Making customer experience metrics work to drive change

Many organisation have a strong desire to provide and deliver great customer experiences. The outcome of this achievement is demonstrated through their ability to win and retain customers.

For example we see in Fig 1 below how the various sectors perform in terms of their achievement of loyalty and recommendation.

Loyalty v Recommendation Chart (Fig 1)

In the last 24 months the highest loyalty and recommendation metrics have been dominated by Online Retail. A sector primarily led by Amazon that has continuously developed frictionless process and customer experiences, in conjunction with technology to manage stock availability and delivery networks. Amazon also provide market leading support services when things don’t go as planned, that is where they really differentiate, getting it right when it goes wrong. At this point, their staff don’t deliver the customer experience, they create it.

There are some exceptions where some leading retail organisations such as John Lewis, M&S and Next, enjoy strong market presence through their online and on street presence. They have led the way high street and online can come together to simplify and create a great customer experience, enjoying strong loyalty and recommendation metrics as a result. Offering genuine cross channel experiences and services, showing they have really listened to their customers.

Supermarkets are also achieving great success in this area, where the online / high street presence and connection is being supplemented through their seamless delivery services, where consumers can elect to reject products, that may be substitutions or have short life dates and almost instant refunds being provided. Customers get to know delivery staff and vice versa, the connection becomes tangible and one that drives loyalty through a bond with people.

Our cross sector benchmarking analysis evidences the most dominant indicator of the ideal customer experience is customer satisfaction, which when delivered positively creates loyalty amongst customers. When customer needs are well understood more opportunity exists for delivering higher levels of satisfaction. Fig 2 below presents cross sector analysis of customer loyalty versus customer satisfaction and how organisations deliver great experiences and maintain high levels of customer loyalty satisfaction.

Loyalty v Satisfaction Chart (Fig 2)

The powerful indicators presented above are driven by the perceptions of other correlating questions and the extent they are perceived to be present or delivered by each organisation. In the chart below we have identified and shared one of the most dominant attributes of customer satisfaction we see evident in customer experience.

Customer services has a strong influence on satisfaction and loyalty. In this context overall customer services demonstrates it is a strong predicator on the overall indicators. The characteristics of a customer service team, expected by customers we talk with are:

• Knowledge of the service/product
• Empathy
• Customer focus
• Patience & flexibility
• Desire to deliver great service

Customer service satisfaction v loyalty Fig 3

The chart above shows satisfaction with customer services presented against likelihood of repurchasing. We see in the chart the influence customer service satisfaction has on loyalty in these instances. The exception is Distribution we see lower levels of satisfaction and higher levels of re use. We know that core online retail distribution is undertaken by a few organisations, the customer has little choice, this shows low levels of satisfaction and high likelihood of re use, customers are captive. There may be a point where the quality of delivery will effect customer choice of online retailers. However if we look at Online Retail we see high levels of loyalty and slightly lower levels of satisfaction. Indicating a strong relationship between the 2 indicators. This is proven through further exploratory analysis such as key driver analytics. 

Whilst Online Retail is the highest performing area there remains room for the gap to be closed. Our research has raised the following high level comments relating to customer service interactions:

Service interactions (Fig 4)

Our insights demonstrate that sectors delivering high satisfaction within the service, relationship and product attributes expected of them are also likely to deliver frictionless interactions. This is evidenced through the related customer effort required to achieve their desired outcomes. The chart below shows which sectors these are and how recommendation is also influenced by the amount of effort customers perceive to achieve their desired outcome from customer services.

Csat v Ceffort v Recommend (Fig 5)

What is clear above is that the degree of effort customers are needing to exert to achieve their desired outcome has a significant influence on both satisfaction and recommendation. Some of the challenges we see experienced are captured in the comments cloud below. 

Service challenges (Fig 6)

Many of the full comments relate to how well customer service staff listen, we all dislike being talked over, or hearing a response without it being considered. The art of listening is easily trainable, for example Restaurants, Hotel and Leisure and Airlines have mastered this within their Customer Services staff, often seeing positive outcomes from other indicators.

Our sector insight shows that measures of customer experience are a key feature in business success the composition of the measures plays a major part in their usefulness. So whilst very short indicator surveys provide high level understanding and comments provide a point in time understanding, there is a need to look beyond the top line and take time to understand the features of Csat, CX, Loyalty and Recommendation that interact with each other and have an impact to a greater or lesser extent on customers and their behaviours.