Customer experience analytics

In the previous article we have described what is customer experience and what is it for. In this article we describe CX metrics to measure and a common strategy for Customer Experience improvement.

How to measure Customer Experience?

The only way to understand results of any customer experience efforts is to define and track metrics. Each business is unique so there is a necessity to define unique metrics. However, there are also a set of basic ones. Let’s briefly describe them:

Net Promoter Score in Customer experience

The first metric is a simple and commonly used Net Promoter Score – NPS.

This metric is based on a single simple question to a client: Would you recommend the company (product, or service) to your friends? A client is asked to answer placing a score from 1 to 10, where 10 means “will definitely recommend” and 0 means “will never recommend”.

Further all the replies are placed to 3 groups: 

• replies 0-6  are so called “critics” – clients who will not recommend the company. 
• replies 7-8 are neutral clients. These clients cannot make a choice or are not involved in the communication with the company very much. 
• replies 9-10 are promoters’ replies – clients that will definitely recommend the company and its services.

Then it is necessary to apply a formula:The more the total value is – the better. Negative one means significant problem(s) with customer experience and service.

How often to measure: Net Promoter Score is good to be measured once every 3 months.

Customer satisfaction index in Customer Experience

The second metric is a Customer satisfaction Index – CSI

This metric is also based on honest replies of clients. The question to a client is: 

How satisfied are you with the interaction with the company?

Clients are asked to reply scoring from 1 to 5, where 1 means “completely dissatisfied”, and 5 means “very satisfied”.

Then a company simply needs to calculate percentage of clients who scored 4 and 5. CSI 80% and higher is considered to be good. Less than 80% means there are aspects to improve. 

How often to measure: the question about customer satisfaction is usually asked every time after providing services.

Customer Loyalty index in Customer Experience

One more metric is a Customer Loyalty Index. 

This metric is expected to describe the loyal audience. A client is asked to answer to 4 questions:

1. Will you recommend the company (service, product) to your friends?
2. How likely you will continue using the services/products of our company?
3. How likely will you purchase additional services/products from our company?
4. How likely  will you go to services/products of another company?

Again a client is expected to answer placing a 1-10 score to each question. Then it is necessary to calculate average reply. What’s more, thanks to the CLI, a company can further categorize customers, define directions to improve service, or optimize actions aimed at customer loyalty on the basis of the results. 

How often to measure: Customer loyalty Index is good to be measured once every 3 months.

Customer Churn in Customer Experience

Customer Churn is one more basic metric. It is calculated via the following formula:Lower than 5% is considered to be ok. However, it is important also to check what customers leave. In case those who previously were loyal leave the company, it is necessary to find out what is happening as quickly as possible and understand how to make things better.

To collect the information and communicate with the customers “in online mode” it is recommended to use the following channels. 

• email – makes possible to collect scores basically, without clarifications;
• messengers – could be automated using bots and make possible to collect more information about customers’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction;
• call center – not a cheap tool. Call center can reveal some insights that may be used in communication and in the development of advertising brand campaigns further;
• landing page – aimed at asking several questions to a client;
• pop-up notification on the website. Makes possible to get feedback at the stage of placing an order, selecting a product or its search.

We have already mentioned previously that it is important to use these tools at the right time and in the right place. Spamming emails and calling 10 times a day is not a constructive step. 

How to improve Customer Experience

Here is a brief algorithm that any business can pass to start working on Customer Experience improvement. 

Current status analysis

Step 1 is a checking current status of the company. This includes the following stages:

1. Check security. Revise juridical documentation that regulate storage, processing and usage of personal data.
2. Analyze tools that are used for interaction with clients. Trigger mechanics, communication channels, website are among them.
3. Revise content-management. The task is to analyze how the content is created and delivered and how personalized it is.
4. Work with target audience and its segmentation. It is necessary to understand is current segmentation correct or not.
5. Revise automation of communication, what is the level of communication with client automation, what works independently and what doesn’t.
6. Revise all the business process. What this or that employee does in this or that case. What can be improved. 
7. Analyze the results and define an implementation plan.

Customer Journey map creation

Step 2 is about building a so called Customer Journey Map. As you may know, building a CJM is a complex research, and we will not touch this process itself  in detail and will just describe its benefits for Customer Experience.   

At this stage it is necessary to define points of contact between the company and a client. It could be website, emails, calls, socials, contextual advertising, billboard advertisement etc. This is required to understand how a customer uses this or that channel to achieve the goal. After the whole picture is clear, it is time to decide what to improve on each stage, what to add. 

Push-notifications, chat-bots, email, messengers are channels that can benefit to customer loyalty in case it is included in the communication strategy correctly. A single main rule of correctly implemented channels is to contact a client both at the right time and place. 

As a parallel activity company has to analyze current sales funnel, understanding where the process is satisfied and where changes are required. For example, where it could be a good solution to send an email with a discount promo code when a client added product to cart and left the website. 

We would like to underline that all this steps has to be performed by all the team, every employee should participate actively in the analysis of current status and improvements implementation. If not all the team takes part, there is a possibility to miss some details.

Business processes improvement

Step 3 is completely dedicated to optimization of business processes.

This is about generating ideas on what else we can do. Congratulate a client on birthday, New Year, etc. Implement gamification tools to website that make possible, for example, to build a new computer from components in 30 seconds online, buy in 1 click and so on, free delivery, etc. 

Summary

Working on Customer Experience is an ongoing process. Mentioned steps should be repeated constantly. Constant work on customer experience improvement is the only way to customer loyalty.