Customer experience baseline studies
Effective customer experience
measurement must to go far
beyond a satisfaction or advocacy score or a performance index. In
developing our research methodologies we have ensured that measurement
produces
clearly actionable findings that identify specific
areas of customer dissatisfaction, prioritised in terms of their strategic
and financial impact to the organisation’s success.
Our customer experience baseline study measures the customer’s experience across the breath of their journey and relationship with an organisation. It identifies specific areas of poor performance, sources of customer dissatisfaction and customer-driven improvement priorities. It also identifies key aspects of customer complaint and word-of-mouth behaviour and provides a measure of the organisation’s effectiveness responding to customers.
The study delivers much more than a simple customer satisfaction score and performance index. It provides specific and actionable findings about customer experiences, presents customer satisfaction and improvement opportunities in financial terms, and estimates the cost of poor service and the potential return on specific areas of service improvement investment.
Baseline studies report on four key areas of customer experience that impact on loyalty and advocacy:
- Overall customer satisfaction and the impact current levels of service have on strategic outcomes for the organisation such as customer loyalty, advocacy and support
- Problems experienced by customers, identifying specific areas of poor performance and sources of customer dissatisfaction
- Customer contact behaviour (when things go wrong), identifying key aspects of customer complaint and word-of-mouth behaviour amongst the organisation’s customers
- Response effectiveness, providing a measure of the organisation’s effectiveness responding to its customers when they make contact about problems and concerns
The study identifies a set of clearly actionable customer-driven
product and service quality improvement opportunities that often include
a combination of strategic and tactical issues.
By estimating the financial impact of current level of satisfaction the study identifies opportunities for improvement based on the profitability of good service and the cost of poor service. Potential remedial actions and improvement initiatives can then be assessed in terms of their potential return on service level investment.
Podcast episode: “The Measurement and Accountability Challenge”
There seems to be something very wrong with the way many businesses, and public services, measure their customers’ experience. Their customer experience metrics seem to mask potential failure, mystify effective management, absolve accountability, and do nothing to drive actions to improve.
If you’re investing in voice-of-the-customer and measurement programmes, and not YET seeing many improvements – you are NOT ALONE. In this episode I discuss a five step path to measurement and voice-of-the-customer maturity, along which many organisations set out, but only a few manage to get past the half way point - and that’s when they encounter this big BOULDER, “The Measurement and Accountability Challenge”
Check-out this episode right here and subscribe to the series on your favourite podcast platform:
Industry studies
In addition to customer experience baselines studies commissioned by individual companies and public services, CTMA also conducts industry-wide baseline studies. Each participating organisation receives confidential findings of their own organisation's customer experience performance, along with industry-wide findings for benchmarking and performance comparison. Industries in which CTMA has conducted baseline studies include:
- Retail banking
- Telecommunications service providers
- Electricity and gas supply companies
- Passenger travel
- Local government services
We are currently extending our industry and geographical
reach with these studies so please get in touch to find out if
we are planning a study in your industry and your country soon.
For more information
If you would like to discuss our approach to
establishing a customer experience baseline, or find out if we are
planning an industry-wide study in your industry and country soon, or discuss any other ways we
can help,
please get in touch so we can schedule a call, or a Zoom Meeting.
