CX measurement: 5 critical mistakes you must avoid

When you are improving your customer experience (CX), measuring your progress is crucial. Measurement tells you what you are doing right and, perhaps more importantly, what you are doing wrong. The analysis also helps you determine goals for your team and where to focus your efforts. It also helps you allocate proper resources. Fail to measure correctly, and you will have a tougher road to success - or miss the road altogether.

We find that many organisations measure performance in sales growth or stock price. But these don’t work, at least not for your CX improvement programme, because they are too disconnected from the CX and cannot link to the day-to-day actions of your team.

In our global customer experience consultancy, we recommend measuring CX performance that does the two following things:

1. Reflects the CX definition you have determined as your goal, also called the Customer Experience Statement or CES.
2. Assesses by an indicator with a direct tie to your CES, which for most organisations is NPS score.

Once you have these two areas covered, you should be fine, right? Not so fast. CX improvement measurement often misses a few other areas. Five, in fact. To that end, here are five critical mistakes you can’t make in CX measurement:

1. Forgetting to establish a starting point for the whole organisation, not just customer-facing teams. To get where you are going it is critical to know where you are. Otherwise, how will you know how far you have come. Not only that, you need to have a baseline for CX established for every department, not just those that have direct interaction with customers. Yes, finance, legal, accounts receivable, we are talking about you. Fail to do this, and you delay your progress toward your CX improvement goals.
2. Not celebrating quick wins. Real-time feedback helps relieve the pain of change for your team. To that end, investing in real-time feedback on your efforts helps team members see why the actions you prescribe are significant. It also helps them buy-in to what you are doing quickly.
3.  Allowing the agenda to pass you by in meetings. As global customer experience consultants, we see this all the time. Significant sections of meetings are devoted to operations and sales but nothing for Customer Experience. Or very little time is and it is at the end of the meeting, when everyone is restless and ready to go. Ensure that your CX improvement efforts and results get their due in meetings or you could find that what you need takes a back seat to the items that were discussed in the conference room.
4.  Neglecting to get senior management support. CX Improvement programs are most successful when you employ a top-down strategy. Senior management must support and celebrate your cause if you want to get anywhere. A number of ways exist to determine whether you have senior management’s support. We suggest you figure it out and start campaigning for support if you discover you don’t have it.
5.  Permitting your first strategy to be your last. CX improvement is a journey, not an event. Like a car, it requires a constant maintenance and occasional tune-ups to run smoothly. You must reassess, re-evaluate and refine what you are doing as you go. After all, as your performance improves, your metrics will, too. Not only that, what customers expect changes, too. As CX becomes more and more refined in business, you will find yourself measured not only against the best in your industry but also against the best customer experience out there. Regular analysis of your strategy and performance are your friend on this CX improvement journey.

A robust customer experience improvement programme needs an equally robust customer experience measurement programme. Ensure that you choose a metric that reflects your desired CX that links directly to that CX outcome. Then, get a baseline for everyone, celebrate any quick wins, fight for your time in meetings and support from senior management, and reassess and refine your strategy as needed. These efforts will not only help you see how you are doing, but they will also pave the way to success for your CX improvement programme.

Have you been struggling to measure your success? Let us know how you managed to overcome this.

To learn more about CX Measurement programmes and how you can use them to help facilitate your success, watch the FREE, 30-minute webinar, “Where Customer Experience (CX) Measurement Goes Wrong) on our website.

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Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of six bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX