The main issue with NPS and similar customer satisfaction metrics is that the feedback is usually based on an isolated experience. While this too can be the case with another popular CX metric – the CES (customer effort score) – this metric has proven slightly more effective in measuring customer experience. It works by identifying how much effort it takes to do business with a company, usually on a scale of 1-10, and can help organisations gauge their probability of customer retention. This is important, because a Gartner study found that if a customer has an easy or low-effort experience with a brand, they are 94% more likely to repurchase. The appeal of CES is that it enables a business to measure a specific customer service touchpoint, e.g., return of goods. Once an issue has been identified with a touchpoint, the CX manager can then measure future CES scores against previous scores and track progress.
THE IMPORTANCE OF DATA-DRIVEN CX
PHOTOS: LUKAS BLAZEK, NATHAN DUMLAO UNSPLASH.COM
The real ROI of customer experience comes down to how well a marketer can analyse and use the data at their disposal
For example, the reliability of NPS has recently been called into question as it has been found to produce misleading results by overstating the number of customers who are unhappy with a business. For example, a survey conducted by independent research company ForeSee of 20 000 people categorised as ‘detractors’ by the NPS (who are
taken to be genuinely unhappy with the brand) found that just 1% of that total said they would communicate their ‘bad’ experience to others. So how bad could the experience have really been? Further questioning revealed that 60% of so-called ‘detractors’ were loyal customers who had been using the brand for more than two years and intended to continue doing so.
Achieving fast results and progress in the customer experience journey is more likely if one can pinpoint key focus areas to work on. Often, ambitious marketers try and tackle too many problems at once. Instead, they need to take on projects that they know will give them reliable results. This will help drive trust and ‘buy-in’ from the higher-ups in the organisation. The best way to obtain reliable results is to build the CX strategy with the end goal of proving ROI. For example, if an e-commerce company wants to increase the speed and reliability of its deliveries to make for a better customer experience, the marketer or customer experience manager can assess the impact of this by measuring repeat purchases, new customer purchases, and cross-sales since the faster delivery was put in place.
Issue 1 2021
strategicmarketingforafrica
31
