Is your Customer Experience Measurement Program Delivering a Profitable ROI? - The MSR Group

Is your Customer Experience Measurement Program Delivering a Profitable ROI?
It’s no secret that satisfied customers are essential for business success. That’s why organizations invest in programs to gather feedback and measure customer experience. However, the way these programs are constructed and managed makes a big difference in the attainable outcomes.

These questions will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your existing customer feedback measurement program to see if you’re maximizing your potential or if it’s time to make some changes.

Are you just measuring and reporting scores or are you doing something about them?
Effective customer feedback programs provide scores for tracking purposes and then give insight into specific actions employees should take to improve them. This focuses efforts where they have the greatest impact on improving customer satisfaction. If your managers are not executing on the results of the surveys, find out why?  You may need to find a more intuitive measurement and insights program.

Can you identify your return on investment?
How do you know if you’re paying too much for your measurement program? The right customer feedback program will pay off with more satisfied customers, less attrition and real financial returns. Your vendor should be able to show you how…with real numbers.

Are employees in your organization using all the tools provided in your customer feedback program? If not, why not? If the system is too complicated to learn and use, it doesn’t matter how many bells and whistles there are. A good program drives results through the managers and employees who use it every day. A program that is easy to implement, user-friendly and effective at helping employees do their jobs better is more likely to be accepted. That benefits everyone, especially customers.

How does your customer experience measurement program assist managers and front-line employees in resolving customer problems? You should have the ability to identify problems quickly and move on to addressing them to speed service recovery. Do you know if your team is getting better or worse and if there are certain areas or individuals who experience more or fewer customer problems than others? A good program pinpoints and prioritizes the problems, allowing you to focus on resolution.

Once customer problems have been identified, can you monitor the status of your service recovery process to ensure these issues are resolved promptly? Flagging the problem is just the first step. How well you manage the resolution process is the key to success? If asked, can you identify at any point in time how many problems have occurred and what the resolution status is? A problem resolved well can strengthen a customer relationship, but handle it ineffectively and you may have lost that customer for good.

On the flip side, does your system allow you to share positive customer feedback with employees? It’s good for morale when employees hear they’ve done something well. Do your employees receive positive cus­tomer feedback in a timely fashion? How about the rest of the management team? Sharing kudos not only allows the team to celebrate together, but it also gives you an opportunity to underscore the importance of the training concepts you are trying to instill.

Are you incorporating feedback from customers across all channels in your measurement program? Customers do business with you in multiple ways – does your measurement program reflect this? Multi-channel measurement ensures everyone is speaking the same lan­guage and gives upper-level management the complete picture of how the organization is performing on key metrics. When lines of business measure their success at meeting customer expectations using different mea­surements, it can lead to confusion, conflict­ing incentive programs and even inconsistent customer experiences.

Do your managers know when they’re being “shopped” and place an extra emphasis on service then? Whether it’s a conscious decision or not, when we know we’re being watched, we tend to be more “in tune” to customer service.  Mystery shopping programs allow you to spot-check for specific things while ongoing customer feedback measurement programs tell where service levels are in the eyes of the customer. Are you getting an accurate representation of your overall customer satisfaction and your service quality?

Are you benchmarking your organization against regional and national norms? You want to know how your customer satisfaction levels stack up against the competition, so benchmarking is an important feature of any measurement program. Where are these benchmarks coming from? Different vendors offer different types of norms for comparison purposes. Some use a database composed only of their own clients while others field independent surveys.

How flexible is your customer feedback program? This is your program and that makes you a customer as well. Are you working from a standard set of questions or are you able to customize your survey to reflect your organization’s brand and specific needs? Can you make changes to survey content and reporting? If you have questions or when problems arise, how long does it take to resolve them…and at what cost? A vendor who understands your goals and plays an active role in your planning and problem solving can help you maximize the return from your custom­er feedback program. That delivers big results for your business.

Now that you’ve read through this list, you may have some questions of your own. Like, is our customer feedback program working for us?

Customer feedback is a powerful source of information for your organization, one that’s too important not to collect and use in the most effective way. Utilizing the feedback and creating action plans that result in improved customer satisfaction has a direct relationship on getting a better return on your customer measurement program and happier customers. If you’d like to discuss additional best practices on how to get the most out of your customer experience measurement program, we’d be happy to help.

We created a customer feedback business portal that focuses on the best practices to measure, improve and respond to your customers.  We deliver the feedback and analysis in an intuitive company-wide online dashboard.  The delivery is customized to the needs of you and your business lines. 

See for yourself – Take a tour!