While organizations like Disney and Ritz-Carlton have the luxury to hire front line staff based on Emotional Quotient (EQ), you will agree that not all of us have that levy. More importantly, in some sectors we have to weigh other skills such as technical, financial, engineering, software than EQ during hiring. For example, in product service, B2B front line, IT solutioning, etc., it is not a pragmatic aspiration to expect employees to possess high EQ & technical know-how.
Over the years, employees have understood the importance of customer centricity. So everyone wants to be customer centric but the question really is, how? Are the specific pointers that CXOs & HODs can give to their team on what to do? Motivating & inspiring them to do so is just as good as cranking the engine. What about throttling and shifting gears?
Unfortunately, there are very few leaders who go that far. If you want your employees to emulate certain behavior everytime-everyday, you have to be very specific and take a prescriptive approach.
Here are the 8 super simple behaviors that you can demonstrate every day, in meetings, field visits, reviews, planning, brainstorming sessions, or even when you scroll down a spreadsheet. Every customer facing employee (rather every employee) can be encouraged to imbibe these practices to become customer centric that will facilitate value generation for customers & business.
We will start with the simplest and go down to the difficult ones.
- Consistently deliver on promises: This is the simplest way to build trust and usually doesn’t cost much. And promises, whether big or small, are what we voluntarily make! So, it’s pretty much in our control.
- Permanent Issue Resolution: Whatever technology and processes we put in place, problems do crop up, every now and then. These issues are irritants for customers. Imagine, how many different products and services he/she uses. If we learn to go to the root of the customer issue and fix it permanently, we are not only helping this customer, but proactively preventing many such issues. This is when we can devote our energies towards constructive strategies.
- Collaborate together to fix customer issues: Organizations have become complex systems and authority is largely decentralized. Unless we collaborate internally and externally with all stakeholders, we will never put up a good show in front of customers.
- Listening to customers and understanding their needs: While it sounds very simple, it’s important to recognize every customer is unique. Furthermore, needs and requirements are very different. And lest, we have time to listen.
- Look for ways to make things better for our customers: Unearthing the unarticulated needs of customers pushes it by one more notch. Real and productive innovation starts here.
- Going out of way to help customers: We are trained to follow rules, processes and policies. Many a time, the biggest hindrance to customer centricity are none but these factors. The courage to challenge and break them when the situation really warrants is not short of heroism in Customer Centricity.
- Keep customers at the heart of our decisions: We are in business and not in charity, but when it comes to day to day decisions, do we weigh customers equally as business?
- Serve with Passion: While the first 6 points hinged on skill & action, the last two are about will. Conviction is born at the bottom of the heart.
If you wish to learn more about these 8 behaviors or how to create buzz around customer centricity in your organization, happy to be of help any time.
Key Customer Experience (CX) Metrics that all organizations should measure
In a world of analytics, most organizations have enough data, metrics and dashboards to deal with. When it comes to customer experience (CX), unfortunately, many organizations don’t always measure and report the right metrics. For example, in a 2018 NPS & CX Benchmark report, One-third of organizations don’t measure Customer Churn or Retention. This is indeed an irony because organizations spend enormous amount of resources in marketing and sales and finally they don’t track how many of those acquired customers have been retained or what let them to attrite.
Immaterial of how big your organization is, and which sector you belong to, here are 4 top line Customer Experience metrics that you should be tracking. Consider these as bear minimum that should be measured. But I would caution against going overboard on Customer Experience Measurement. A survey pointed out that some organizations measure as much as 200 odd metrics relating to Customer Experience. That’s overwhelming, isn’t it!
What are CX Top Line Metrics?
Top Line Metrics are those which are lag measures or outcome indicators. They keep us tied to our long term vision. These metrics don’t improve by themselves. To show an improvement on these metrics, we need to improve other independent or lead CX metrics.
I’m going to restrict the scope of this resource paper to top line Customer Experience Metrics. There is a separate resource paper on ”What are CX lead measures?”
The most important top line Customer Experience Metrics that you should measure are:
- NPS
- CLV/CAC
- Customer Churn
- CES
We’ll talk about each briefly now and cover them in detail through separate resource paper.
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Probably, there is no explanation needed as NPS has gained enormous popularity in the last decade or so. Over 70% of fortune 1000 companies use NPS to measure their brand loyalty.
The advantage of NPS is its simplicity (single question format) to assess the customer’s intention to recommend the product/service to trusted ones, such as family and friends.
The uniqueness of the question lies in its 11 points survey scale (0 to 10) with 0 to 6 as detractor, 7 & 8 as passive and 9 & 10 as promoter.
Net promoter Score is the difference between proportion of promoters and proportion of detractors.
A detailed understanding of NPS scores, its merits and demerits is available in a separate resource paper titled “NPS – What are we doing wrong?”.
Data of sector wise NPS scores are tracked by Satmetrix and CX & NPS Benchmark Reports.
The next metric we’ll talk about is a ratio.
CLV/CAC (Customer Lifetime value/Cost of Acquisition of Customer)
CLV is Customer Lifetime Value and CAC is Cost of Acquisition of Customer. What we are interested here is the ratio of CLV to CAC.
What is CLV?
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) aka Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) is the net financial value (or economic value) associated to the relationship between customer and the organization.
CLV is a very good metric to let us know how much money we are making from a customer. When averaged out, we can generalize it for the entire customer base. If we don’t make enough money from the relationships we have with our customers, then we may seize to be in business sooner or later.
Calculating the net financial value or the net contribution (profit) from an ongoing relationship with the customer will involve the contribution we have made in the past and estimating the future contributions. Thus, CLV is an estimated metric.
There are several ways in which CLV can be computed, the details of this covered in a separate resource paper.
In its simplest form, CLV is the average sum of contribution made by customers till they churn or retire.
Thus CLV takes into consideration the ‘average contribution from customer per period’ and ‘the expected number of periods the customer stays with the company’.
For example, if the average customer revenue for a telecom company like Vodafone-Idea, Jio or Airtel is Rs.1000 per month and if the cost of offering the service is Rs.800, then their Average customer contribution is Rs.200 per month. If an average customer stays with an operator for 12 months before churning out, then CLV is Rs.2400 (200 x 12).
This calculation takes into consideration, the customer retention rate (or customer churn rate) & average contribution per customer.
We all know the future value of cash flows is less than its present value. So, this formula can be adjusted or improved to include this aspect.
As CLV puts an economic value to customer relationship, it is very good metric for the following:
- Evaluate if our delivery model is viable
- Consider how we can refine our customer service, so as to increase CLV
- Sensitize employees about economic value and inculcate ownership in them
- Evaluate individual customers as against average CLV, to know whose relationship is more valuable to us. This can also help in customer segmentation
Unfortunately, in India, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is still a metric owned by Marketing and Customer Experience (CX) professionals are yet to embrace it.
What is CAC?
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) alone may help us to some extent in refining our operations & service delivery model, but CX (Customer Experience) starts right from marketing. Hence we need a metric that considers the end to end impact. That can only be achieved by considering CAC, that is, Cost of Acquisition of Customers.
CAC is the average cost of acquiring a customer that includes marketing and sales expenses. It also includes offers and discounts.
CLV/CAC
The ratio of CLV to CAC is very useful to evaluate the entire business model and its viability. When the cost of acquisition is greater than the CLV, the answer is straightforward – Business model isn’t viable. For a sound business, as a rule of thumb, the CLV is 3 to 4 times CAC.
There are many factors which drive this, but Customer Experience (CX) professionals can play a significant role in optimizing this ratio using levers of Customer Experience (CX).
Further, tracking the trend of CLV & CLV/CAC ratio will help Customer Experience (CX) professionals to assess the impact of Customer Experience (CX) initiatives implemented in the organization. Many organizations in India, lack robust ways to evaluate the ROI of Customer Experience (CX) initiatives or projects and this metric can go a long way in doing that.
Customer Retention or Customer Churn
As it seems, Customer Churn is a popular metric in Customer Experience Management. Most Customer Experience (CX) professionals talk about it. But as per NPS & CX benchmark report 2018, only one-third of companies track Customer Retention Rate.
In simple words, Customer Churn is the proportion or % of customers who have left or discontinued using the organization’s services as against the total base of active customers.
Customer Retention is just the inverse of Customer Churn Rate. (1/Customer Churn Rate)
Apparently this looks straight forward, but in reality, there are many scenarios such as non-recurring business models, businesses with lock-in periods & without lock-in periods, pure subscription models, etc. Hence calculating Customer Churn has been very tricky. In fact, that is one of the reasons for organizations to not calculate Customer Churn. There is a separate resource paper on “How to calculate Customer Churn Rate?”
There are no universal benchmarks for Customer Churn Rates, but there is data available by sectors. However, there is no such data available for India centric businesses.
I have found that baselining historic churn rates is a better way to assess the efficacy of Customer Experience (CX) initiatives. So, lack of data for benchmarking across industry shouldn’t be of any concern.
Customer Churn Rate is a very good metric to know effectiveness of Customer Experience Strategy.
A variation of Customer Churn Rate is the Revenue Churn Rate.
Revenue Churn Rate
Revenue Churn Rate reveals how much revenue was lost in a given period. This is a very useful economic indicator of customer loyalty in subscription based business models.
In simple words, if Rs. 10 lacs is recurring revenue of last month and if that has reduced to Rs.9 lacs this month, then, there is a revenue churn of Rs.1 lac. In other words, the Revenue Churn rate is 10% [=(10-9)/10]. We should take into consideration the installed base of customers and shouldn’t add new acquisitions to current month. The simplest version of this formula ignores customers who have upgraded. However, the refinement to this formula is covered in a separate resource paper titled “How to calculate Revenue Churn Rate?”
Revenue Churn Rate is as good as Customer Churn Rate for subscription business, except that downgrades would impact Revenue Churn Rate but not the Customer Churn Rate.
CES (Customer Effort Score)
Customer Effort Score is not a very popular metric in India. Even globally, only 15% of organizations use this metric. I would say that it is one of the most under-utilized metrics by Customer Experience Management fraternity.
Did you know that CES has higher statistical correlation to both repurchase and increased spending rates than Net Promoter Score (NPS). That means, it is a better metric to predictive repurchase and spending behaviours than NPS. In today’s scenario, customers are genuinely busy and anything that can make their life easy is a natural choice.
For example, all of us would prefer using a web or kiosk check in facility rather than stand in check-in queue in the airports. Thus reducing the customer’s effort and helping the customer ‘Get the Job Done’ can drastically increase brand consideration and preference.
CES (Customer Effort Score) is measured through a single question like NPS but with a 5 point scale. Another big advantage of Customer Effort Score (CES) is that the same question can be posed after every interaction or transaction as it makes sense to find out if the customer found it effortless to transact.
Thus these are 4 most important top line Customer Experience metrics (CX metrics) that every organization should track.
Of course, there are so many other metrics such as Service Levels, Turn Around Times, Complaints %, etc that can be tracked. All these are lead measures, which can help in improving the performance of the 4 lag measures or outcome measures.
Every Customer Interaction creates a Personal Reaction. From the customer’s perspective, if the reaction is positive, she not only desires to have more such interactions, but shares her experience with her trusted ones. If the reaction is negative, it is bad news for both the customer and the company, but it costs the company a ton because:
- 96% of unhappy customers don’t complain, however 91% of those will simply leave and never come back
- 85% of customer attrition is because of poor customer experience, not pricing or competition!
- 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated
- It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience
- Acquiring a new customer costs more than 5 times the cost to retain an existing customer!
The real fault lines between different processes, departments, divisions and channels are exposed in each Customer Interaction.
The secret of good customer experience is seamless & consistent customer interaction, and a good measure of customer experience is customer churn rate!
How do companies decide on pay package for their customer service executives?
Customer Service is typically measured using Service Levels. Organizations establish the desired service levels that they wish to operate at and then capacitize for that. Compensation of Service Executives is dependent on several factors (external and internal) other than service levels. Some of the important Service Metrics for monitoring service levels are:- Response Time
- Wait Time
- Handling Time
- Complaints and Repeat Complaints
- Rework
- Customer Satisfaction on Service
- Channel wise effectiveness
- Service Costs
- etc.,
Customer Experience: Are there any advantages for refunding a client for a problem he experienced before he is actually asking for it?
Refunds impacts #customerexperience. It depends on the product/service and the nature of the problem. More importantly the emotional state of the consumer. Its a norm now is some industries to offer 30 day refund window.
Ideally, its best to address the problem and resolve it (Corrective Action First). If the problem cannot be resolved, well then, you have a bigger issue on hand than just refunding. Your organization’s reputation is on stake.
If its a one off case and if the customer is too pushy on some aspect, then proactively refund.
On the other hand, proactively refunding, when the customer shows no sign of regret for making the purchase, would send wrong signals that they are being made guinea pigs on some beta proto!
To sum up, designing the refunding policy for a large organization isn’t just putting up a document and communicating it to all the staff. Its much more than that.
What common problems do restaurateurs face with respect to services provided to a customer and customer satisfaction?
If one draws a continuum with Products like Commodities on one side and Coaching/Teaching on the other, Restaurant service probably fits at the center.
Unlike most services, the consumption happens right then and there and in the supplier’s premise. Shelf life is very less and customer requirement is diverse.
You will have the Buyer, Consumer, Decision Maker and Influencer all together sitting in the same desk.
I feel the waiter’s job is the most difficult one in this world.
Restaurant is all about Moment of Truth.
Coming to your question, it actually depends on the restaurant, its product and service quality.
- Handling irrated customers
- Ensuring Food Quality
- Waiting Time Reduction
- Communicating issues between waiters and customers
Above 4 areas may be issuers that bother an owner when it comes to Customer Satisfaction!
- My first suggestion is that ensure your product is robust, so it doesn’t generate complaints or support mails.
- Understand the Customer Journey and find out what can possibly go wrong.
- Classify what can go wrong into following groups:
- Life threatening to customers
- Results in Customer being non-compliant
- Renders the product unfit for use
- Partial malfunction
- Noticeable loss of performance
- Minor performance loss (unnoticeable)
- Minor nuisance
- If there are too many items in first 4 categories, you better plan for 24×7 support
- Build strong help and FAQ features through videos & text Q&A in your website.
- In spite of all the above, you are bound to encounter a reasonably healthy rate of support requests :-(… That’s life.
- I don’t know what kind of product or service you are into, if its time-sensitive or offers critical services, etc then 24X7 support is a good idea even if the volume is low. But if its not that sensitive and doesn’t impact your customer’s daily life in a big way, then even if your product/service is paid (& highly paid), customers will be ok with reasonable responsiveness.
- So its nothing to do with your volumes, its to do with the criticality of your service.
- My personal suggestion is that give an personalized email id (not support@…) but (Someone’sName@….). Give phone line and set up a good voice mail message.
- Also clearly mention the expected response time for resolution.
- Set up a filter in your email box to catch keywords like “URGENT”, “CRITICAL”, and route them to a separate folder.
- Check that folder first thing in the morning as you get up 🙂
This has been working for 5 years for me! Good Luck
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