Your 10-Minute Guide Into The Customer Experience Index Jumble
The intellectual debate on how to design and deploy a Customer Experience Index (CXI) has never been more intense. Researchers, Consultants and Corporate Executives are stirring a perfect storm of CX vernacular jumble to tout thought supremacy and flaunt industry leadership. Gone the days of simple words such as Customer Satisfaction and Net Promoter Score, to give way to a streak of gleaming terms such as-happiness, advocacy, tenacity, rigor, and much more.
Despite the clamor, the role of a CXI has not changed drastically. It still measures how your customers perceive your brand, how that perception is likely to impact customers’ future behavior (e.g. purchase, deflection) and what you need to change to improve. A CXI simply measures if your organization today remains faithful and diligent to deliver on your Brand Promise and if that Brand Promise is still appealing!
Having examined scores of CXI frameworks internationally, Alberta Advisory Group distilled down the 3 most critical elements a leading organization should embrace when measuring customer experience. Whether you are about to establish your organization’s CXI or pondering an enhancement to the existing one, it’s vital that you consider the 3 elements of Need, Investment and Feelings described below.
Starting with the first element, NEED. A customer approaches you to solve a problem or gain a valuable outcome. Hence, you need to measure if your customers perceive your organization’s interactions to have- (i) fulfilled their requirements (i.e. Returns), (ii) protected their interests (i.e. Assurance) and (iii) exuded confidence to deliver the same in the future (e.g. Sustainability).
For example, in the Health Care industry, patients expect to be cured completely and painlessly (i.e. Returns), have no side effects or regressions (i.e. Assurance) and rely on the medical facility for future check-ups (i.e. Sustainability). Similarly, in the Financial Services industry, borrowers expect to be furnished the funds they require, offered the interest, insurance and repayment terms to suit their cash flow and rely on the bank for future top-ups or restructuring.
A flaw in any of the components of, Returns, Assurance and Sustainability will scathe customer experience. A patient is unlikely to opt for a hospital known for long recoveries, occasional viral outbreaks or out-dated facilities. Likewise, a borrower is unlikely to engage with a bank that often denies credit, charges excessive interest rates or has notorious collection reputation.
Moving into the second element, INVESTMENT. As customers interact with an organization, they spend time, invest money and assume risks. The interactions of these three elements give rise to perceptions of ease, simplicity, convenience, affordability, efficiency, speed and safety.
For example, in the Telco industry, mobile subscribers spend time and money on activities of service provisioning, bill payment, calling/messaging and interrupted coverage troubleshooting. In doing so, mobile subscribers assume many risks such as, loss of vital business and personal contact and unlawful disclosure of private data. Similarly, a Manufacturing Plant supplying goods to Retailers, should carefully watch out the time and money invested by Retailers in orders, shipment, returns, billing, collection and inventory management.
Unfortunately, many CX professionals do not view Service Pricing and Customer Risks as integral parts of customer experience, but rather, as factors of Product/Service Design. Though, the same professionals acknowledge that Product Design ultimately affects Customer Experience.
Moving into the third and final element, FEELINGS. Whether you are serving consumers or corporates, your customer experiences generate feelings that become your street brand or de facto credit rating. A customer expects an organization to be recognized, listened to and understood (i.e. Respect). Then, the customer expects the organization to be served without prejudice and deceit (i.e. Fairness). Last, the customer expects the organization to show the closeness, warmth and conviviality humans hold dearly (i.e. intimacy). In other words, customers need to feel they are unique and valuable.
Surprisingly, some decision makers view the FEELINGS element as irrelevant, or marginal at best. They postulate that Human Feelings is a complex, fluid subject, vaguely understood and hard to engineer with precision. They simply shrug off and sweep the matter to the Marketing carpet. For example, in the Public Sector, FEELINGS is typically overlooked under the flimsy pretexts of red tape, government policies and budget crunches.
By now, you have captured the quintessence of Customer Experience measurement and you are mulling over the CXI implementation details. While it’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss the design and deployment nuances of CXI, we feel morally obliged to stroke the fires of your enthusiasm with few pointers.
Adopting a phased approach is surely paramount. Start with CXI elements that directly address today’s organization pain points such as- dwindling sales, high attrition, eroding margins, etc. The CXI elements can be applied to specific segments, channels or customer lifecycle stages.
Piloting and Experimentation are inevitable. Remember that CXI is a lagging metric, thus requiring 6-9 months post deployment to reveal dependable insights and prove effectiveness.
CXI is an organization-wide, not solo sport. An effective CXI framework requires a wide spectrum of skills including- Customer Segmentation, Data Analysis, Process Adjustment, Communication / Training and Financial Planning.
Hope you find the above executive digest a good contribution to your CXI program. Feel free to reach out to us if you would like to discuss the topic further.
Have a great Thursday!
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Alberta Advisory Group is an international consulting power house specialized in driving large scale business transformation programs by orchestrating the elements of strategy, people, process, technology and market.