Asking your customers "the one question" to determine your customer advocacy level is a good first step to understanding the impact of customer experience. Yet many companies stop at this step because they think that asking is enough. Similarly, they decide that tacking the question onto their customer sastisfaction surveys will achieve results.
Context
Periodically asking customers whether they would recommend the business only tells a part of the customer experience story. It reveals advocacy at a certain moment in time. It gives an overall view of advocacy, but doesn’t drill into reasons behind advocacy. For example, are your biggest advocates new or your lifelong customers? Do they interact with you online or through your retail outlets? How do their evaluations change after dealing with your contact center?
Distribution
Traditional periodic surveys are not built to distribute information throughout the organization. “But wait, every department gets a copy of the market research report once it’s complete,” you say. True, you are sharing information. But think about what information you are sharing. That report contains aggregate data perfect for executives to identify trends. But does it contain detail about each experience so that staff members delivering those experiences—contact center agents, retail staff, field service staff—understand how their actions impact the experience?
Timing
And what about the timing of the report? Since it’s done periodically, and the report takes some time to produce, how much time passes between when the experience happens, the survey is deployed, and the results are circulated? Does this information provide an accurate picture of the customer experience now, or some time ago?
How CEM is different
CEM answers questions about the customer experience by asking them at different points in the customer lifecycle, using three approaches. First, the always-on customer-driven feedback. This approach allows customers to provide feedback when they want. Next, event-driven feedback. This approach gathers feedback from customers as they reach important lifecycle stages—first purchase, trouble-shooting contact center call—to provide additional detail about the experience at these stages. The third approach, company-driven feedback, most closely resembles the traditional market research survey. It happens periodically, regardless of the lifecycle stage that customers are in. Together, these three approaches combine customers’ advocacy scores with information about who delivered the experience, when, where, and how it was delivered to paint a complete picture of the customer experience, and how to make improvements.
For more information about CEM, email us, with CEM Solution in the subject.
