It seems that the longer your customer experience program has been in place, the easier it is to become completely engulfed in data. At first, you might only have one survey or listening post in place and you get a manageable amount of feedback. Then you add another, and another, and another. And then you want to incorporate your operational metrics to learn what is driving each fluctuation in survey scores at various touch-points. And then you want to build a model to predict how changes in operational metrics will impact survey scores. And so on.
If you have really sophisticated data management tools and a talented team to manage them, then you’re all set! But if you’re dealing with disparate systems and a lack of dedicated resources, then you have to come up with creative ways to get actionable data points from your customer feedback.
What do you present to your audience? What metrics make the most sense? What do you take action on? Here are some ideas for regaining focus and control over your customer experience program in the face of a demanding audience with varying needs and requests.
Check out some stack rankings. This is always an easy place to start for quick action. You can slice and dice stack rankings many ways: by person, team, geographical area, etc. And right away you can see what group/individual is not measuring up to the expected customer experience. You might not make too many friends with this approach, but no one likes to be dead last. A ranking can be a quick motivator for improvement. Be sure the quantities are high enough in each grouping to provide valid results.
Take a step back. Look at a high level view of your customer journey. Are there any known pain points or bottlenecks causing frustration with your customers? Check out satisfaction or effort scores related to these areas and see if you can dig deeper. Do you have any KPI’s in place for the touch-point that is causing problems? If so, is it the right KPI? Make sure both your survey data and your operational data are providing you with something that you can act on.
Start at the beginning of the customer lifecycle. If you don’t have a known pain point to investigate at the moment, segment out the feedback that pertains to touchpoints early in the customer lifecycle. First impressions are important to customers. Analyze these data points and see how they correlate to purchase behavior and early lifecycle churn. If you are able to identify that customers are more likely to leave you after a certain circumstance during the onboarding experience, then you’ve found a great place to focus your efforts.
Read recent comments. Get back in touch with what is most important to your customers based on their verbatim comments. It is really as simple as that. You will likely find something you want to explore in more detail. And don’t hesitate to pick up the phone to get more information from your top customers about what is currently most important to them. You’ll prove your value by improving things that are meaningful to them.
List out the different audience groups and the things they care about. This is a great internal step to make sure your customer experience program is dispersing relevant information throughout the organization. Pick someone from each different type of audience to which you are distributing results and discuss their top priorities for the month/quarter/year. You can then tailor the CX reporting to their needs. Priorities often evolve so it is important to check back in to make sure the information you are providing is still relevant.
Show results for what you want to fix. This isn’t to say that you should ignore results that are critical to improving the customer experience and driving success in your organization, but there are opportunities to prioritized based on your opinions about what is important. You are the expert that is studying how customers interact with your business. People are relying on you to have an understanding of what is important to customers. And therefore, you are in a great position to present analysis on exactly that. Be their advocate!