Surveys & Feedback

Customer Experience Surveys & Feedback

Customer experience surveys are powerful tools that allow you to gather data about customers’ opinions and feedback about their personal experience with your brand. The insights gained from these surveys can be invaluable, within limits and when utilized appropriately. They provide data that can help identify what matters most to your customers, reveal problem areas, and highlight opportunities for growth and development.

Creating an effective customer experience survey is about more than asking “how likely are you to recommend this business?” It’s about gathering key insights, and most importantly, showing customers you value their feedback by taking acting on the results.

Jim Tincher

Change Management, Not “Bribes,” Improves CX

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This post picks up where last week‘s left off…

In giving bonuses based on overall survey results, companies are assuming that 1. teams actually know what to do in order to improve customer satisfaction and 2. they won’t do it unless incented to.

Both points in that statement need to be analyzed.

First, understanding how to drive customer satisfaction (I’m using this as a catch-all for NPS, customer effort, etc.) isn’t that easy.

When I led a CX program in the health savings account (HSA) marketplace, I asked teams what they thought the top drivers of satisfaction were. Product thought it was about features. Marketing thought it was about educating on how to use the HSA. Sales thought it was about pricing.

They were all wrong. Read more

Jim Tincher

Why Do Bonuses for NPS Scores *Seem* Wise?

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I’ll get right to the point: Change management is cheaper than bribing employees. It’s more effective, too.

The CEO of a client organization recently asked us about offering a bonus tied to their Net Promoter Score (NPS). He believed that this would motivate employees to think more about customers and improve their experience.

Without mincing words, I told him I thought that was a terrible idea – one that is universally frowned upon.

He pushed back: “Why? What’s the evidence? Other organizations are doing it. Why is it so bad?” Read more

Jim Tincher

Are Your “Averages” Obscuring Your CX Opportunities?

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If I could only ask you one question to determine if you’re a Change Maker, it would be this: “Tell me about your data.”

Most of the more than 100 CX pros we interviewed in the course of our research last year responded with, “What do you mean?” Or they only mentioned survey data.

But not the Change Makers.

They understand that business data is what the organization runs on. And they have a thorough understanding of the metrics that make up their customer journeys, particularly their organizations’ key performance indicators (KPIs). Read more

Jim Tincher

Follow the Chain of CX Value to Drive Impact

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Done right, CX is a business discipline where organizations thrive by investing in an improved customer experience. That notion is largely accepted, even though it’s not always practiced.

The challenge there is knowing where to invest.

Success requires finding the sweet spot where an improved experience leads your customers to spend more with you, stick around longer, and/or engage with you in less-costly ways.

So how do you find that sweet spot?

By working the issue backward and managing it working forward, through the Chain of CX Value.

Read more

Jim Tincher

One Size Fits All? Not for Metrics!

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Imagine if your HR partners told you they were going to use one metric to measure all of your employees, and that should be how you determine each one’s overall effectiveness.

You’d push back immediately.

You’d say that your software developers should have different measurements than your salespeople, who should have different measurements than your trainers and your customer service reps.

And you’d be right.

So, why do we think all companies should use the same customer measurement? Read more

Jim Tincher

Fitbit Proves Rich Emotions Can Overcome Poor Quality

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Customer experience has three components: Effectiveness, Ease, and Emotion. But too often, CX programs focus only on the first two. Why? Because they’re simpler to address.

Emotion is more elusive and complicated. But it’s where true loyalty is earned (as opposed to just preventing disloyalty).

That message hit home to me when my Fitbit died…again!

I was an early adopter and have owned several Fitbits over the past decade or so. Almost all of them managed to fail shortly after the warranty expired. (Show of hands – who doesn’t love that?)

When the unit I was using  just over a year ago died, I decided to upgrade to the Versa 2 Smartwatch, hoping that the higher-end product would last a bit longer. No such luck.

Read more

Jim Tincher

For B2C, Cleanliness Is the New Black

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Let’s not beat around the bush: $#@&*%! coronavirus trashed your journeys.

Prior to the pandemic, organizations had clear strategies on how to serve their customers, working to deliver an ever-improving experience to earn loyalty.

A better experience is still required…but how we go about providing it – and what “it” even is – has completely changed, particularly for B2C companies, where among other things, face-to-face interactions now take place mask-to-mask.

When I hosted a fireside chat earlier this month with Alison Circle, the Chief Customer Experience Officer for the Columbus Library system, she told me how difficult new protocols necessitated by the pandemic have made it to forge personal connections between staff and customers. But safety just has to come first. Read more

Jim Tincher

Chase Business Results, Not Survey Scores

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We had a great discussion on LinkedIn a few weeks ago about the disconnect between customer experience and leadership. This post kicked things off:  

As I interview CX leaders and CEOs, it’s been fascinating (but not surprising) to hear the vast differences in focus. 

CX people focus on survey results; their thoughts are on how to improve the experience in order to improve survey results. Since they often can’t track the survey’s impact on revenue, costs, or retention, they spend their time on what they can measure – promoters vs. detractors.  Read more

Shawn Phillips

Use Smart AI to Reduce Churn in Three Steps

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Most customers don’t just suddenly disappear. When dissatisfied, they move over to an exit lane and chug along while waiting for an excuse to cut ties to your organization.

If, like many companies, you’re not paying attention when they turn on their blinkers to make that move, you’re making a costly mistake.

To avoid missing your chance to reduce customer churn and bring these customers back into the flow of traffic (where they can fulfill their lifetime value), look first to “customer math” – more specifically, tracking those customers who have already stopped their journey. Read more

Jim Tincher

Five Ways to Make Your Surveys Matter

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Most survey programs provide information: “Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) is 25, up from 22, compared to our competitive benchmark of 30.”  While those figures might be interesting, they don’t provide the context that is essential for prompting action.

As Heart of the Customer has been conducting interviews with CX pros (more than 70 so far this year!), we’ve found some common themes – notably that most programs use NPS as their measurement, and most don’t provide much context for those scores.   Read more