Ultimately, What Is the Question?
Last week I had a great conversation with Satmetrix CMO Deborah Eastman about the evolving customer experience. Of course, we also discussed the Net Promoter Score methodology.
To level set, Eastman pointed out that customer strategy success doesn’t come from asking the “would you refer” question in and of itself. What makes an impact is when a company focuses on customer-centric measures that drive employees to change the customer experience. This means that the surveying customers on their propensity to refer cannot live in a vacuum; it needs a management framework, Eastman said. “It has to be a part of the management rhythm,” she said, adding that companies must also link operational and loyalty metrics.
One example Eastman gave of this link is the contact center. She cited an unnamed company that was limiting its calls to four minutes. This was negatively impacting customer satisfaction; customers who were rushed or cut off were, not surprisingly, among the least satisfied. When management removed the time limit, both satisfaction and first-call resolution jumped.
According to Eastman, 75 percent of customers are B2B. So she gave an example in that area as well. Basically, she said, companies need to integrate customer feedback into the account management process. So, when a sales team is conducting an account review, they discuss the feedback from that customer. This is especially important in B2B, she said, because loyalty drivers are different based on the various roles of the people within the client company. For example, users want ease of use and top-notch support, while executives want a trusted partner, etc.
Leading organizations look at what Eastman called the customer corridor. In other words, they take an end-to-end view, examining the customer experience from each touchpoint all the way through to the conclusion of that specific experience. The customer corridor for a financial services company, for example, might start with a customer seeing an ad or receive a direct mail piece, going to the company’s website, or hearing about it through a referral. Along the corridor are such activities as opening and using a new account, transferring assets, receiving competitor promotions, contacting customer service, applying for a mortgage, using the website, etc.
Linking operational and loyalty metrics all along the customer corridor effectively means that companies need to work cross-functionally, led by a CMO or chief experience officer—someone “anointed by the CEO,” Eastman said. It also means looking at processes from the customer’s perspective. And, it means giving managers customer-centric goals in areas where they can drive action. Basing an employee’s objectives or compensation on broad targets that he has little impact on will only lead to frustration. One manager Eastman talked about is measured on the success of the 20 percent of her employer’s operations that she “owns,” instead of being measured on the whole company’s performance.
In the end, the real question to ask is, “Are we, as an organization, taking real action toward being customer focused, or are we just talking about what we ‘should’ do, but not actually acting on that?”
