Article

Anna Pogrebniak
Anna Pogrebniak 3 December 2018
Categories

Customer Feedback Is Never About a Score

When measuring customer experience, don't just blindly follow CX established KPIs or metrics scores. Understand the text customer feedback and emotions of you customers. Find out what truly drives your customer experience.

There's a company X that collects customer feedback. Company X prefers the Net Promoter Score® (what is NPS?), yet it could be any other metric. They ask the very familiar NPS question: "How likely is it that you would recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague? (on a scale from 0 to 10)" after each customer purchase or interaction. But guess what? The company X doesn't ask why the customers are giving the score. A number, a score is all what they track. 

You might rightfully ask: what's wrong with that?

Let's continue. The company X's NPS in January was 45, which is a very positive score. This month they have released a new product and NPS fell down to 12. Why did it happen? No-one knows. They could've started to blame the product designers or try to improve the features which they thought seemed to be lacking. This could've taken their time, effort and money away from the actual problem.

Luckily, they didn't do that. The company X started to contact its customers and finally ask why. They learnt that the customers actually liked the new product, but it was way too expensive. They also found that the speed and friendliness of customer support left much to be desired. 

What's the moral of the story? The company X could've spent thousands of euros fixing the wrong thing - the one, as they believed, needed improvement, or they could've even simply ignored the issue. Instead, they listened to the voice of the customers, thus saved money and made their customers happy

Listening To The Voice Of The Customer Is No Longer An Option, But A Necessity.

There are too many companies, which just like the company X, don't collect open-text feedback from their customers.

Net Promoter Score calculation is easy, how do you know what drives your scores?

So, what is the right way to collect customer feedback?

Customer experience is more like an iceberg. You could see the numbers and trends on the surface, but dive deep down and you'll discover what actually drives it and, more importantly, how your company can achieve business goals making improvements on the basis of customer feedback.

One more time, why should you collect text feedback rather than scores?

For starters, customer feedback is an asset in many ways and for the whole organization.    When you start collecting open-text customer feedback, it'll become easier to:

1. Understand what drives your customer satisfaction (and essentially the revenue)

Very often, there's a correlation between revenue and customer satisfaction. According to the customer experience statistics, if NPS increases by 7%, the revenue increases by 1%. In order to actually work on NPS, you have to understand what drives it. Thus, you have to know what stands behind every promoter or detractor.

2. Improve customer retention and decrease churn

Sounds complex, but in reality it's simple. Boost what your customers love and avoid what your customers hate. For that, you need to know what they actually say about your product. 

3. Improve your product and services

Customer feedback is an endless source of inspiration for development. Customers are the reason you exist, they pay your salaries. Use their ideas when planning the next product release or update, and don't forget to let them know that they're being actually heard.

The best customer experience strategy is very simple.

If your customers give feedback, they expect it to be heard. 

Don't ask customers for feedback if you don't have a follow-up plan in place. "Capturing VoC (Voice of Customer) data, but not using it to influence customer conversations, is a short road to customer experience failure." - condludes Aberdeen research on customer experience. Not capturing feedback at all is even a shorter one.

The power of customer feedback only realizes when you act on it. 

Originally published

Please login or register to add a comment.

Contribute Now!

Loving our articles? Do you have an insightful post that you want to shout about? Well, you've come to the right place! We are always looking for fresh Doughnuts to be a part of our community.

Popular Articles

See all
The Challenges of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The Challenges of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

We all agree Customer Lifetime Value is important, but there’s not much agreement after that. This blog is about the challenges of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). CLV is a fantastic concept but defining that value and...

Peter Rivett-Jones
Peter Rivett-Jones 24 May 2023
Read more
How to Review a Website — A Guide for Beginners

How to Review a Website — A Guide for Beginners

Whether you're a startup or an established business, the company website is an essential element of your digital marketing strategy. The most effective sites are continually nurtured and developed in line with...

Digital Doughnut Contributor
Digital Doughnut Contributor 7 January 2020
Read more
7 reasons why social media marketing is important for your business

7 reasons why social media marketing is important for your business

Social media is quickly becoming one of the most important aspects of digital marketing, which provides incredible benefits that help reach millions of customers worldwide. And if you are not applying this profitable...

Sharron Nelson
Sharron Nelson 6 February 2018
Read more
Exploring the Rapid Growth of Mobile App Development

Exploring the Rapid Growth of Mobile App Development

Smartphones have included mobile applications for more than ten years. The fastest-growing area of the mobile industry is the mobile app market. Only a few app developers were aware of the potential market opportunity...

Prashant Pujara
Prashant Pujara 24 May 2023
Read more
The Top Ecommerce SEO Trends for 2023

The Top Ecommerce SEO Trends for 2023

As we approach the midpoint of 2023, ecommerce businesses face an increasingly competitive landscape. To stay ahead of the game, businesses must focus on optimizing their online presence for search engines. Here are...

Jagdish Mali
Jagdish Mali 23 May 2023
Read more