Customer experience surveys are powerful tools that allow us to gather data regarding customers’ opinions and feedback about their personal experience with your brand. The insights gained from these surveys are invaluable, within limitations and when utilized appropriately. They provide data that can help identify what matters most to your customers, unveil problem areas, or highlight opportunities for growth and development.
Creating a customer experience survey is about more than asking “how likely are you to recommend this business?” It’s about asking the right questions and showing you value their feedback by doing something with the results.
Despite all the hardship, trauma, and loss endured by the global community the past few months, I can’t help but feel a sense of awe at times. I truly believe this is the greatest period of innovation I have experienced in my lifetime. Read more
I’ve been posting weekly videos on LinkedIn with advice on what CX professionals can do during this unsettling time.
During Week 2 of the pandemic, I received a survey request that I felt was ill-conceived. The email –entitled “We’d love to hear your thoughts!” – had your standard “based on your current level of happiness with [vendor], how likely are you to recommend [vendor] to a friend or a colleague?”
There was no “we realize this is a difficult time but hope you can give us a few minutes of your time,” or any other acknowledgement that we’re in the midst of a global pandemic. To me, it screamed “sure, people are dying, but we really need to capture our metrics, so please stop what you’re doing and fill out our survey.”
I remember the joy of getting a new Lego set as a kid, and I see the same joy in my kids now, when they do. It’s hard to contain the temptation to rip the box open, dump the pieces out, and start building. Inevitably, I’d end up with something that kinda sorta looked like what was on the cover of the box, and always, a few ‘extra’ pieces left over.
The same temptation exists with new CX toys.
You get a voice of the customer (VoC) platform like Qualtrics and pump out a survey, because you can and it’s so easy! You buy a state-of-the-art journey orchestration engine (think Usermind), build a journey, and get creative with some actions! In both cases, more likely than not, you end up with something a little ugly and not very useful. Read more
Today’s blog post features an interview of Jim Tincher completed by SurveySparrow, the maker of widely celebrated online survey software. They asked such great questions around Heart of the Customer’s origins, Jim’s involvement in the CXPA, and how to best use customer surveys, we felt like it had to be shared!
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that customer experience (CX) is important. But even the staunchest CX advocates might not realize that CX done right can save lives.
Earlier this week in this space you met Lee Becker, Chief of Staff of the Veterans Experience Office (VEO) of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He discussed the challenges of integrating CX principles into governmental structures, and the four CX capabilities – Data, Tools, Technology, and Engagement – on which the VEO’s successful program is based.
Today we focus specifically on how the VEO is maturing its data capabilities to address trust, a fundamental component of customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Your CFO doesn’t care about your customer experience (CX) surveys. She cares about the health of the business, and it’s unlikely she sees a direct link between your survey scores and the measurements she follows.
Meanwhile, your CEO is focused on your customers, but that doesn’t mean he cares about your surveys, either. As one business leader confessed to me, “I keep seeing these survey scores saying we’re doing great. Then I meet with customers who they tell me how frustrated they are. So I don’t believe in the surveys.”
By extension, that means he doesn’t believe in his CX team.
So by focusing on customers’ scores, you’re at risk. Forrester predicts that one in four CX pros will lose their jobs in the year ahead, because they aren’t showing business impact. Read more
This post, written by Heart of the Customer B2B Practice Lead Nicole Newton, is the third in a week-long series about some of the ways journey mapping differs from traditional market research. Guest authors Corey Pawlak, Cathy McLane and Nicole Newton will share their expertise in recruiting and interviewing B2B customers, why 10-page reports are better than 50-page reports, and using video to bring the customer experience to life.
As a long-time marketing research practitioner, I am focused on gathering the most accurate data to answer the problem being researched. Why are sales lower than anticipated? Why is our customer retention rate lower than projected for certain product lines? What can we do to make it easier for customers to work with us?
This post, written by Heart of the Customer Project Manager Corey Pawlak, is the first in a week-long series about some of the ways journey mapping differs from traditional market research. Guest authors Corey Pawlak, Cathy McLane and Nicole Newton will share their expertise in recruiting and interviewing B2B customers, why 10-page reports are better than 50-page reports, and using video to bring the customer experience to life.
In journey mapping, customer interviews are used to validate, refine and revise internal beliefs about customer perception and experience with your firm. It’s essential for understanding and reflecting the voices of actual customers. Therefore, recruiting customers to interview for the customer journey mapping process is a crucial—yet potentially time-consuming—step.
We find a lot of confusion in the marketplace around journey mapping. Some think that journey mapping is just a workshop where you take all the people who created your broken, siloed experience, give them Post-It Notes, and Bam! You have a journey map. Others go the opposite direction, considering journey mapping to be traditional market research with a nice-looking report. It’s this latter group that we’re focusing on this week in a series of posts about what exactly is different between traditional market research and best-practice journey mapping. Read more
Note: We’re celebrating the upcoming launch of our new book, “How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Customer Journey Mapping to Drive Customer-Focused Change,” by Mapper-In-Chief, Jim Tincher and B2B Practice Lead, Nicole Newton. In the book, we introduce five journey mapping questions to answer as you launch your customer journey mapping effort.
Three weeks ago, Jim walked through “What’s the Business Problem or Opportunity?,” two weeks ago Nicole introduced the topic of “What is the Right Journey?” and last week Jim wrote about “Who’s the Right Customer?”
Interested in the five journey mapping questions? Watch the intro to our youtube series on the topic here.
Once you’ve defined the customer and the journey you would like to map, you will need to select the best approach to collect information about the experience.
