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1 Customer Experience Management | Future Thinking | June 2016
Voice of the Customer Programmes, sometimes referred to as Customer Feedback Programmes, are widely used by many organisations in customer centric industries. They have the ultimate goal of ensuring the delivery of a great customer experience; to maximise customer loyalty and consequently to improve business performance.
Within this document we have outlined 10 best practices for developing and implementing Voice of the Customer Programmes in order to drive improvements.
1 THE ‘VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER’ IS EVERYWHERE; LISTEN TO IT
Your customers will give you feedback on your products and services if the right channels are available. Therefore, offer your customers as many methods as possible for collecting opinions about their product and service expe-riences. This could include transactional surveys as well as social media platforms, traditional focus groups or online communities.
Even if you don’t pro-actively provide the opportunity for feedback, your customer is talking about you and to you in countless internet forums, blogs, on social networks and review sites. It is essential in today’s world that you embrace this fact and integrate the find-ings into your customer experience programme.
2 ENSURE SURVEY EXPERIENCES ARE ‘APPEALING AND ENGAGING’
Any research with your customers should form part of the overall customer experience.
Surveys should be created in a form that allows the customer to provide open and relevant feedback. In online surveys customers can be engaged through the use of rich media tech-niques, i.e. more visual, interactive and dynamic questions, and through the personalisation of the survey experience. However, online is not always appropriate; whatever fieldwork meth-odology is used, care must be taken to ensure that the process is effortless and even enjoyable for the customer.
3 CHOOSE THE RIGHT KPI(S) TO FOCUS ON
Many papers written on the subject of customer experience measurement seem to imply that all businesses have the exact same challenges. This, of course, is not true. Frederick F. Reichheld would have us believe that Net Promoter Score is the “The One Number You Need to Grow” but can this really be true for every company in every market? Business objectives will vary and so will the best measure.
Choosing the right KPI is perhaps not as simple as it sounds. Future Thinking have written a guide on this very subject which can be found here: Measuring Customer Experience: Beyond the Acronyms [click here]
4 SHIFT THE FOCUS FROM METRICS TO DIAGNOSTICS
It’s not enough to simply measure and report KPIs related to the customer experience; you need to understand what drives satisfaction and loyalty so that the data can be translated into meaningful, actionable business insights.
Advanced analytical techniques such as key driver analysis and data linkage will provide insights that will help you better understand what is important to your customers. Taking this further, it is possible to derive evidence-based action plans and even to create predictive models that forecast the likely outcomes of your actions.
Customer Experience Management
10 TIPS FOR THE SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT AND EXECUTION OF VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER PROGRAMMES.
Advanced analytical techniques such as key driver analysis and data linkage will provide insights that will help you better understand what is important to your customers.
June 2016 | Future Thinking | Customer Experience Management 2
5 IMPLEMENT A PROCESS TO DRIVE ACTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS FROM THE DATA
Even the most insightful research will not improve a company’s performance unless it is continuously converted into actions. You will not improve customer satisfaction through short-term ad-hoc actions. Continuity and a systematic approach are vital.
A customer feedback programme needs to go beyond simple satisfaction reports; it should incorporate performance management tools as well as formal processes for implementing actions. Consider target setting, action planning workshops and closed-loop issue resolution. The latter can be particularly effective; the use of pre-defined triggers on customer surveys can provide frontline staff the opportunity to imple-ment actions and resolve issues in ‘real-time’.
6 ILLUSTRATE ROI BY LINKING CUSTOMER FEEDBACK TO OTHER BUSINESS DATA
In order to effectively identify the root causes of customer dissatisfaction and disloyalty, a holistic view and understanding of the customer experi-ence is required. This can be achieved through the combination of disparate data into a single view.
Transactional customer survey data can be combined with data from enterprise systems or other sources. By analysing primary research data along with transactional data, finance data, operational metrics and so on, the link between customer experience and business performance can be identified. Importantly, this means that resulting improvements can be directly linked to the bottom line.
7 BALANCE CONTINUITY WITH THE NEED TO RE-EXAMINE AND REFRESH
Trend information is extremely useful; it’s the only way to truly gauge performance over time. Therefore, we do need to ensure a consistent approach wherever possible.
However; we should not be afraid of making alterations to our programme if the need arises. Things move on; products and services are updated, market dynamics change. We have already established that it is important to include the correct diagnostic questions in our surveys; these should be routinely re-examined. Qualitative approaches running alongside the main programme are often a good starting point to understand what a survey should be covering.
8 BENCHMARKING: LOOK OUTWARDS AS WELL AS INWARDS
Imagine a situation where your customer experience metrics are constant but loyalty is declining; there could be many reasons for this, including the performance of your competitors.
What once may have been ‘best-in-class’ performance may now be distinctly average or even below expectations.
By benchmarking your organisation against key rivals and understanding what works for them, you can ensure you don’t get left behind. Research agencies can utilise tools such as online panels to speak directly to customers of your competitors.
9 ENABLE THE FINDINGS TO TRAVEL THROUGHOUT THE ORGANISATION
It is vital to ensure that the ‘right people’ have access to the ‘right data’ at the ‘right time’. Executive management want big-picture summaries and insights that inform overall company strategy. Operations managers require more detailed tactical reports. Frontline staff should have access to actionable customer data through interactive dashboards with drill-down capabilities to establish root-causes.
Whoever the output is for, consider the use of high quality visual interpretations such as info-graphics and videos; these really help bring the research to life, embedding the findings within the organisation.
10 MAKE THE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK PROGRAMME A STRATEGIC INITIATIVE
The introduction of a new customer experi-ence measure often requires an organisation to re-focus priorities and even a cultural change. In order to make your customer feedback programme a success it is essential to have a dedicated team in place, get buy-in from front-line staff and have support from the top.
Additionally, the ROI of the programme should be ascertained in the design phase to enable milestones and targets to be set; if you really want to get people’s attention, bonus-able targets should be considered. y
IT IS VITAL TO ENSURE THAT THE ‘RIGHT PEOPLE’ HAVE ACCESS TO THE ‘RIGHT DATA’ AT THE ‘RIGHT TIME’
June 2016 | Future Thinking | Customer Experience Management 3
Customer experience managementAt Future Thinking we have been helping our clients implement successful Voice of the Customer Programmes for many years. For more information, please contact:
Craig Strudley, Research Director – [email protected]
Future Thinking takes a consultative approach to market research with commercial focus driving everything we do. That’s why we focus our attention on the three key areas that drive competitive advan-tage: Launch, Communicate, Experience.
We’re a global company of researchers, marketeers, statisticians, strategists, innovators, creatives and industry experts, integrating qual, quant and analytics through the latest technologies, to deliver research that engages audiences and drives action.
Our mission is to deliver consumer and business insights that tells stories, inspires action and travels within an organisation, long after the debrief.
For more information please contact John Whittaker +44(0)1865 336 463 [email protected] visit: www.futurethinking.com or follow us on Twitter: @FutureThinkHQ
