One size doesn’t fit all, but knowing essential NPS best practices that can fit any program is a great place to start. In our latest report, State of Customer Experience: 2023 UK Consumer Study in partnership with NPSx by Bain & Company, we uncovered the differences between industries and brands and how each brand represents certain values. We learnt that there are multiple approaches to achieving success and that the true differentiators between leading and lagging companies are culture, capability, and execution.
In this blog, we have listed NPS best practices that will help you shape the course of your organisation into becoming a leader in customer satisfaction.
NPS Best Practices Tip #1: Listen To Your Customers
Understanding your customers is paramount in shaping your business strategy. While reports and data can offer valuable insights, the most authentic and relevant information comes directly from your customers. The strength of your organisation’s capability to listen, understand, and act upon customer feedback is crucial. By engaging with those who use your products or services, you gain unparalleled access to the truth about your brand’s perception and the experience you deliver.
Start by delving deep into your customers’ perspectives, their pain points, and their expectations. This knowledge will empower you to craft a customer experience (CX) approach tailored to your unique circumstances. Remember, customer feedback is a goldmine of actionable data that can steer your business towards delivering exceptional experiences and fostering lasting customer loyalty.
NPS Best Practices Tip #2: Build a Customer-Centric Culture
A customer-focused culture is essential, where processes align with customer-centricity, making it a systematic approach rather than mere aspiration. It requires alignment of processes and actions that prioritise customer satisfaction at every level; from the leadership team to front-line employees, everyone must understand their role in delivering for customers and comprehend the significant impact it has on the success of the business.
It is imperative that everyone across the organisation understands their role in delivering for customers and why crucially it makes great business sense. Companies that prioritise their customers and build a culture around their needs, tend to thrive and outperform their competitors and grow ahead of the market.
NPS Best Practices Tip #3: How You Execute is Key To Your Success
Effective execution determines success. Even if you have established listening posts and a customer-focused culture, poor execution will hinder your progress. The true value lies in taking decisive action based on the insights gathered from customers. Turning knowledge into action is the driving force behind real progress.
By actively listening, learning, and implementing changes based on customer feedback, customer-focused companies create a framework for continuous improvement. While knowledge is valuable, taking action based on customer insights is what drives progress. Simply knowing everything without implementing changes will hinder your advancement. Continuously evolving and adapting based on customer insights propels these businesses towards sustained success.
NPS Best Practices Tip #4: Listen Outside of Your Industry
Often, brands focus solely on their own industry, and while it’s natural to focus on your own industry for inspiration and benchmarking, looking beyond those boundaries can yield valuable insights and a competitive edge.
Analysing similar structures in different industries can provide valuable insights that may not be apparent when only examining your own category’s performance. For instance, in this study, we observed that the automotive industry can learn valuable lessons from other industries, such as energy. Even in relatively narrow categories like insurance, there are opportunities to gain inspiration and insights from unexpected sources. Embracing ideas from different industries can lead to groundbreaking strategies and a forward-thinking mindset.
NPS Best Practices Tip #5: Don’t Ignore Low NPS Drivers
It is interesting to note that sustainability ranked relatively low in terms of importance. However, upon closer examination, some leading brands do have robust sustainability charters and consider environmental impact in their operations. While it may not be a major driver, there is a subtle undercurrent of customers caring about how companies treat their employees (which manifests itself in the employee experience) and the origins of their products.
As customers become more conscious of corporate social responsibility, the significance of these factors may grow over time. By acknowledging and addressing low NPS drivers, businesses can stay ahead of evolving customer expectations and position themselves as responsible industry leaders.
If you are unsure whether your existing CX technology vendor can help you achieve these goals, we would be happy to talk to you about how we can assist you. InMoment’s award-winning AI-based experience improvement technology and decades of industry expertise combined with NPSx market-leading training certification and communities for CX practitioners, and CX Roadmap & Assessments help organisations align and prioritise their CX investments, create customer-centric cultures and give clients a comprehensive set of solutions to support customer loyalty and business growth.
Take the initiative today and book your meeting to start your journey towards improved NPS and a remarkable customer experience. We look forward to discussing how we can support your growth and success.
In the modern consumer-led environment, the customer experience is of paramount importance. Whether you’re offering omnichannel contact center solutions like we do at RingCentral or work in online retail, you must go the extra mile to ensure that your customers enjoy the best possible client experience. Because if you don’t improve customer experience, you can rest assured that your competitors will.
Where once the emphasis might have been on clever publicity schemes or B2B affiliate marketing, now businesses recognize that these methods – though they remain hugely important and valuable—need to be complemented by a laser-like focus on customer experience. Without that focus, you’ll find that consumers explore other options, and take their business where they feel it’s more valued.
Delivering exceptional customer experiences requires a wholehearted commitment across your company. That’s from the most senior management at the top, to the staff dealing directly with customers on the shop floor (or in the call center). It also requires a willingness to ask awkward questions about your own business, and a preparedness to confront – and address – any failings you might identify.
To improve customer experience and make your client encounters the best they can possibly be, you need to ensure that each interaction a consumer has with your business is smooth, consistent, and straightforward. You must also attend to their needs and concerns. Whether you’re showing customers how to record a webinar or helping them find the right furniture for their home, the same fundamental principles apply.
With all this in mind, then, it should be apparent that customer experience is vitally important to scaling a business. But what particular customer experience competencies can boost your business’s growth? This is what we’ll discuss in this guide, but first, we’ll look in more detail at exactly why the customer experience is of such overwhelming importance.
Furthermore, it is important to note that these expectations have changed quite dramatically in a relatively short period of time. The sheer choice available online has made it easier for consumers to shop around and explore alternative options. It’s no longer a matter of competing with businesses in your local vicinity, as there is (almost literally) a world of options out there for people to choose from.
Offering an exceptional customer experience, then, can have all sorts of welcome consequences. As we’ve discussed, it’s essential to ensuring long-term customer loyalty, thereby putting your whole business on a firmer footing. In addition, it also encourages positive word of mouth. Customers promoting your business to their friends and colleagues, and thereby (hopefully) bringing more custom your way.
The most important thing to remember with regard to customer experience is that the power these days lies with the consumer. No longer is it possible to pull the wool over their eyes with sub-standard products and services. The bar has been substantially raised, and this is the reality you must adapt yourself to.
Understanding Customer Expectations
Understanding customer expectations is crucial for businesses seeking to improve customer experience. It begins with identifying customer needs and desires, diving deep into what truly matters to them. By actively listening and gathering feedback, businesses can uncover valuable insights to tailor their products and services accordingly. Recognizing key touchpoints, such as initial contact, purchase, and post-sales support, allows businesses to focus their efforts and resources where it matters most. Mapping the customer journey provides a holistic view of the entire customer experience, enabling businesses to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement. By thoroughly understanding customer expectations, businesses can deliver personalized and exceptional experiences that leave a lasting positive impression.
So, now that we’ve clarified just why customer experience is so vital, we need to discuss the competencies that can transform your business for the better and send its growth soaring into the stratosphere, as well as creating a healthier business environment for everybody involved.
Here are five customer experience competencies which you must be continually focused upon:
1) Prioritize the Customer
It might seem like an obvious point to make, but to deliver the best possible customer experience, you need to genuinely prioritize the needs of the customer. This is of the utmost importance whether you’re promoting a video hosting platform or trying to tempt people to try a new restaurant.
The exact experiences that people expect differ from sector to sector, of course, but prioritizing the customer must remain constant across the board.
Customers need to feel that they are the focus of your attention at all times. They need to feel valued at all times. This needs to involve more than just rhetoric or platitudes. Your plan to improve customer experience must be backed with a plan for action, including the resources necessary to back it up. Set clear metrics and use hard data to measure customer experience management.
2) Be Prepared to Engage
Another point that needs to be kept in mind is that customer engagement is an integral part of delivering exceptional experiences. Consumers these days love to give their opinions, and most of the time they don’t require much prompting to do so. This is something your business has to be properly prepared for. Customer engagement, therefore, needs to be a leading priority for your business.
It’s best to take the initiative yourself. Be proactive in your efforts to seek customers’ opinions, and provide your own outlets where clients can offer them. Of course, people will use social media too, so be alert to any discussion of your business there. Also, when customers provide feedback, listen to it. They may highlight issues of which you were previously unaware, and it’s always frustrating for customers to feel their views aren’t taken seriously.
3) Demonstrate Firm and Open Leadership
Much is often made of the importance of purposeful and strong leadership in business, and there’s little doubt that this can make a huge difference. The value of entrepreneurialism has been proven over many years, from the largest multinational corporations to the smallest mom-and-pop retail outlets. But when it comes to customer experience, business leaders themselves must be prepared to be led by customers.
Business leadership must, therefore, accept the necessity of customer-centric growth. This involves heeding the views of consumers and maintaining an intimate understanding of exactly what they’re looking for. This doesn’t mean following the whims of customers blindly, however. It’s a question of distinguishing the good ideas, ones that can genuinely advance your business, from the fly-by-night suggestions.
4) Get Employee Buy-in
Following on from the previous point, leadership isn’t about dictating from on high and then leaving everybody else to make sense of the latest diktat. If we’re working to improve customer experience, we need to make sure that an ethos of prioritizing the consumer’s needs saturates the whole business. This means that the entire team, from top to bottom, needs to buy into the idea.
Employees must be provided with the resources, tools, and training they need to provide customers with outstanding experiences. They could be helping a customer find the perfect holiday gift or undertaking a Google Analytics health check for a client. Either way, they need to be supported and encouraged in their efforts to enhance customer experiences.
5) Build Strong Brand Values
We’ve touched upon the importance of having a clear and compelling ethos. This also needs to inform the general values of your brand. You have to remember that customers will hold you accountable if your business, its products, and services don’t live up to the various values you espouse. Whether it be a commitment to attentive customer service, unbeatable value for money, or simply a pledge of consistent quality in all areas.
Also, it’s crucial that your values aren’t just hot air. They have to relate in a concrete way to what your business is doing. Your team must understand how the work they do ties into the broader values your business has articulated. It’s not enough to reel off some superficial platitudes and then try to present these as a mission statement. They have to actually mean something, and what’s more, they have to be seen to mean something by customers.
6) Designing Intuitive User Interfaces
Designing intuitive user interfaces is essential for creating a seamless and satisfying digital customer experience. One key aspect is simplifying website navigation, ensuring that users can effortlessly find the information or products they are looking for. By organizing content in a logical and user-friendly manner, businesses can reduce frustration and improve engagement, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.
Optimizing mobile responsiveness is another crucial element in today’s mobile-centric world. With more users accessing websites through smartphones and tablets, it is imperative to provide a seamless and enjoyable mobile experience. Responsive design ensures that websites adapt to different screen sizes and resolutions, allowing users to easily navigate and interact with the content. By prioritizing mobile responsiveness, businesses can cater to the needs and preferences of their mobile users, enhancing their overall satisfaction.
Streamlining the checkout and conversion processes is vital for minimizing cart abandonment and maximizing conversions. Long and complex checkout procedures often deter users from completing their purchase. By simplifying the steps, minimizing form fields, and offering convenient payment options, businesses can create a frictionless experience that encourages users to convert. Streamlining the conversion process not only improves the user experience but also increases the likelihood of repeat purchases and fosters customer loyalty.
Measuring and Analyzing Customer Experience
Measuring and analyzing customer experience is vital for businesses to understand and enhance their interactions with customers. Key metrics serve as valuable indicators of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) provide quantitative insights into the overall customer experience. Collecting and analyzing customer feedback through surveys, reviews, and social media monitoring allows businesses to gain qualitative insights into customer perceptions and identify areas for improvement. By actively listening to customers, businesses can address their pain points and meet their expectations more effectively. Additionally, utilizing customer journey analytics provides a holistic view of the customer’s end-to-end experience across multiple touchpoints. This helps businesses identify moments of friction or delight along the customer journey, enabling them to optimize each stage and enhance the overall experience. By measuring and analyzing customer experience, businesses can make data-driven decisions, implement targeted improvements, and ultimately deliver a more personalized and satisfying experience that fosters customer loyalty and drives business growth.
Conclusion
It’s very easy to tell customers how important they are and how concerned you are to ensure their happiness. There’s scarcely a business in the world that doesn’t tell its customers how important they are, and how valued their opinions are, and so on. But far fewer businesses actually uphold standards like these. The crucial test for your business is to prove to customers that their welfare and satisfaction is your number one concern.
That said, if you can prove your sincerity, then improving the customer experience is the natural result. After all, when clients know that you are on their side, then they’re likely to be much more willing to work with you to optimize all aspects of your business.
In this guide, we’ve listed some of the core competencies which your business will need if it is to make these commitments into an everyday reality. Of course, the exact steps your business has to take to improve customer experience will vary according to a number of factors. They include the resources at its disposal, what competitors are offering, the sector it’s competing in, and so on.
You should also remember that your focus will inevitably change as your business prospers and expands. Nevertheless, you must redouble your efforts to ensure that your customers remain at the heart of what you do, and that you don’t lose sight of your original mission and purpose.
John Allen is Director, Global SEO at RingCentral, a global UCaaS, VoIP, and cti software provider. He has over 14 years of experience and an extensive background in building and optimizing digital marketing programs. RingCentral is a Wootric customer.
InMoment® assists alphabroder in improving the employee experience (EX) to ultimately improve customer experiences (CX) by establishing an action-based employee experience improvement program that focuses on communication, development, and acknowledgement.
alphabroder, an industry leader in the promotional products space, provides apparel and additional goods to promotional product distributors, athletic team dealers, and screen printers and employs thousands of associates throughout multiple facilities across North America.
“At alphabroder, we believe taking action on employee feedback demonstrates that the voice of the employee is valued, heard, and respected”, said Maria Koppy, VP of Organizational Development, alphabroder. “Above all, the greatest impact to our culture is the attitude of amazing associates, operating from a state of integrity while keeping both customers and coworkers top of mind in everything we do.”
The annual employee survey and engagement program is reaping many benefits for alphabroder. They have seen an increased employee satisfaction score by nearly 10% year-over-year, an increased survey completion rate to 86% employee survey completion, and after implementation of the program and feedback follow-up and action, 70% of those surveyed feel the company is providing good to very good corporate communications
InMoment and alphabroder previously partnered on their customer NPS program and continued their goal of improving experiences with an employee engagement program targeted towards associates leveraging the InMoment XI Platform and expert support team.
The approach of soliciting feedback at every level of the organization has yielded more valuable employee insights and actionable information than before. The employee responses and recommendations are in turn immediately shared with transparency companywide. The executive team and managers use the data to help them prioritize employee-based initiatives, create department-specific goals, and support short-and long-term business decisions that benefit both employees and customers.
Find out more about alphabroder’s employee engagement journey and how their approach is aligned with their strategic priorities of cultivating positive employee experience and customer experience by enhancing employee communication, development, and acknowledgement.
When it comes to starting a customer experience (CX) program, the right vendor (and solution) can make all the difference. Choosing the right vendor for your CX program can be a critical decision, as it can have a significant impact on the outcome of your program. The right vendor will not only provide the necessary tools and technology, but also bring valuable expertise and experience to the table. They can help you identify your business’s specific CX needs, develop a tailored plan, and implement it successfully.
With the right vendor, you can ensure that your CX program delivers the desired results and improves your customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue. When it comes to what type of CX solution you want to implement, there are two options to choose from: a full-service program or a self-service program.
What Is a Full Service CX Solution?
A full-service CX solution refers to a CX partnership where the company that provides the platform manages all aspects of the technology (programming, analysis, change management, etc.)
This brand/CX vendor relationship is services driven, and a brand that purchases this type of solution can expect to have a dedicated team of experienced CX and technology experts to check in with regularly (sometimes as often as every week with additional calls if needed) to help the brand with every aspect of their CX program. A full-service CX vendor will help your team define strategy, implement the technology, train team members, craft surveys, import other customer data, design reporting dashboards, and beyond.
What Is a Self-Service CX Solution?
A self-service CX vendor refers to a situation in which a person or persons within the purchasing organization are responsible for all aspects of the ongoing technology usage.
A brand purchasing a self-service CX solution can expect to have full control and autonomy in their CX initiatives. There is often a dedicated implementation team, but post implementation, there is more likely to be a helpline or contact the brand can reach out to in case of an error or if they’re in need of help.
Of course, there is a gray area between the two categories. A CX vendor that emphasizes true partnership will emphasize that customer experience is not one size fits all, and will therefore offer a blend of self-service and support-driven options to fit your needs. For example, a vendor may offer DIY survey tools alongside strategic insight sessions.
Self-Service v. Full Service: How to Determine Which Is Right for You
A full-service program can be a great choice if you’re short on resources or if you want to outsource CX management to an expert team. With a full-service program, you’ll be able to fill in any gaps in resources or skill sets with the considerable expertise your full-service CX vendor has on staff. Your dedicated team will be infinitely familiar with your business, goals, and program.
A full-service CX solution will also help you to drive more long-term strategy for your program. Check-ins will help you to stay accountable to goals, and your vendor will be able to advise you on any challenges, as well as connect you with other CX professionals in your industry.
On the other hand, a self-service program may be a better option if you have the expertise and resources to accomplish your CX goals in-house. With a self-service program, you can make changes to surveys or other initiatives in the middle of the night if you want to.
Additionally, self-service programs can be more cost-effective in the long run, since you won’t be paying for the vendor’s management services.
Take Our Quiz and Get Started
Ultimately, the decision between a self-service and full-service CX program depends on a variety of factors, including the size of your organization, your budget, and your technical expertise.
Click below to take the quiz and find out whether a self-service or full-service CX program is right for your business!
QUIZ
Self-Serve v. Full Service CX Program: How to Determine Which Is Right for You
Looking to choose a CX technology vendor? Here’s the first question you need to ask yourself: are you looking for a self-serve solution or a full-service solution? The answer will determine how much support your team receives, the expertise you have access to, where your team will spend their time, and more! On the fence about what’s right for you? This quiz will help you decide.
Forrester predicts that in the next year, one in five customer experience (CX) programs will disappear, but one in 10 will be stronger than ever. The pressure is on for all CX practitioners—but small CX teams are feeling the heat the most. But just because you have a small team doesn’t mean you can’t make a major impact.
In our over two decades of experience, we’ve worked with many small-but-mighty teams of around one to three people. And though it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you have big obstacles but limited resources, we’re here to tell you success is possible—if you use your time wisely.
That’s why it’s absolutely crucial to focus on CX strategies that help your organization get the most out of your program. What strategies will support CX success for your small team? Keep on reading to find out!
4 Strategies for Success With a Small CX Team
#1: Focus on Quick Wins
Much like baseball, customer experience is a game of singles. You can’t magically tackle every customer issue at once—especially with limited resources. Instead, you need to understand what most negatively impacts a specific customer journey and focus on solving that problem. Then line ‘em up, and knock ‘em down.
For example, let’s say that your call center data shows customers frequently complain about the log in experience for their online account. Then you know you need to dig into the call transcripts and other available unstructured data to understand what about that experience is making such a negative impact on your customers. (Get a step-by-step guide on how to do this here.)
#2: Lock In Your Executive Champion
To get your CX program started, you likely needed an executive sponsor. But in order to have long-term impact, you need to maintain their support.
This may be easier for the 53% of CX practitioners who say their executives want their firm to be a CX leader, but for the other 47% percent, making an exec-friendly business case is everything. Your team will need to craft a compelling story, leverage strong visuals, and prove tangible ROI to really knock it out of the park!
With your executive sponsor in place, now it’s time to sell the rest of your organization. Realistically, you won’t be able to get every employee to buy-in—that’s why you need to sell your program to key individuals that can help you to take action and influence other team members.
How? You need to adopt a salesperson approach to your own program. Make it clear to team members in other departments exactly what they can gain from CX insights: optimized processes, access to data that can inform decision making, and wins of their own.
#4: Leverage Your CX Partner
Having a small CX team or even just one CX employee can mean that it’s hard to validate ideas or discuss new ones. In fact, four out of five CX teams will lack critical design, data, and journey skills. And that’s understandable when you have a small team—you can’t be absolutely everything for everyone.
Luckily, you can lean on your CX partner as an extension of your team, especially if your vendor provides you with dedicated services and team members!
Your Next Steps
Now that you understand the four strategies for success, it’s time to make an actionable plan to turn those strategies into a reality.
To get you started, we’ve put together a step-by-step checklist for your team. In it, you’ll find a manageable task list that will help you lay a strong foundation for each of these strategies, and there’s even an advanced checklist to take your success even further.
How to Craft a Max-Impact CX Strategy for a Small CX Team
Having a small CX team doesn’t mean you can’t make a big difference. What it does mean is that you have to use your time wisely! Download this checklist for step-by-step instructions on how to realize four strategies designed specifically for CX teams like yours.
For your small CX team, every second counts. You simply don’t have time to waste with a vendor that doesn’t work for you or understand what makes your business different.
At InMoment, we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions or set-and-forget programs. Our award-winning technology is built to integrate into your existing tech stack and align to your business goals. And our expert services? Your dedicated team is with you every step of the way. You are always able to reach out to an expert who is intimately familiar with your program—not merely dial a 1-800 help center.
That’s why InMoment customers give us 4.9/5.0 Stars and a 100 “Would Recommend” User Rating.
Want to learn how InMoment can help you maximize your CX strategy? Let us show you!
In today’s highly competitive business landscape, delivering exceptional customer experience (CX) is essential for any organization to remain relevant and successful. However, many businesses struggle to find success with their CX program because of organizational silos.
What Are Organizational Silos?
The term “organizational silos” refers to the condition in which different teams or departments within a company operate in complete isolation from one another. This isolation hinders overall collaboration and the sharing of information and data, making it almost impossible to execute on a business-wide initiative that requires the buy-in from multiple teams across the organization.
How Do Organizational Silos Impact the Customer Experience?
This challenge likely sounds familiar to CX professionals. After all, a successful CX program needs to be able to collect data across channels and touchpoints, pinpoint friction points wherever they exist, and then take swift action.That simply cannot happen with silos in place, and that’s why organizational silos can have such a significant negative impact on the customer experience—they make it essentially impossible to improve experiences.
Wondering if organizational silos could be at the root of your CX challenges? Today, we’ll explore the symptoms of CX silos within an organization and why breaking them down is crucial for achieving your CX goals. We’ll also provide practical tips and strategies for bridging these silos and fostering a customer-centric culture within your business.
The Symptoms of Organizational Silos
Organizational silos refer to the situation where different teams or departments within a company operate in isolation from one another, hindering collaboration and the sharing of information. This can have a significant impact on the quality of the customer experience delivered by the organization. But how do you know if your company is suffering from silos that are negatively affecting the customer experience? Here are some signs to look out for:
Executive Level:
Lack of Organizational Efficiency
Misaligned Resources
Competing Organizational Objectives
Ineffective Process
CX Specific:
Consumer Data Silos
Limited Insights
Duplicative Efforts
Feedback Disarray
If any of these signs resonate with you, it may be time to take a closer look at the silos within your organization and take steps to break them down. In the next section, we’ll discuss the impact that silos can have on the customer experience and why it’s crucial to address them.
The Negative Impact of Organizational Silos
Silos within an organization can have far-reaching consequences if left unaddressed. The negative impact can be felt across the entire organization, from customers to employees to the bottom line. Here are some potential outcomes of silos:
Customer Churn:
When different departments are not aligned on the customer experience, it can lead to a disjointed experience for the customer. This can result in frustration and dissatisfaction, leading to churn and lost revenue.
Customers may seek out competitors who can provide a more seamless experience.
Employee Turnover:
When teams are working in silos, it can lead to a lack of collaboration and communication, making it difficult for employees to work together effectively. This can result in a negative work environment and a lack of motivation among employees.
Frustrated employees may look for opportunities elsewhere, resulting in high turnover and the loss of valuable talent.
Excessive Costs:
Duplicative efforts and inefficiencies can result in excessive costs, both in terms of time and resources.
Teams may be spending time and money on initiatives that are not aligned with company goals or customer needs. This can have a negative impact on the bottom line, with costs eating into profits.
In order to avoid these negative outcomes, it’s essential to address organizational silos and foster a culture of collaboration and communication.
So, What Is the Prescription for Organizational Silos?
You know the symptoms of organizational silos, and what the negative effects may be. But what are your next steps going to be?
In our over 45 years of experience, we have helped organizations of all sizes break down organizational silos. As a matter of fact, we have developed a 3-step organizational silo treatment plan to help you do just that. Join two of InMoment’s brightest minds, VP of Customer Success Will Huffman and Manager of Program Excellence Angela Zieres as they walk you through our 3 step treatment plan that won’t just improve your CX program, but it will also improve your business! Watch it here!
WORKSHEET
Discover Your Customer Experience
A Guided Exercise to Help You Understand the Current State of CX at Your Organization
So, you’ve been charged with leading a company-wide CX initiative. But where do you even start? Likely, customer experience efforts are already being made in different pockets of your organization, but it’s up to you to break down the silos and connect the dots. This worksheet will guide you through an exercise to do just that!
Mary Anne Ghobrial is the director of Australia’s largest customer experience event—The Customer Show. Because she speaks to thousands of client-side professionals and many vendors, she gets an insider view of how the entire industry is structured, giving her a unique perspective on the CX market. .
InMoment’s Simon Benns sat down with her on the recent XI Cafe Podcast to chat with Mary Anne about what you can expect to see at The Customer Show this year, as well as getting Mary Anne’s insider knowledge as to what are the key trends and concerns for CX professionals in APAC. Here’s an overview of their Q&A:
What Is the Customer Show?
The Customer Show launched in 2022, and the premise behind the event is to bring together everyone playing an active—or even a passive—role in the customer journey. The team used to run smaller events for different business units, but they soon realized it would be more valuable to bring together all the silos of the organization—marketing teams, senior leadership teams, data teams, employee experience teams, product teams, and, of course, the customer experience team under one roof.
From a bird’s eye view, there are 2,500 expected attendees for this year, 50 exhibitors, 100 speakers—and Mary Anne organized all of it!
What Is the Purpose Behind the Customer Show?
All brands know that customer experience is important—delighting customers is the name of the game. There are many ways to do that, but the result is to give good experiences to customers. The event is designed for attendees to actually learn how to work collaboratively across the organisation.
Different teams have different goals and incentives. For instance, the marketing team might focus on driving loyalty and retention. CX teams will have more impact if they work with the marketing function’s unique goals and align their priorities to reach the end goal: delivering great customer experiences.
Think of it like building a house. You’ve got individual people building the foundation but you need project managers to take on different parts of the process. As with building plans, your CX program also requires a strategy and multiple people working together collaboratively to execute it. The overarching idea is to ensure all different business parts are working toward the same goal.
What Are Your Views on Customer Experience as a Centralized Versus Decentralized Function?
When customer experience is centralized to one department, it won’t have a strong impact. Ultimately, customer experience should be decentralized so that the strategy can spread to every department.
A company that has decentralized customer experience really well is Medibank. The healthcare business had one of the biggest corporate turnarounds in Australian history, largely due to its commitment to customer centricity. Medicare appointed cross-functional squads that took customer insights (using data to back it up) and then tested which insights would have the biggest impact before deciding which CX initiatives to invest in. The team also implemented a re-measuring step to confirm which initiatives would have the biggest impact, then re-measuring to see if it worked.
What Are Some Tips for Delivering AND Demonstrating Impact?
Forrester predicted that 1 in 5 CX programs would disappear soon—mostly due to a lack of ability to demonstrate impact and prove ROI of their CX projects. That being said, it’s extremely important for CX professionals to learn how to deliver and demonstrate the impact of their programs.
It’s one thing to get the actual insight from your customer data, and it’s another to demonstrate the impact that insight will have.
When it comes to delivering and demonstrating insights, Mary Anne’s tips are:
Align every department to customer experience by aligning your CX priorities to the priorities of each individual business unit
Make sure you use your feedback to understand what customers actually value
Create strategies—or even micro strategies—that can deliver what customers want
Identify one of the four pillars of ROI to start pointing your CX program to: customer acquisition, customer retention, reduction in cost, cross- and up-selling
Understand your business’ “why” before implementing a CX program
Use true driver analysis to see if what you think is important to the customer is actually important
What Is the Best Way to Know Which CX Initiative Will Have the Biggest Impact?
It’s art and science to determine which lever is the easiest to pull. Figure out what will actually be the most important to the customer. For example, when it comes to insurance, fees might be the most important thing to a customer, but that’s not necessarily something you can change from a CX perspective. Instead, maybe look at the call center and see if you can identify another customer issue that could deliver a similar impact.
And when it comes to making changes across the business, you don’t want to take on too much at once. If you do a complete rehaul of multiple aspects, it might shift the brand promise, and cause customer confusion. You want to make incremental changes to actually shift the culture and sustain the program, not lose steam by taking on too much at the front end. At InMoment, we recommend a continuous improvement framework to help you keep incrementally evolving your CX program.
How Is InMoment Involved in the Upcoming Customer Show?
As the 2023 Customer Show Foundation Partner, InMoment will have a representation at the panel “CX is an Outcome, Not a Strategy: Moving Towards an Era of Improvement Management Through Top Level Buy-In” on the NextGen CX Panel at 3PM on Wednesday 3rd. InMoment’s Head of Customer Success, John Harb will join the panel to discuss:
How to ensure your customer experience strategy is flexible enough to shift based on changing behaviours
How to understand your customer behaviours and journeys by tracking their trends regularly
The steps involved in integrating experience improvement methodologies across the organisation
The Customer Show is also giving away a $10k holiday prize—go to InMoment’s stand and get a stamp for your Customer Show passport, and at 2pm on Day 2, a winner will be chosen.
When and Where Is the 2023 Customer Show?
Date: Wednesday, 3 May 2023 & Thursday, 4 May 2023
Location: Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
1 Convention Centre Pl, South Wharf VIC 3000
Where to Listen to the Full Conversation
You can listen to the full conversation with Mary Anne and Simon on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Podcasts. But, if you are eager to jump right in then you can click the play button below to start listening now!
More of a visual person? No worries. You can also find the video recording on our YouTube channel!
Customer experience (CX) surveys are foundational to soliciting the customer feedback you need to power your CX program, and many of these surveys are sent via email. However, the first step to receiving that survey feedback can be one of the most difficult: getting your customer to open your email.
When it comes to open rates, your email’s subject line is more important than you might think it is. Two helpful email stats drive this point home:
69% of recipients will look only at the subject line before flagging an email as spam.
47% of recipients decide to open an email based only on the subject line.
If you’re trying to figure out all the possible reasons why your survey emails aren’t getting decent open rates, it makes sense to start with your subject lines.
5 Tips to Help You Write Engaging Email Survey Subject Lines
Tip #1: Establish the Right Tone
Effective customer interaction is super dependent on speaking your audience’s language. This doesn’t just refer to the words and terms you use in your emails, even though that is obviously also extremely important.
No, we’re referring to your “voice” here – where you pitch the subject line on the “familiarity” spectrum. On the one side of this spectrum is “ultra conversational,” and on the other side, “ultra professional.”
On the conversational side, you’ll use language that makes your recipients feel like they’re being asked a question by a friend or a trusted colleague. These subject lines should make the recipient feel comfortable because they have an approachable tone.
Here are some examples:
“A quick question for you”
“Leslie, got a sec? ”
On the professional side of the spectrum, you’re using language that builds trust in your brand’s ability to take your service seriously. You don’t have to come off pompous or like you’ve swallowed a thesaurus. Stick to the point, and treat the recipient like someone who appreciates professionalism in the workplace.
“We’d genuinely appreciate feedback on our performance.”
“Leslie, how can we make you more productive?”
There are quite a few things to consider when choosing the tone of your survey email subject lines. Your brand image is arguably the most important, but things like recipient demographics and the industry you’re playing in should also play a role.
Building buyer personas is a standard practice in digital marketing. Many successful businesses go through this process to understand exactly who they’re selling to. This data is invaluable when deciding on the tone of your survey email subject lines.
What you use to customize the subject line will obviously depend on the data you have on the customer. Using their name is an obvious starting point. However, you can also reference their most recent purchase if your CRM has logged it. Or a virtual event they attended. A modern CX platform can grab this info and personalize the subject line.
If you’re online mattress retailer Zoma and you’re sending out a customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey email to find out how a support query was handled, if the shipping went well, or if the customer is satisfied with the quality of a recent purchase, you could take one of the following approaches:
“How did we do on your support query [#66456]?”
“James, how was the webinar with DocuSign?”
“How’s that Zoma mattress working out?”
Showing evidence that the email comes from a reputable origin (i.e., the actual company they interacted with) is critical if you want to maximize that open rate.
By using their name and referencing their purchase, you’re landing a one-two punch of credibility and massively increasing the chances of a response.
Tip #3: Talk About Benefits
Let’s be frank here. When you send out a net promoter score (NPS) survey email, you’re basically asking an established customer to take time out of their day to reveal their feelings about your brand despite there being no immediate reward in it for them.
But that shouldn’t stop you from letting your recipients know that their feedback will result in long-term benefits for you and them.
Good feedback — both positive and negative — means improved service for everyone. A large number of honest responses will help you get better at designing new product features. Let your recipients know! Make them feel like their voice is important and that it benefits them to be heard.
Here’s an example. If you’re an energy services company like Ecopreneurist, and you’re sending out an NPS survey, you may want to try subject lines like these:
“Help us get even better at saving you energy.”
“Leslie, your feedback helps us save you money.”
Even though the email content will ask them a typical NPS question like “How likely are you to recommend Ecopreneurist to a friend?” the subject line can illustrate the eventual reward customers will experience by responding.
There’s a genuine correlation between improved service and receiving this type of information from customers. There’s no reason you can’t creatively leverage this relationship to create highly engaging subject lines.
Tip #4: Ask Your Recipients a Question
A good subject line engages the recipient. You’ll want the subject line to make them think and feel something. Trigger their thoughts and their emotions.
A great way to do this is by asking a question.
The right question can trigger introspection. It can make the recipient think about something they want to share with you.
A SaaS company like ShowMojo might employ a customer effort score (CES) survey to help them spot inefficiencies and/or improve in two areas:
Onboarding. Good onboarding helps ensure “trial subscribers” see the product’s value and eventually become paying customers, and it’s a critical step in maximizing a subscriber’s lifetime value (LTV).
Product features. A CES survey can gauge how easily customers are adopting a new product feature and help you optimize for improved adoption.
In both cases, positioning the survey in question form is a great way to maximize open rates. For example:
“How hard was the migration to ShowMojo?”
“How easy was it to create a new rental dashboard?”
You can see in the above examples that the subject lines don’t even mention the survey. The two questions are directed at the customer and their experience.
Tip #5: Keep It Simple and Short
You should keep your survey email subject lines to under 50 characters to be sure everyone sees it. The number of people opening emails using their mobile phones is increasing every year. And the limited amount of real estate on a mobile device means that subject lines are often truncated.
Yes, it’s hard to make a compelling case for someone to open an unsolicited email using so few words, so take your time writing. Constantly try whittling the number of characters and words down to an absolute minimum without compromising your core message.
Let’s take a look at some concise and effective customer survey subject line examples:
“Are we doing a good job, Leslie?”
“Where can we improve?”
“We’re always looking for honest feedback.”
“Give it to us straight; we can take it.”
A Quick Word on Open Rate Benchmarks
What kind of open rates should you expect from your survey emails? Having a sense of benchmarks is critical if you intend to measure how effective your new subject lines are.
According to our customers’ results, an open rate over 20% is solid, with only a small number of emails achieving a 30% open rate. If you see this level of engagement, you’re probably doing multiple things right. If it’s below this figure, realize there’s room for improvement and review your subject line copy against our recommendations.
Some Final Thoughts
Regardless of what industry you’re operating in, certain best practices will always be relevant when crafting email subject lines.
Here’s a summary of the most important things to bear in mind (along with a fifth bonus tip):
Personalize as much as possible.
Tell recipients about the benefits of completing the survey.
Ask a question.
Keep it short and to the point.
Try to keep your subject lines under 50 characters.
Avoid spammy words like “opportunity,” “offer,” “cash,” “discount,” or “click here.”
There’s little point in rethinking your subject line strategy if you’re not backing up your efforts with data on the success or failure of a new approach.
You’ll want to A/B test your survey emails. A simple way to do this is:
Split your email recipients into two groups (Group A and Group B).
Target Group A with subject line A. “Welcome! How was the sign-up process?
Target Group B with subject line B. “Answer one question and help us improve.”
Measure each email’s open rate. If Group A gets a higher open, a post-onboarding greeting works well for your new customers.
By A/B testing your email subject lines over time, you gain valuable knowledge about the subject lines that resonate with your customer base. Not only will that information help you with your specific survey, but it can also help other CX-focused teams optimize their customer communications as well.
Want to learn more about best practices for surveys? Check out this white paper from the experts! And if you want to learn more about how you can listen to your customers not only via surveys, but by leveraging data from social media, online reviews, and more, let’s chat!
As businesses strive to improve their customer experiences, asking for feedback has become a common practice. However, not all feedback is created equal, and simply collecting feedback for the sake of it may not lead to meaningful insights or improvements.
In a recent appearance on the ReThink Productivity Podcast, InMoment’s Vice President of CX Strategy, Simon Fraser, discussed the importance of understanding why you are asking for customer feedback in the first place.
Fraser emphasized the need for businesses to have clear objectives and a strategic approach to collecting and utilizing feedback. He explained that businesses should identify the specific outcomes they hope to achieve through feedback, whether it be to improve customer loyalty, identify areas for operational improvement, or measure the success of a new product or service.
Fraser also stressed the importance of tailoring feedback collection methods to the specific needs of the business and its customers. This could include using various channels such as surveys, social media listening, or customer interviews, as well as considering factors like timing, frequency, and the types of questions being asked.
By taking a more strategic and tailored approach to customer feedback, businesses can gain deeper insights into their customers’ experiences and make more informed decisions to drive business growth and success.
Listen to the full episode to hear ReThink’s Simon Hedaux talk with Simon about:
Asking for customer Feedback?
Chat GPT
Supervised Machine Learning & AI
Tailored Feedback Modeling
Where to Listen to ReThink Productivity’s Episode With Simon Fraser
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Podcasts. But, if you are eager to jump right in then you can click the play button below to start listening to this week’s episode!
Welcome back to the XI Café Podcast! In order to continue Experience Improvement, the XI Café Podcast was created so that CX program owners around the world could join the conversation and learn from global businesses and industry experts about the latest experience improvement innovations in technology and research services, industry and market expertise, and customer (CX) and employee (EX) engagement best practices.
In the latest episode of the XI Café Podcast, we interviewed Marina Strbac, who leads the Membership Experience Team at the New Zealand Automobile Association (NZAA). Marina is a people-focused, data-informed professional with a passion for customer-centric marketing.
Here are some of the questions and answers we covered:
Q: What is the structure of the membership experience team at NZAA?
A: Marina leads a small team of four diverse humans from vastly different backgrounds—UX/UI design, math, and marketing all combined together to create optimized experiences for NZAA members. When it came to pitching and embedding an insights-to-action VoC program, the whole team worked together to implement an experience improvement program that would eventually support 1 million+ New Zealanders!
Q: How did you get the NZAA Voice of Customer Program off the ground and what were the bumps on the way?
A: The team leveraged all their skill sets and adapted as they progressed.
The initiative changed as business circumstances changed. Originally, the team aimed to set up a company-wide VoC program, and eventually, the team pivoted toward a membership-only, journey focused VoC program that was approved by the wider business. Three months later, the program went live!
Q: You now have a VoC program in place with a large volume of data flowing in. Marketers are somewhat overwhelmed with the vast array of data points already available (website, emails,…) how do you integrate VoC data for marketing purposes?
A: From Marina’s perspective, there’s no need to be overwhelmed by data—instead, ask yourself a few questions. Which insights/data points matter the most? Why do they matter the most? Qualify both of these against your business strategy and business goals. Take your own perception out of it, and instead re-focus on the wider business strategy.
Once you have the answers, data and insights are pretty straightforward. Measure the baseline of the data points you’re interested in, set up a test and learn matrix, and keep going with reiteration— remove things that don’t work, and keep those that do. Remember that context is important, so do what you can to be data and insight INFORMED, not merely data driven.
In practice, NZAA identified that the “onboarding” member journey was important to track. The team knew engagement was dropping—and with membership retention as a key metric for the business, this was an important challenge to tackle. There were a lot of hypotheses from different people in the business, but ultimately the team needed to understand the “why” behind the onboarding challenge. With that in mind, the team pushed beyond open rates and click through rates, and set key metrics for customer intelligence. NPS, CSAT, and sentiment measures were set and with verbatims on top, understanding the WHY behind engagement drop became easier. Now, the team has the business data overlaid with VoC data, and they can see a fuller picture—they learned it’s a whole lot more complex than the original hypothesis. Through a test-and-learn approach, the membership team is driving optimisations based around justified prioritization.
Q: What was the “aha” moment that made you realise the potential of adding customer data to your marketing decision making process?
A: With 15+ years of experience, and over ten years in direct-to-customer, Marina has always integrated insights into communications and campaigns, and she acknowledges that customer data points at our disposal have evolved. You now need to overlay business data, operational data, and customer insights to get a full picture. The entire business capability needs to be lifted to enable customer centric marketing endeavors. Marketers need propensity models, a well-oiled marketing automation platform, and prioritized test-and-learn matrics just to name a few. As a marketer, you can’t build these alone.
The aha moments happen when you’re working with other parts of the business, connecting the dots and asking questions like, “is it correlation or causation?” With a focus on customer actions and the passion for creating better experiences, you’ll constantly have those ‘aha’ moments. Curiosity tangents should be encouraged as that is usually where the magic happens.
Q: How are you planning to further grow your VoC program to improve the effectiveness of your marketing?
A: Next up for NZAA is strategic customer journey mapping! The business will identify key pain points and validate these with operational data. Of course, all different business units will have varying opinions, but NZAA will use business and VoC data to validate these.
Where to Find the XI Café Podcast
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Podcasts. But, if you are eager to jump right in then you can click the play button below to start listening to this week’s episode!
More of a visual person? No worries. You can also find the video recordings off the XI Café Podcast on our YouTube channel!
Welcome back to the XI Café Podcast! In order to continue Experience Improvement, the XI Café Podcast was created so that CX program owners around the world could join the conversation and learn from global businesses and industry experts about the latest experience improvement innovations in technology and research services, industry and market expertise, and customer (CX) and employee (EX) engagement best practices.
In this episode of the XI Café Podcast, we’re talking to State Revenue Office Victoria (SRO) Customer Experience Manager, Desmond Strydom. Desmond has over a decade of experience in this field, and in his current role, he has spearheaded and launched the VoC program at SRO. Desmond will talk about the SRO journey of launching a new VoC program, gaining support from leadership, and some of the early success stories the team has seen.
Where to Find the XI Café Podcast
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Podcasts. But, if you are eager to jump right in then you can click the play button below to start listening to this week’s episode!
It’s now time to discuss the organizational elements that are necessary for CX to thrive in an organization (regardless of the reporting structure your organization chooses or the characteristics of the person leading the CX function).
We utilize a continuous improvement framework with our clients that starts with the principle of “design with the end in mind.” This means achieving one or more of the four key economic pillars: acquiring more customers, keeping more customers (reducing churn), growing lifetime customer value (CLV), or reducing cost to serve.
The Five Stages of the Continuous Improvement Framework:
Stage #1: Design
Clearly design an experience strategy that aligns with overall company goals and brand promise, driving customer outcomes.
Stage #2: Listen
Thoughtfully deploy modern listening strategies and data integrations across the journey to expand and enhance an integrated view and holistic customer understanding.
Stage #3: Understand
Consolidate all data streams and leverage advanced analytics to identify where and how to act (and the anticipated impact on customer outcomes).
Stage #4: Transform
Create & implement dynamic action plans, training, and policies that facilitate organizational change (and promote activities that drive customer outcomes).
Stage #5: Realize
Evaluate and demonstrate results of experience initiatives including (but not limited to) organizational change, improved metrics, and financial impact.
Building the Foundation for A Successful CX Program: Moving Beyond the Continuous Improvement Framework
Beyond those five core stages, though, there are certain foundational and organizational elements that must be present for CX to thrive in your company.
What these additional elements suggest is that customer experience is a team sport that requires the participation, alignment, and coordination of the entire organization—and that your success will be limited if it is a grassroots effort and not a strategy led and supported by the executive leadership team. That alignment and shared understanding is vital to CX success, and by extension, the wider success of your entire organization.
Our hope is that this three-part series has given you much to consider about your organization’s customer experience efforts. Based on what we see in the marketplace, too many programs are still stuck in the Listen and Understand stages and have not figured out how to get organized to break down silos in order to drive effective improvement efforts or don’t have the executive leadership and buy-in to facilitate this. Breaking down these silos, both in terms of the organizational design as well as internal data structures, requires executive leadership engagement and strategies to enable a single view of the customer.
Driving ROI from your customer experience efforts continues to be the biggest conversation in the CX community and the greatest challenge for most companies. And your C-Level executives, board and shareholders expect this.
Being organized properly, having the right people with the skill sets that we discussed in place, migrating your culture to one of customer-centricity and getting organizational alignment on what customers need and how to best, and most efficiently, meet these desires is really tough work. But it is critical to have all of these elements in place in order to drive the best CX outcomes. And the companies that can do this are the ones that stand to reap the greatest benefits in terms of future revenue and market share growth and long-term profitability.
Change Region
Selecting a different region will change the language and content of inmoment.com
