by Sheri Petras, CEO | February 15, 2019
Two keys to successfully navigating the CX process is to have the right expertise at each point in the CX journey, and to measure across the customer experience. This is the first of several blog posts that we will write on this topic, so stay tuned!
The CFI Group team of experts have helped hundreds of companies and government agencies run successful CX programs. Through this extensive client work, we have identified several best practices of successful customer-centric organizations. This is the first of several blog posts that we will write on this topic, so stay tuned!
USE THE RIGHT SKILL SET FOR THE JOB
Building a house requires a variety of skilled trades. If you hired only electricians, you would have awesome lighting, but you might wind up with a flooded basement. Just as a home builder hires the right expertise for the right task, an organization must make sure that they have the right expertise throughout their CX process.
Successful organizations realize that the skills required to write a good survey are very different from the skills needed to analyze a complex dataset, or the skills that are required to integrate internal operational metrics. And unless organizations wish to risk hefty fines (up to 4% of revenue for GDPR violations), the CX team also must possess knowledge of data security and data privacy.
The key to successfully navigating the CX process is to have the right expertise at each point in the CX journey. Survey specialists should be designing your survey, and trained data analysts should be evaluating the output, making sure that the right analytic tools are being used. Data security should be making sure that the data meets all required standards. Finally, organizations need someone who can socialize the results and drive change, which is really what the entire process is all about.
These types of skills are seldom found all in the same person, so organizations that effectively implement a customer satisfaction program typically will utilize a full CX team or will work with an experienced partner organization to make sure that they can get it done.
Understanding the customer experience requires more than one question. Organizations need to assess the various elements of the customer experience to determine what is driving satisfaction, loyalty, or likelihood to recommend.
MEASURE ACROSS THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
A mistake that some organizations will make is to think they can run their business based on a single question. This is akin to facing a health examination by a doctor who simply asks, “Are you sick? Yes or no?”, and then receiving a prescription based on the answer. You must go through a much more thorough diagnosis to understand what is making you sick. Only then can a doctor write an effective prescription.
Similarly, truly understanding the customer experience requires more than one question. Organizations need to assess the various elements of the customer experience to determine what is driving satisfaction, loyalty, or likelihood to recommend. And most importantly, the best CX programs identify which elements of the customer experience, if fixed, will result in additional revenue and increased loyalty in the private sector, or increased trust in the public sector.
In a world of unlimited time and money, everything could be fixed. In the real world, organizations have limited resources to invest, and the role of any CX program should be to identify the areas that need investment. Hint: most times these areas are not the lowest scoring items on the survey. But this topic is for a future post.
CFI Group offers expertise in providing organizations with the right expertise for managing a CX program. Contact us for more information on how you can design a survey to appropriately measure across the customer journey.
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