How do you measure customer experience culture?

In my book, 'Kiss Your Dragons', I talk about the importance of transparency and the power of building relationships. When it comes to defining your customer experience vision, being open and honest about what you hope to achieve is crucial. Ensure that your vision is easy to comprehend, remember, and echoes in every customer interaction. How? Use the 'Know Me' principle – connect on a personal level. Understand their needs, wants, dreams, and fears. Build a vision that resonates with them.

You might be able to create a customer experience vision in isolation, but you can't realize one without one or more customer journey maps and customer personas for people to refer to so they can understand how their work will contribute to its achievement. Storytelling has an important role to play as well.

Utilize multiple methods to measure customer experience culture, involving customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Track progress over time to identify areas for improvement and make necessary changes. Continuously improve and track progress to ensure a comprehensive understanding of your customer experience.

Engage with your employees to understand their perception of the organization's customer-centricity. Ensure a clear and relatable set of key performance indicators (KPIs) related to customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Then conduct surveys or interviews to gather insights on how they view the importance of delivering exceptional experiences. Regularly collect customer feedback through surveys, reviews, or social media monitoring. Monitor these metrics over time to gauge the effectiveness of your customer experience initiatives. Assess your level of commitment and leadership towards fostering a strong customer-centric culture. ensure that leaders set an example by prioritizing customer satisfaction in decision-making processes.

I’ve witnessed companies that too often, define their CX vision in terms of business viability and growth, which may divert employees’ attention towards achieving business goals instead of prioritizing customer value. Using the “jobs to be done” framework for value proposition design can be a valuable tool to keep employees focused on delivering excellent customer outcomes and ensuring the organization remains customer-centric.

I've been known to say, "I don't like data!" but that isn't true. Use data when data is needed. The 'Surprise Me' principle encourages us to go beyond the expected and deliver delightful experiences that create a wow factor. To do so, you need to measure key business/customer experience metrics regularly. Look for metrics that can give you actionable insights. So many times, we try to create new metrics, when, if you look at business metrics, you can measure CX just as well. Remember, your metric isn't just a number; it's a conversation starter for improvement.

Measuring customer experience culture involves assessing various aspects of an organization's culture that directly impact how customers perceive and interact with the company. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, some commonly used methods and metrics to measure customer experience culture have been found to be incredibly effective. Remember, customer experience culture is a complex and multi-faceted concept, and measuring it requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to obtain a comprehensive understanding. It's essential to tailor the measurement approach to align with the specific goals and context of the organization.

I’d emphasize that CX company culture is not solely about measuring metrics, but also about how employees use and interpret those metrics. It’s essential to assess if employees feel empowered to analyze the data and translate it into actionable steps that lead to gradual improvements in those metrics. In my experience, if employees cannot influence the metrics it’s an indicator of poor CX culture in the organization.

Measuring customer experience culture involves assessing various aspects of an organization's culture that directly impact how customers perceive and interact with the company. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, some commonly used methods and metrics to measure customer experience culture have been found to be incredibly effective. Remember, customer experience culture is a complex and multi-faceted concept, and measuring it requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to obtain a comprehensive understanding. It's essential to tailor the measurement approach to align with the specific goals and context of the organization.

Customer feedback even in the form of a complaint is a gift. Use it to understand your customer and their needs, improve their journey and make it easier to do business with you. Always share these insights with your product and operations teams to drive continuous improvement in the right direction.

This is where the power of 'yes' comes into play. Take every feedback as an opportunity for improvement. Utilize platforms where customers are voicing their experiences, and pay attention to what they're saying. Honesty comes into play here. Be honest with your shortcomings and be transparent about your plans for improvement. This boosts loyalty as customers feel valued and heard.

Your associates are the gatekeepers of your customer experience. Hence, their behavior significantly impacts your customer experience culture. Emphasizing the value of integrity, it's critical to encourage employees to be true to themselves and the company’s values. Always remember, happy associates create happy customers. So, make sure your associates are well equipped to deliver the experience you promise.

In my opinion, a customer-focused culture hinges on two main factors: employee engagement and internal collaboration. Engaged employees are more committed to satisfying customers and improving their experience. Meanwhile, internal collaboration ensures consistency across all customer touchpoints. By fostering open communication and teamwork, a collaborative culture leads to better problem-solving and a more seamless customer experience. Therefore, to gauge customer experience culture, I prioritize assessing employee engagement and the level of internal collaboration within the organization.

In my experience, prioritizing clients is vital for success. Employees focusing on customer experience should understand clients' pain points and needs through active listening and empathy. Client relationships must go beyond transactions; the focus should be on providing value first and solutions through the company's services. For example, when contacting a healthcare client such as a physician, employees should offer new information, like updates on accepted insurances or patients’ care. Ultimately, clients crave being seen, validated, and heard. Integrity and trust are the keys to successful relationships. There is a powerful quote by Stephen Covey regarding this: “Seek first to understand, then be understood.”

Inspire your people to treat your customers in a way that represents the values of your brand. It should be an intrinsic mechanism. I don't mean by the goodness of their heart but they genuinely believe that their interaction is making a difference and they are valued for going the extra mile.

Ensure that everyone within your organization, from the C-suite to frontline staff, aligns with your customer experience vision. Here, the 'Make It Easy For Me' principle comes in. Design your processes, policies, and work culture in a way that it's easy for everyone to understand, follow, and commit to the vision. When everyone in your organization is singing the same tune, the harmony echoes in your customer experiences.

The organisational alignment is absolutely crucial and has to start with the Board and CEO. A hospitality group I used to advise saw its properties shoot to the top of the Tripadvisor rankings when the CEO started to hold the General Managers directly accountable for their rankings and any guest comments received. Despite this being a business turning over hundreds of millions every year he would follow up on a broken lightbulb if he saw a repeat complaint. Similarly, customer facing staff were empowered to do "whatever it takes" to resolve a complaint or glitch, no question asked. Companies can have all the data and metrics they like but if customer experience is not made a priority top-down then it will be a wasted effort.

Here is a great opportunity to partner with you business architecture team to potentially take a business capability map and turn it into a heat map with their collaboration as to where the capabilities as currently implemented are affecting the customer experience positively, negatively, or neither (neutral). This exercise may also help to identify capabilities in different parts of the business that might be missing, and as a result also have a negative impact on the customer experience. An exercise like this also creates a great visual artifact to help drive alignment, buy-in and attention on how every part of the organization has an impact on the customer experience.

Measuring customer experience culture involves assessing the organization's leadership and support, as well as its capacity for innovation and adaptation. Strong leadership and continuous commitment from top management are vital components of a customer-centric culture. Leaders must not only promote values and behaviors aligned with quality customer experience but also actively support initiatives aimed at strengthening this culture throughout the organization. Additionally, a customer experience culture fosters innovation and continuous adaptation to meet changing customer needs and market dynamics. Companies that prioritize innovation are better positioned to anticipate and address customer expectations effectively.

Great insights on CX culture! For organizations, fostering a genuine customer-centric mindset is key. It's not just about metrics; it's the daily behaviors, leadership buy-in, and empowering frontline staff. While data provides a roadmap, the human touch brings the journey to life. Encouraging a culture of immediate feedback can make a world of difference. When customers feel genuinely heard and valued, loyalty and advocacy naturally follow. Kudos to all the contributors for shedding light on this crucial topic!

Adding two simple questions to the evaluation of every potential project for funding across the organization can do a lot to move the organization toward customer-centricity. They are: (1) What is the impact of this project (or investment) on customer experience? (2) What is the impact of this project (or investment) on the employee experience?

Drawing from my experience as a CX consultant, it's crucial to visualize a customer-centric culture as akin to viewing an iceberg: the hidden, underlying factors such as employee engagement, leadership vision, and a culture of innovation and adaptation form the foundation. Only when these invisible elements are successfully implemented can the organization measure customer-centricity, as it is ultimately the customer feedback that gauges the effectiveness of this culture.

Customer experience can be measured using CSAT, FCR, AHT. A weekly meeting can be prepared where teams evaluate the frequency about customer experience. And I have also noticed that the more companies empower their employees the more likely they are able to take ownership of customer ‘s problems and find innovative solutions.

Drink your own champagne (or eat your own dog food) by getting staff to use your own product or service end to end so they can experience it for themselves. Also getting senior leadership to see and do more unstructured customer interactions in contact centres or in person can be powerful to showcase the challenges staff face when trying to do the right thing for customers.