Capturing baseline customer insights
Customers are one of the best sources of insight for innovation and business improvement. But effective customer experience measurement must to go far beyond simply creating 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.
Customer experience baseline study
CTMA’s Customer Experience Baseline study measures customer 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
have an 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.
Industry studies
In addition to customer experience baseline studies commissioned by individual companies and public services, CTMA also conducts industry-wide baseline studies. Each participating organisation receives confidential findings of its own 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’re 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.
Capturing baseline employee insights
Employees are one of the best sources of insight to identify barriers
that may exist within your organisation to delivering great customer
experiences. After all, employees are the ones who deliver your
products and services, and they are also the ones who help customers
when things go wrong. The effectiveness of employees doing
their work is so vital in delivering customer experience, it’s essential to learn what stands in their way to
being effectively engaged in driving your organisation’s success.
For large organisations with more than a hundred employees, employee studies can help you leverage their insights and identify priorities for improvement to improve employee and customer engagement, productivity, attendance and retention.
Employee experience baseline study
CTMA’s Employee Experience Baseline study captures employee insights of the internal influences on the organisation’s success. It captures their experience of what it’s like to be an employee of the organisation, the problems and concerns they experience, what they do when they experience those problems and concerns, and how well the organisation responds to them when they look for help. As an added benefit, it helps to prepare the organisation for change by encouraging employees to start thinking about business improvement. The Employee Experience Baseline study also assess how employee experiences may impact their loyalty to the organisation and their advocacy for the organisation as an employer and a supplier of products and services to its customers.
Employee customer experience insights study
CTMA’s Employee Customer Experience Insights study captures your employees’ view of what it’s like to be a customer of the organisation. It collects their insights into customer journeys, the problems they experience, and helps to prepare the organisation for change by encouraging employees to start thinking like a customer.
When combined with the findings of a Customer Experience Baseline Study, employee experience and insights form a complimentary view of enterprise-customer engagement.
Customer experience diagnostic assessment
To complement the rigour of the baseline measurements described above, a close look at how the organisation works through a customer experience lens can often help to bring customer and employee insights into a practical context. From our strategic assessments and reviews, to periodic visits, customer service ‘health-checks’ and executive coaching, we provide external validation, and act as an external catalyst for customer experience improvement initiatives.
CTMA’s
Customer Experience Diagnostic Assessment can
help to clarify the operational gap between your customer experience
vision, and the reality of where you are now. It provides a
strategic external view of an organisation’s current customer service
and voice-of-the-customer practices, its current strengths and
opportunities for improvement.
Assessments are typically conducted through a series of site visits and interviews with a cross-section of staff and management. Following these meetings we present our findings to senior management, together with specific recommendations. When assessments are conducted in parallel with a customer experience baseline study, the quantitative findings from the study can compliment and arm the assessment with customer-driven economic imperatives.
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:
For more information
If you’d 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.
