You'll Never Satisfy Your Customers — or Grow Your Business — Without Doing These 3 Things

The early of customer experience (CX) is each astir growth. We precocious asked our clients and wider contacts what they considered to beryllium nan astir important facet successful their CX programs and what they saw arsenic nan No. 1 situation aliases point that keeps them up astatine nighttime — and immoderate of nan answers amazed us.

Many of them said customer acquisition is important for occurrence and creates a cardinal competitory advantage — we expected that answer. Many person trim costs, leaving nan work and income experiences arsenic cardinal differentiators. These teams are focused connected action and building capacity and tin show a nonstop nexus betwixt improving CX results and business KPIs.

What we didn't expect was what they told america astir their No. 1 challenges. Perhaps you tin subordinate to these symptom points successful your ain CX program.

We expected to perceive that they person excessively overmuch data, not capable action and not capable clip to instrumentality nan action needed based connected said data. These symptom points are rated successful nan apical 5 challenges, but they told america that 1) engaging customers to supply meaningful feedback, a.k.a. consequence rates, and 2) motivating squad members to return ownership of their results person moved to nan apical of nan list. Survey fatigue is existent — customers are tired of changeless requests, and unit often disregard feedback arsenic irrelevant aliases extracurricular their control.

So what are nan apical 3 strategies that thief to reside these challenges and thief you execute what we telephone "feedback for growth?"

Related: The Only Way to Win Over Customers Is to Become Their First Choice. Here's How to Do It.

1. Implement action-driven accountability

The first cardinal strategy is taking action pinch accountability, truthful it's each astir your team. Your CX attack should region immoderate guesswork retired of nan "why," "what," "who" and "how" of what happened successful each experience. Individual squad members must cognize what action is required and really their behaviour makes customers feel. To amended response rates from customers and make a minimum of 50 words per feedback response, location are immoderate important keys:

1. Make judge it's connected marque and feels for illustration a virtual conversation.
2. Keep it short — it should return nary longer than 3 minutes.
3. Only inquire questions related to nan intent of that visit.
4. Ensure nan reside of your study questions feels authentic, empathetic and appreciative of their clip and input.
5. Allow them to complete nan study aliases feedback consequence erstwhile and really they choose.

The results you person pursuing these elemental steps will thief you understand really they genuinely felt and you tin measurement nan effect of each behaviour connected loyalty and advocacy. For 1 customer (a specialty retailer pinch 400 locations), we identified 7 cardinal behaviors that created nan perfect experience. The customer wanted unit to urge due further items. The apical 20% of stores had a 34% higher add-on complaint and achieved 143% higher year-on-year comparative income maturation compared to nan bottommost 20% group. Happy customers bargain much — and they emotion nan work experience!

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2. Engage your teams

As mentioned, feedback for maturation will only hap erstwhile your teams are inspired to support improving. Customer feedback collected via video, sound aliases matter will thief you nexus results to circumstantial actions for your squad members, positive develop e-learning opportunities. It besides reinforces why it matters. When unit spot nan relevance to them and consciousness accountable for those results, they're much apt to act.

For example, 1 world customer successful homewares introduced a mobility that asks "Based connected nan expertise, friendliness, knowledge and proposal of nan squad personnel who served you, really consenting would you beryllium to beryllium served by them again?" We compared nan results against income conversion rates (i.e. really galore shoppers became buyers) and recovered nan apical performers for this mobility had a 36% higher conversion rate.

The cardinal to maturation is to reside what whitethorn beryllium opinionated successful nan way, beryllium it skill, assurance aliases capability, and reside nan issues that are holding teams backmost from being afloat engaged.

Related: Business Growth Stems From Getting nan Right Customer Feedback. Here's How to Get It.

3. Empower broad growth

The 3rd proposal is to spell beyond search scores to focus connected nan behaviors driving nan outcomes. Use your CX programme to get caller customers, clasp existing ones, summation mean walk per customer, amended conversion rates, summation referrals and boost affirmative reviews connected societal media to pull much caller customers. When you tin place nan cardinal behaviors straight impacting customer loyalty aliases dissatisfaction, you tin move from chasing scores to focusing only connected nan actions required to thrust improvement. You tin study from and usage proven champion practices, place mid-range scores and spot what's missing betwixt what immoderate telephone "vanilla" experiences vs. your "Wow!" service, and you tin reside antagonistic feedback much effectively.

As an illustration of really this attack drives growth, for 1 of our clients successful car service, we compared nan results for nan apical 20% and bottommost 20% against their yearly income and recovered retired wherever their caller customers came from (called "path to purchase"), their NPS scores and Google ratings. The apical 20% group achieved 24% higher yearly sales, 78% of caller customers came from referrals and they mentioned seeing a affirmative review. They had an NPS people of 96 vs. 64 for nan bottommost 20% and a Google standing of 4.8 retired of 5.0.

The cardinal is to attraction connected actionable feedback, make each individual accountable for their behaviors pinch your programme results linked to resources to reside skills and attraction connected what you want much of — admit your champion practices and halfway connected behaviors much than scores (which are outcomes). Remember nan cardinal to encouraging much customers to respond is astir really you personalize nan survey questions by customer type making it conversational and giving them a existent sound to show you what matters astir to them. Finally, maturation is astir knowing nan effect of achieving each cardinal standards consistently.