn metrics into meaningful and strategic CX actions. Our latest eBook, “How to Go Beyond CX Insights and Take Action: 6 Action Steps for Experience Transformation” guides you on everything from feedback to insights, insights to intelligence, intelligence to action, and action to transformation. 

Here are six crucial action steps outlined in the eBook that detail how you can own the customer experience transformation. 

#1: Get the right reports

Work smarter, not harder. 

Gathering data is an essential step for nearly all businesses, but it’s not enough to transform your organization. Not all data is good data—and to ensure your company is moving forward, you need the right reporting tools to complement your customer experience strategy. You don’t have to be a data expert, but with the right templates and reports, you can turn metrics into insights that produce meaningful change.

#2: Include third-party information 

Feedback is everywhere. Use it.

Technology never stops evolving and as a result, customer feedback takes various shapes. With social media commanding the attention of nearly all generations, your approach to data collection must be extensive. It’s imperative to implement tools that break down social data and deliver integrated insights to you in a variety of dashboards, reports, and apps. This enables you to take action to address unhappy customers, and get ahead of your competition.

#3. Proactively monitor the impact of campaigns on your CX

Understand the big picture, faster.

Businesses—no matter how big or small—constantly introduce new initiatives, leadership, campaigns, or policies. With all this noise, it can be difficult to ideate, complete, and understand the impact of projects. How can you address this challenge head on? Work to continuously monitor specific issues, and their impact on key metrics. By tracking, A/B testing and improving campaigns,  you can better understand the big picture to more quickly determine what’s working, and what isn’t. 

#4. Resolve issues quickly

Control the entire customer lifecycle.

Negative customer feedback can be valuable. One of the most important actions your CX program can take is to respond to negative feedback quickly and efficiently. But with a massive amount of data to sift through, addressing all negative feedback on your own might not be feasible. Linking up with intelligent tools, like InMoment’s case management system, gives you more control over your case list. That means your company can address things in order of importance to quickly solve everyday issues.

#5. Train your employees efficiently

Use data to empower your staff. 

Give your employees the tools to succeed. With the right intelligence program, you can leverage customer feedback to train your employees. Robust coaching applications equip local managers with simple, procedural steps to solve service and satisfaction concerns in a quick and efficient fashion. With advanced data science in your corner, your company can take the employee experience to the next level—an action with rewards that will trickle down to the rest of your company.

#6. Prove the effectiveness of your actions

Justify the importance of your CX program.

How many times has your organization implemented projects that fall off the map? Often, it’s not the fault of those responsible for the project, but rather the lack of ability to determine and analyze the conclusions. Data-ingesting experience tools, like our XI Platform, can turn CX initiative data into intelligent and easy-to-understand insights for long-term, meaningful change. This intelligence helps gain the trust of higher-ups, which in turn leads to more business initiative freedom down the road. 

When companies combine data insights with action, everyone wins. The right intelligence platform works in unison with capable employees for a fully formed CX strategy that produces a transformative impact for customers, employees, and the business itself. 

You’ve collected the data, now what? Download our eBook, “How to Go Beyond CX Insights and Take Action: 6 Action Steps for Experience Transformation” to learn more today. 

Guest experiences don’t exist in siloes. From marketing to HR and operations, your entire organization plays a role in delivering memorable customer experiences (CX) and interactions that lead to increased customer loyalty.  

InMoment’s Nate Morley was joined by Savannah Harper, director of operations services at Auntie Anne’s, and Nhuy Weidinger, brand marketing manager for McAlister’s Deli, to host a webinar in partnership with FastCasual.com, “Success Starts with Your Guests: Using Guest Feedback Throughout Your Entire Organization.” From leveraging the power of data to improving employee and customer interactions, this webinar discusses how each department across your organization can leverage customer feedback to make better business decisions and improve the overall experience. 

How Guest Feedback Impacts Department Roles 

Operations: It’s no secret that good customer experiences start with employees. Your operations department is a great place to uncover how you can deliver value from the inside out. 

According to Savannah Harper of Auntie Anne’s, this can be done by leveraging your guest experience platform to deliver in-depth data and metrics. This real-time, priceless data shows store owners and employees why they should care about guest experiences, drawing a correlation between good service, guest recovery, and a better bottom line. 

Human Resources: A reported 79% of employees who quit their jobs claimed that a lack of appreciation was a major reason for leaving. And employees that don’t feel appreciated likely aren’t going the extra mile to improve customer experiences. But when your HR team highlights employee successes—as detailed in guest feedback—employees not only feel valued, they also know they’re doing well. 

HR teams can also leverage employee success for training purposes, using real-world situations to prevent negative or bad customer experiences in the future. 

Finance: Think finance is removed from guest experiences? Think again. While employees on the floor are the ones responsible for interacting with customers, those interactions directly impact things like revenue. By investing in your guest experiences, your business will see positive outcomes like: 

• Recovering at-risk revenue: Guests have lifetime value, especially those that continually seek out your brand for products or services. Identifying and recovering at-risk customers helps you rescue that revenue as well. 
• Increasing sales opportunities: According to Forrester, customers who have great buying experiences are 3.6 times more likely to spend more with the brand who provided it. Good customer experiences can equal more revenue opportunities.
• Acquiring new customers: Word of mouth from happy customers makes up roughly 3% of CX-fueled revenue potential. Not only do great experiences lead to repeat purchases from existing customers, but it also increases the chance they’ll share your brand with their peers. 

Development: For departments responsible for business development, guest feedback can lead to clearer understanding on brand perception, which in turn allows you to better optimize store locations. Granular guest data helps you know where your customers are coming from, where there’s opportunity to open new stores, and when it might be time to close ones that aren’t performing well. 

Marketing: Marketing teams are constantly testing the waters with customers. And finding products customers love, or uncovering those they don’t, requires gathering guest data and feedback. According to Nhuy Weidinger, brand marketing manager for McAlister’s Deli, when the company changes the menu or introduces limited-time, seasonal menu items, they make sure to gather guest feedback to determine if those items should be rolled out again the following year. 

For example, when McAlister’s Deli removed gravy and croissants from the menu, customers spoke up to let the company know they missed those items. And when McAlister’s marketing department made the decision to reintroduce those menu offerings, guests felt like their feedback was heard—and their cravings were satisfied. 

Whether you’re responsible for your company’s books or determining the best locale to open a brick-and-mortar location, a strong CX strategy must touch every facet of your business. By aligning departments across your organization on how to listen, leverage, and act on guest feedback, you’re working to create better customer experiences, in turn driving more business success. 

For more insights, check out Fast Casual’s webinar, “Success Starts with Your Guests: Using Guest Feedback Throughout Your Entire Organization,” today. 

Today’s oversaturated markets make it difficult to stay on top of all CX insights, intelligence, news and trends. To help you sort through the massive amounts of market information, we’ve gathered some of the best CX insights from 2019 that you might have missed so you can better prepare for 2020.

Insight #1: Optimize the feedback experience.

It’s what your customers want. 

Did you know that 70% of your customers want direct feedback? Our survey revealed that consumers want to be heard, but not in the same way as before. Traditional modes of feedback like long-winded surveys no longer cut it. Users demand a beautifully designed experience that expedites customer service—without skimping on the service portion. 

One way to achieve this is by integrating intelligent conversations in real time to improve your CX insights. Showing that you care as a brand makes customers more likely to tell their story (and for it to be positive). By building a customer-centric culture, you’re establishing not only trust between the brand and consumer, but you’re creating a more engaging and meaningful experience for everyone involved.

Read more…

Insight #2: Build your employee experience index. 

Gain CX insights from EX improvements.

It’s no secret that customer experiences and employee experiences are more connected than we think. As a result, business success cannot be achieved if one is neglected. However, it’s important not to treat EX and CX feedback the same. 

As referenced by InMoment VP, Customer and Employee Experience Strategy Paul Warner, work and organizational psychology professor Dr. Wilmar Schaufeli suggests organizations focus on the three tentpoles of employee engagement: vigor, absorption and dedication. Building your employee experience index and taking effective action is extremely crucial for growth. By first listening to employees, then acting on that feedback, you’re working to create meaningful changes that start at the employee level, trickle down to customers, and offer actionable CX insights.  

Read more…

Insight #3: Create an effective listening strategy.

Ask the right questions to gather better CX insights.

You can’t predict customers’ needs, but with the right tools and information, you can better curate their experiences. Start by asking better, more relevant questions that allow them to tell their stories. Guests want to engage with a brand that makes them feel seen and heard, and takes their feedback into account. Creating an effective listening strategy that gathers the voice of guests and employees will also help you fulfill all their needs to create a better, more positive experience.

Read more…

Insight #4: Take a more personal approach.

Treat your customers like friends.

When it comes to customer appreciation, it’s important to go above and beyond. Effective brands with stellar customer reputations are those who accommodate several feedback options. While some customers prefer a phone call, others feel that chatbots or email work better with their schedules. A more personalized approach facilitates stronger brand-to-customer connections and grants an opportunity to gather CX insights.

Read more…

Insight #5: Leverage feedback.

Learn from CX insights, gather feedback, and then use it.

Surveys aren’t useful unless you do something with the results. It’s imperative for brands to use CX insights to capitalize on the unique things customers like about their brand, and quickly solve for things they don’t. Some organizations struggle to understand how leveraging feedback can lead to tangible change. As InMoment VP of CX Eric Smuda explains:

“Better experiences lead to happier customers, more brand loyalty and increased revenue.”  

Useful, educational data comes from the intelligent tools that allow you to understand what your customers want. Companies wanting to stay ahead need to use metrics to develop stronger customer relationships that power business growth. 

Read more…

It may be the end of the year, but it’s never too late to adjust your CX strategy. By implementing these CX insights now, you can better prepare your business to deliver more profound customer experiences in 2020 and beyond.

In a world where e-commerce is constantly evolving, more and more traditional quality assessment strategies are becoming obsolete. Even though mystery shopping was once the standard approach to assessing service, new technology proves itself to be more effective and more reliable.

Your organization needs an all-encompassing customer experience (CX) strategy that grants you peripheral views of customer service shortcomings, as well as insights into the most critical lines of your business. InMoment’s latest white paper, “Why a Customer Experience Program is More Powerful Than Mystery Shopping,” details what intelligent technology can do that mystery shopping simply cannot. 

The Benefits of Adopting a Holistic CX Program 

Improving the customer experience doesn’t just affect the customer. Your organization can leverage the insights gained from newly implemented technology to make meaningful, transformative business decisions. Here are a few improvements that a holistic approach to feedback can drive for your business: 

#1: You can more closely assess your CX program, and make strategy adjustments as needed.  

Reviews from mystery shopping companies and other traditional modes of quality assessment tend to accumulate over time. Without having direct and instant access to CX results and reviews, odds are your business will make the same mistakes over and over again, negatively impacting customer experiences. 

But with instant real-time access to results, your organization can quickly and efficiently assess information, making necessary strategy adjustments. InMoment’s XI Platform is comprised of three clouds: the CX Cloud, the Employee Experience (EX) Cloud, and the Market Experience (MX) Cloud. The platform garners different types of data formats, including real-time survey responses, analytics, reporting and alerts that deliver immediate results. With this modern technology in place, these clouds can be used individually, or combined to deliver insights from the most critical lines of your business

#2 Your CX and performance data is carefully and optimally organized. 

Not all businesses are the same, so their CX strategies shouldn’t be either. You need a platform that is flexible enough to support all different types of executives within every area of your organization. With a scalable architecture, data can be obtained, stored, organized and distributed to the right people, at the right time, so that everyone gets the relevant insights they need in their roles—from executives to marketing, and HR. 

Additionally, intelligent automation tools can provide external and internal improvements for both customers and employees. For example, InMoment’s XI Platform allows companies to incorporate tried-and-true feedback (like surveys) in a way that doesn’t complicate processes for customers. The insights and results are received in real-time, allowing companies to respond to feedback and implement changes much faster.

#3 You’ll increase your organization’s revenue and performance. 

Among all the other benefits, an intelligent CX strategy also increases the overall performance and reputation of your organization—and results in a better bottom line. Here are just a few notable numbers achieved through a holistic customer experience strategy: 

• $23 million in potential revenue one InMoment client gained after implementing a closed-loop system. These kinds of customer improvements can help your company identify and retain at-risk customers, in addition to acquiring new ones.  
• 3.6x more money customers who have great experiences with a brand are more likely to spend with that brand. With the right CX strategy in place, the payoff will come quickly. 
• 3% increase in CX-fueled revenue. According to Forrester reports, happy customers account for about a 3% bump in revenue potential in most industries. 

Leveling up your customer experience strategy has both quantitative and qualitative benefits for the entire organization. In a highly competitive market, staying ahead is key to staying on top. To learn more about how our XI Platform can take your CX program to the next level, download our white paper, “Why a Customer Experience Program is More Powerful Than Mystery Shopping” here.

In the evolving e-commerce market, consumers have just as much power as brands, if not more. As a result, the demand for intelligent, user-friendly customer experience (CX) has only increased, with no signs of it slowing down.

 In a highly competitive market, traditional methods will no longer cut it. In order to create a meaningful experience that benefits everyone—brands, customers, employees, and the market—you need all-encompassing business intelligence tools that fill the gaps with insights that will drive impactful results. 

InMoment puts the intelligence in intelligent automation. The XI Platform is comprised of three clouds, the CX Cloud, the Employee Experience (EX) Cloud, and the Market Experience (MX) Cloud. Built on a modernized technology stack, these clouds can be used individually or combined to deliver insights from the most critical lines of your business. 

4 Key Drivers in Experience Intelligence Automation

#1: Synthesize

Customer feedback is essential, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Data doesn’t come from just one source or even one format; experience data lives in every part of your business. Our approach widens your lens to a 360-degree view by mining and storing data from a variety of sources—your organization, its products, your market, and your competitors—to identify the most critical intersections of what creates meaningful experiences. With InMoment, science is infused in every part of the XI Platform, which enables the extraction of more data in more formats for even more intelligent business insights.  

#2: Analyze 

Collecting and leveraging data through silos makes it difficult to piece all of the experiences together and even harder to create an effective CX strategy. But with the extraction of data in its original form combined with the unique fusion of sources, our platform easily compiles findings from the customer, employee, and market to take your analytics to the next level. By viewing metrics through the right lens, you can maximize the quality and relevance of the insights that your company receives to transform CX metrics into meaningful analysis, which in turn, gives your company the tools to execute an actionable, data-driven customer experience strategy. 

#3: Prioritize 

Every company strives for meaningful contribution but without the fundamental knowledge of your customers, employees, competition, and the market, you can never truly make informed decisions. InMoment’s XI Platform allows you to customize and tailor the intelligence that users receive, ensuring everyone gets the relevant insights needed. This experience intelligence allows everyone to better understand feedback and prioritize the issues that require immediate action and solve those problems. Our solution is highly scalable to meet your company where you are now and get you where you want to go.

#4: Monetize 

With InMoment’s XI Platform and a fully integrated CX strategy, your business can finally see the big picture. Better customer experience transparency allows your company to turn findings into action that produces more business value and profit. These purposefully designed, extraordinary experiences aid in fostering long-term, measurable growth. 

Want to learn more about how our XI Platform can take your CX program to the next level? Download InMoment’s eBook “Designing Extraordinary Experiences: Combining the Power of Customer, Employee, and Market Experience Intelligence” today.

There’s a reputation problem facing the future of the telecom industry. 

Research shows that telecommunications companies consistently receive lower customer experience (CX) scores than any other industry. That’s partly because people tend to have much higher customer experience standards for telecoms than they might have for other businesses. But it’s also because many telecoms simply aren’t listening to their customers. And as the streaming war heats up and spurs major changes in the telecom industry, businesses can no longer afford to ignore their customers. 

Here are a few tips brands can use to improve the customer experience and ultimately customer retention in the telecom industry: 

Anticipate Common Problems Before They Occur

It doesn’t have to be a guessing game when it comes to understanding customer needs and problems. Common issues often plague telecom users, especially as they reach certain milestones along the customer journey. 

For example, our research shows that customers are less likely to recommend internet, mobile, or television services around the one-year mark with a provider. Respondents report common frustrations around staff ability, efficiency, and helpfulness, as well as issues with bill clarity and ease of payment. 

Given that this problem is by no means rare, telecom providers should be proactive and engage existing customers before they reach this milestone. Check in with customers about their points of concern and educate them to avoid any confusion that may create bigger problems down the line. 

Approach Efforts to Automate Wisely

Automation in the telecom industry has changed the game for many companies through the use of AI-enabled chatbots. AI can ease the burden on swamped customer service reps and provide more convenient options for customers to engage with businesses. But no matter how helpful this technology can be, it can never fully replace human interaction.

Poor customer service is a top contributing factor to user dissatisfaction. As a result, telecom companies must review all problems that occur and make sure their chatbots are not used at the wrong times and making issues worse. Every customer resolution strategy should blend automation options with the possibility of intervention by a human customer service rep. This should be a seamless process; that way, if problems are escalated from bots then service reps have all the data and information needed to avoid wasting customer time. 

Engage Customers on Their Own Terms 

It’s hard to understand all of the unique problems your customers face if they can’t easily provide insightful feedback. And given that customer needs and preferences vary, one size does not fit all when it comes to the options for soliciting this feedback. Customers should be able to choose from a diverse range of channels to solve their problems in the ways that are easiest and most productive for them. 

Give customers opportunities to engage via interactive methods—through voice, video, image, and more—beyond just the standard survey. This provides more meaningful and insightful data with details that matter so you can easily improve your CX. Regardless of how your customers choose to engage, make sure their transition from survey to video chat or phone call with a rep is seamless and consistent. 

There are no guarantees in the future of telecom. But your survival in an increasingly competitive space depends on your ability to step in the shoes of your customers and understand their needs and issues. If you can harness the voice of the customer to improve your customer experience, you’re already ahead. 

For more information, download our “CX in the Telecom Industry“ eBook today. 

To leverage a third-party delivery company, or to go it alone? That’s the question facing many franchise and independent restaurants. Today’s diners love meal delivery services; the average person has two food delivery apps on their phone and uses them three times a month. More than half (54%) of users start their meal search with a specific restaurant in mind, then look for it in an app. So if your restaurant isn’t available on food delivery apps, guests may move on to your competition. 

But those wary of jumping on board with a restaurant delivery brand like Grubhub and DoorDash worry about putting their guests’ experience—from the state of the food at arrival to the speed at which it arrives—in someone else’s hands. (There’s also the startling fact that one-fourth of delivery drivers admit to sneaking a bite of a guest’s food.)

Restaurants that do decide third-party delivery services are worth the risk need a way to measure the full effect that these offerings are having on their brand. That means engaging tools within your guest experience management platform to give your brand the opportunity to connect with diners as if you were delivering their meals yourself.

In our latest report, “How to Measure the Effect of Third-party Delivery on Your Brand,” we delve into a few ways your restaurant can leverage guest experience solutions to make sure your diners are getting the quality delivery experience they expect. 

Leverage Email Surveys

While guests may be able to gain instant access to your brand’s online surveys via their food receipts, there’s no guarantee with third-party delivery services that those receipts will even reach guests’ hands. 

To combat this potential gap, restaurants can shift their tactics away from receipt feedback requests to follow-up emails. This leverages a key benefit of food delivery services—access to your guests’ personal data, including email addresses—and allows you to personalize emails based on when and what a guest orders. 

When setting up your email surveys, don’t forget to factor in relevance. Since guests who received delivery orders weren’t served in your restaurant (this time), you won’t want to ask questions about your servers or cleanliness. Instead, focus on the flavor, temperature and quality of the food. Asking the right questions shows guests you’re paying attention and are truly invested in their overall experience.

Contrast Guests’ Experiences

One of the many advantages of a leading guest experience management platform is that it can measure multiple touchpoints. While your goal may be to gather feedback on guests’ food delivery experience, you can also compare and benchmark that data against their dine-in visits. You can even go so far as to break down those third-party experiences by brand (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, etc.) to see which is best representing your restaurant—and which one could be doing damage.

Your most important benchmarking data, however, will come from crunching some numbers. Work with your guest experience team to find an average spend for each guest in a variety of groups (dining-in versus delivery, one third-party brand versus another, etc.). When you multiply that number by the amount of negative experiences in each group, you’ll gain a window into your potential losses if those guests leave your brand—and the numbers show exactly where you need to improve. 

Find Out What’s Really Important to Your Guests

At its core, the ultimate goal behind guest feedback is to maintain a quality experience, improve your service based on wants and needs, then maintain guest loyalty. We already know that more than two-thirds of guests report that “staff interaction” highly influences their ongoing brand decision making. But what about guests who receive your food via third-party delivery services? We can’t assume they’re influenced by the same factors.

That’s where follow-up email surveys can prove a gold mine. Nearly one-third of diners say they buy more food when ordering delivery versus dining in. Why is that? What extras are they ordering? Additionally, you can gain feedback about the delivery experience beyond food. More than one-third (36%) of guests say they would pay more for eco-friendly packaging—do yours feel the same? Do they prioritize friendly drivers and speedy delivery? Your survey can reveal answers to all these questions.

Restaurants that use third-party delivery know they’ve already opened up a variety of new revenue streams. But there’s plenty they don’t know about food delivery experiences. Guest experience management platforms deliver the tools to clear up these mysteries, and help restaurants maintain great diner experiences, no matter where they’re eating. 

To learn more about how you can use your guest experience management platform to guarantee great experiences with third-party delivery, check out our latest eBook, “How to Measure the Effect of Third-party Delivery on Your Brand.”

For brands looking to gain a competitive edge in a customer-centric, digital-first era, quality customer experience (CX) separates the companies that excel from those that fall behind. 

Despite valiant efforts from brands to make customer experience strategies a core part of their business, 70% of CX initiatives risk losing funding—and failing altogether—by not providing enough business value. And while roughly 80% of brands want to compete based on customer experience, only 7% of CX strategies result in competitive differentiation.

However, these numbers aren’t cause for panic. The good news is there are simple measures you can take to ensure your CX strategy is not only effective, but fosters relationships with buyers to increase customer satisfaction—and most importantly, retention. 

3 Steps You Can Take to Improve the Lifespan of Your CX Strategy 

Good CX strategies involve more than occasional customer surveys and scoring systems. They need to be actionable, iterative plans that evolve with customer habits and expectations. 

Simon Fraser, VP of XI Strategy, discussed CX challenges facing brands in the webinar “Delights, Customers, Action”, where they uncover what you can do to overcome CX strategy-related challenges, and develop a plan for success:

Step 1: Take time to ask questions before you roll out a strategy.

It’s difficult to thoughtfully execute CX initiatives when you don’t take the time to ask yourself, “What do we want to accomplish?” Before implementing a full CX strategy, work with your team to compile answers to a few key questions. What is your desired outcome? What obstacles can you anticipate? Who needs to be involved? Once these questions have been asked you can get to work on answering each one, and ensure your strategy addresses any preemptive concerns. 

Step 2: Don’t be afraid to test and reimagine your strategies.

Brands often get caught up in early CX success and become complacent, instead of focusing on how they can continue to improve. It’s important to remember that successful CX strategies should involve ongoing testing, validation and iteration. Factors like buyer expectations constantly shift—and you’ll want your strategy to adjust accordingly. 

Step 3: Make customer sentiment a part of your CX strategy.

Great customer experiences involve fully listening to customer stories. And when you go beyond quantitative CX metrics, you unlock customer intelligence that allows you to understand and identify the actions to take based on what creates those meaningful, memorable experiences. Take this information and integrate it into your CX approach. That way, you can not only continuously improve, but you can also iterate your strategies based an actionable, first-hand data. 

Customer experience shouldn’t trip up organizations. It should be an opportunity to understand your core buyers, drive ROI and gain an edge on competitors. And by taking a careful, comprehensive approach to developing your CX strategy, the chance of sustained success only improves. 

Measuring customer experience (CX) has always been a numbers and metrics game. And while standard CX metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS®), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) provide some insights into customer experience, they don’t tell the whole story.

The limitation of these frequently used CX metrics is that they’re only a surface-level look into past customer experiences. They don’t delve into details, such as why a customer chooses to make a purchase, or the issues that lead customers to leave less-than-favorable ratings. And most importantly, basic customer experience scores fail to uncover how brands can adjust their customer experience strategies to maximize long-term sales.

4 Customer Experience Strategies to Get More From Your Metrics

InMoment believes that by going beyond basic customer experience metrics to seek out customer stories, you gain customer intelligence that allows you to understand and identify the actions to take based on what creates meaningful, memorable customer experiences. 

Our latest eBook, “Taking Your CX Program From Metrics to Meaning: Going Beyond Simple Scores to Get to the Stories That Matter”  takes a closer look at our customer experience methodology, including four key steps you can take to extract more meaning and value from your customer experience metrics: 

#1 Listen

Customers likely have qualitative stories to share about their experiences—both positive and negative. Pay attention to what customers say in comment boxes, and consider providing more opportunities for them to provide details about their experiences—beyond providing you with scores on a scale of 1-10. With more information at your disposal, your brand is equipped to make CX strategy adjustments based on the in-depth feedback you receive.

#2 Understand

Use the CX data you gather to gain a deeper understanding of who your customers are, what they’re saying, and what they want. For even deeper insights, consider taking a step beyond standard text analytics with predictive intelligence and anomaly detection. These technologies allow you to create profiles based on customer behavior so you can anticipate their needs and actions, and communicate with them accordingly.

#3 Improve

Armed with in-depth data and a better understanding of your customers, you can share this knowledge across your organization to impact and improve customer experience strategies. Whether it’s small, targeted changes or sweeping strategy improvements, you can make these changes knowing they were directly influenced by first-hand customer intelligence. 

#4 Monetize

Turn data into action, and action into profits. It’s no secret that better customer experiences translate into greater profit opportunities. Adding more meaning behind CX metrics can help you recover—and discover—revenue streams that may have previously suffered due to lackluster customer experiences. 

Customers are more than numbers. They are the people who fuel your business success.  When you go beyond simple, static customer experience metrics to uncover buyer stories, you extract valuable meaning that drives action and fosters long-lasting customer relationships. 

Want to learn more about how our solutions can help you get real meaning from your customer feedback? Download InMoment’s eBook, “Taking Your CX Program From Metrics to Meaning: Going Beyond Simple Scores to get to the Stories That Matter” today.

From meeting sales quotas to achieving high levels of customer satisfaction, incentivizing employees is commonplace for organizations aiming to increase performance within their workforce.

Customer experience leaders are no different. According to Forrester, 85% of companies tie CX to compensation. But the same report also details why linking customer experience performance to financial rewards (and other incentives) actually results in less-than-favorable employee behaviors that can negatively impact employers.  

The Downside of Tying CX to Incentives for Employees

Tying compensation and incentives to customer experience might provide a short-term bump in employee performance, but it may do more harm than good in the long run. InMoment’s “Considering Employee Incentives for CX Success? Five Ideas for Better Engagement That Won’t Backfire” resource highlights the pitfalls associated with CX incentives for employees, including:

• Bad Employee Behaviors – Most companies that offer incentives use a pay-for-performance or “variable” pay structure, directly tying incentives to individual employee performance. But according to Forrester, this model encourages more troublesome employee behavior, like submitting fraudulent customer reviews and questioning the authenticity of CX data.
• Bad Customer Experiences – When employees feel the weight of incentives – especially relating to their pay – you run the risk of shifting their focus from top-quality customer service to worrying only about achieving rewards. As a result, employees might start pestering customers to submit positive reviews or high survey scores, leaving customers feeling under pressure and uncomfortable.

3 Things Brands Can Do Instead of Offering Incentives

Delivering exceptional customer experiences shouldn’t be contingent on whether there are incentives on the table. And CX leaders should regularly encourage employees to deliver their best work, without solely offering rewards.

Here’s how you can support employees while enabling them to provide memorable experiences that keep customers coming back for more:

• Share Positive Customer Feedback with Employees. Customer feedback typically circulates at a high level, with most employees completely unaware of how customers rate their experiences. When your company receives positive customer comments, share it across the organization. Highlighting great feedback helps to keep employees motivated and excited about their work.
• Identify More Opportunities to Coach Employees. Customer feedback presents an excellent opportunity to improve employee performance. Instead of reprimanding employees if they receive less-than-favorable feedback, use the comments as an opportunity to coach future performance. This turns an initially negative scenario into a positive career-growth moment.
• Focus on Impactful Metrics Employees Understand. Tracking metrics is the cornerstone of successful customer experience programs. Use data and information that’s meaningful to employees, and that they have a chance at impacting. It’s beneficial for your organization as a whole if employees have a better grasp on how their performance attributes to overall company success.

Bottom line: Incentives for CX don’t work. They can encourage bad behaviors and competitiveness in organizations, which may negatively impact your business. Instead of using monetary rewards, CX leaders should focus on supporting employees through coaching, metric sharing and more so they can continue to provide top-tier customer experiences.

To learn more about incentives and CX, check out “Considering Employee Incentives for CX Success? Five Ideas for Better Engagement That Won’t Backfire” today!

Customer Experience (CX) intelligence is a necessity for brands competing for customer attention and loyalty. After all, how can you make sure your efforts to exceed customer expectations are successful if you can’t listen to or understand them?

This is why CX professionals rely on in-depth data to gain a more detailed, real-time look at their customers and their needs. They know that once you understand customers’ behaviors and preferences, you can craft business strategies that truly create positive, memorable experiences.

Three Ways to Find the Right Customer Experience Metrics for Your Business

The volume of CX data and metrics made available to brands is seemingly limitless. From NPS to OSAT and Customer Effort Score, effectively measuring customer experience boils down to focusing on the metrics that matter most to your business.

Not sure where to start? InMoment’s latest eBook, “Three Rules for Choosing the Right Metrics to Track Your Customer Experience Success” guides you through selecting metrics that fit into your overall customer experience program:

#1: Focus on the metrics that will drive the most change in your business.

Successful customer experience programs are built around understanding how you want your business to grow. Instead of narrowing in on a single focal point (like improving one CX score), look at the bigger business picture. Where do you envision your brand in five years? What revenue goals would you like to achieve? Think more about the endgame and choose the CX metrics that will help you get there.

#2: Consider points of view from across your organization.

It’s tempting to track customer experience metrics based solely on executive input, but it’s important to remember that your organization is made up of more than the C-suite. While your CFO might be interested in metrics related to ROI, your employees might want data that helps them sell more effectively.

Brands should also consider their customers’ point of view. Today’s customers expect brands to fully understand their needs. The CX metrics you track should work to support your company’s ability to more clearly grasp – and meet – customer expectations.

#3: Learn from historical data, but don’t rely on it.

Historical customer experience intelligence can provide excellent insights into business performance. However, you don’t want to hold your brand to a specific benchmark or metric you used in the past. Historical metrics are often revisited without context, making them irrelevant for the current state of your company. As your business continues to evolve, so should the framework for how you measure and track success.

It can be overwhelming to define your CX metric framework. But if you remember to put your company and its goals at the center of your efforts, you’re more likely to rely on the data that will have a positive, game-changing impact on your business.

To learn about choosing metrics with meaning, download InMoment’s eBook, “Three Rules for Choosing the Right Metrics to Track Your Customer Experience Success” today!