This practical piece provides a step-by-step guide on how marketers can become the Customer’s Champion, from undertaking research to learning the language of the board. With the board focused on key financials and the bottom line, marketers have a vital role in representing the needs of the customer internally, to guide strategic decision-making and development…. Read more »
Why have a customer experience brief? Whether it is to measure your Net Promoter Score, develop a Customer Journey Map, or to support your orgaisation to become more customer orientated, ultimately the aim will be to improve your customers’ experience. If you are looking to utilise the skills of a third party in partnering with… Read more »
Predictions for Customer Experience Management, some practical issues As Customer Experience Management continues to be a focal point for an increasing number of organisations, we at Customer Champions are seeing the following trends emerge from last year and would make the following practical predictions for the coming year: An increase in the desire to obtain… Read more »
Checklist for the ideal customer feedback programme Designing the ideal customer feedback programme for your own business is essential when you consider there are so many options of how to effectively gather customer feedback, share that with the business and then act upon that feedback in an impactful manner. Built upon Customer Champions’ extensive knowledge… Read more »
Customer feedback supporting Account Based Marketing Gaining insightful and actionable customer feedback will help ensure the success of an Account Based Marketing strategy. Historically the approach to marketing in a B2B environment was focused on identifying multiple new sales opportunities that were then qualified through a sales funnel to generate a small number of quality… Read more »
Are suppliers a strong link in your value proposition? The important role of third party suppliers in any company being able to deliver its value proposition successfully is undeniable, but could companies do a better job in measuring supplier satisfaction when assessing the effectiveness of that synergy? Whether you have formally outsourced part of your… Read more »
Gaining customer experience successes can be hard work, so sharing them with both your colleagues and your customers will maximise their value to all stakeholders. When to share customer experience successes Although organisations recognise the need to share the results of customer feedback or structured surveys, few provide it in relevant detail, and even fewer… Read more »
Customer complaints, concerns, or just feedback? Some organisations are looking to define the differences between a customer complaint, a concern, or whether it is ‘just’ feedback. Presumably to prioritise resources for resolution the customers’ issues but perhaps also to impact any KPIs the business may have around complaints management. All feedback provides insight Surely if… Read more »
With any company new to measuring their Net Promoter Score (NPS) one of the first questions often concerns how the score compares with other companies. The challenge is to find a company where benchmarking NPS scores is appropriate. Are they directly comparable and do you know the reliability of the publicised NPS score? Has their… Read more »
Customer Journey Mapping is a tool that many organisations are turning to when they are looking to align their business with the customers’ experience. But perhaps some companies are not totally committed to ensuring all touchpoints are open for business in order to deliver a positive customer experience. Running a customer journey mapping workshop to… Read more »
Delivering an improved customer experience is seen as a key differentiator in many businesses, but is the impact of employee engagement on that understood and valued by many organisations? Businesses invest heavily in building and delivering brand values and then go on to build impressive websites and produce professional and creative marketing collateral which… Read more »
The power of customer endorsement should never be underestimated in both retaining customers and developing new ones. Within B2B markets customer endorsement through the use of a case study, customer testimonial and the availability of reference customers is vital to the success of the business as they are essential tools in formal bids. So how… Read more »
We all know the great expense incurred when bidding for a major piece of work from a customer, and we all know that depressing feeling when we find out that on some occasions we have not been successful with our bid. But that shouldn’t stop a company conducting a loss review to gain a detailed… Read more »
Big data, what about small data? Big data is all very well but what about those of us who deal in ‘small’ data. Big data is still the exciting big topic many Customer Experience professionals are talking about but it has little to offer organisations without thousands of customers. Working in the B2B environment Customer… Read more »
Can infographics increase the value of customer feedback? Collecting customer feedback is relatively straightforward, yet the probability of someone successfully acting on it depends on how well it’s communicated within a company. Could infographics help get the message across? Few people give much thought to the sharing of feedback. The typical approach is to send… Read more »
Customer case studies and reference customers. Is Net Promoter Score (NPS) a relevant measure in a B2B environment? Or are case studies, customer references and testimonials of greater value to the business than a single response to a questionnaire concerning recommendation? Putting aside the issue of the accuracy of NPS and how well it may… Read more »
When customers complain they have a set of basic expectations of what will happen, but could managing those expectations lead to improved customer relationships? Our own research shows that these expectations would include aspects such as acknowledgement, ownership, and being kept informed about progress. Expectations vs Experience As the table below highlights, what customers actually… Read more »
Whether they are Customer Personas or Buyer Personas these have a valuable role to play in either ensuring a company maintains its focus on its customers’ needs, or in helping a company become more customer focused. You will often hear people talk about ‘putting themselves in the customers’ shoes,’ well Personas are a key tool… Read more »
How high can your NPS score be? So how high can your NPS score be? Is achieving a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 100 achievable? Almost every company that calculates an NPS score wants to know the answer to two questions: How does our NPS score compare against others? How high can our NPS score… Read more »
The July 2013 UK Customer Satisfaction Index report suggests that the overall level of customer satisfaction in the UK may well have plateaued. Here at Customer Champions we have seen this flat-lining of customer satisfaction across a wide range of companies over the years, yet it certainly has not indicated that customers are portraying high… Read more »
The two major influences on a customer’s perception of a firm’s value in the marketplace are their satisfaction with the relative quality of the products and services plus their satisfaction with the competitiveness of the price. Customers expect and look for value, and price plays a large role in the value equation, yet few surveys… Read more »
Do you really understand what your internal stakeholder wants from your customer feedback programme? Whilst asking customers for feedback is relatively straight forward the challenge of converting that into action still remains, and misunderstanding your internal stakeholder customer needs can be a key barrier. When there is not enough focus placed on understanding the needs… Read more »
Having established a corporate measure of customer experience there is frequently a discussion around whether to link a target score for that measure to financial bonuses for either teams or individuals. This tends to raise a few points that need consideration: 1. To what extent can the individual influence the achievement of that target score?… Read more »
The Henley Centre for Customer Management (HCCM) recent report on how effective customer effort is as a measure of customer experience is well worth a read. But is effort or ‘ease of doing business’ just yet another part of the jigsaw when trying to identify how to measure the customers experience? HCCM define customer effort… Read more »
Should NPS scores be audited? There is no doubt that Net Promoter Score has to be the most widely known measure of customer loyalty, but with Boardrooms being increasingly keen to promote their NPS score, either internally or to the wider market, or simply to be able to compare their score with those that have… Read more »
We all have dissatisfied, angry customers at some point, but can you quantify what their true cost to the business is? Customer Champions have previously considered the cost of customer complaints in terms of compensation and lifetime value, but perhaps we need to consider even wider issues, such as: • Negative impact upon the brand… Read more »
Or what an independent osteopathy clinic in Thrapston can do that many organisations would give their eye-teeth for! They don’t refer to their patients as customers and yet they are instinctive providers of customer service, never having attended a customer satisfaction course in their lives. They segmented their customer base by frequency of visit, length… Read more »
Recognition of a Customer Champion As a regular user of Chiltern railways, and in particular the Warwick Parkway station I was delighted to read that Judith Biggs, who works at the station as a station host, has been awarded a British Empire Medal for her focus on the customer. A true Customer Champion. Judith is… Read more »
Great to see Shell UK being announced as the winner of the Customer Experience category in the Chartered Institute of Marketing awards for 2012. Too often companies complain about operating in a commodity market and being unable to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Shell have broken the mould by considering the whole customer experience and… Read more »
Should employees be rewarded for delivering the experience that the customer wants, or the outcome that their employer needs? Having experienced two different car showrooms in 48 hours, it made me wonder why car dealers are so bad at customer service. Personally I find buying a car a stressful rather than enjoyable experience. I think… Read more »
With the recent demise of a number of high street brands I have been able to reduce the burden on space in my wallet. The removal of loyalty cards for Blockbuster and HMV has freed up some space, but also made me consider how effective are loyalty card schemes for the long term growth of… Read more »
Differentiating on customer service is seen by many organisations as a key element of their strategy. Converting a customer service strategy into customer service excellence holds many challenges. Colin Bates, Director of Customer Champions, examines the issues and challenges he sees as being most important and provides some empirical solutions. Introduction Recent research by the… Read more »
Customer journeys that collide Customer Journey Mapping as a tool to recognise the impact that an organisation has on its customers at key moments of truth has grown in popularity, but too little consideration is given to how one customer journey can influence another – or as in my own recent case how they can… Read more »
So what is the most impactful and insightful single measure you can gain from customer insight for whether your customers are likely to remain loyal and grow? A recent article suggested that “Relevance” may be the key measure. Certainly with a number of our clients having a technology and engineering focus we have found that… Read more »
Getting the most from Customer Journey Mapping Without doubt Customer Journey Mapping is a valuable tool in documenting the key interactions between customers and the supplier but it will not drive essential internal customer focused behaviour or required change within the organisation all on its own. Enthusiasm for utilising and implementing Customer Journey Mapping has… Read more »
Introduction One of the biggest challenges facing companies when they want to become customer focused is that their own organisation is based around functional silos. This is not only noticeable to customers as they are passed from function to function looking for service, but also to companies themselves either when they look to start a… Read more »
The days of looking at people’s past experience and present day skill sets when recruiting are fast disappearing. Today, the key to success in business is a high touch approach in what fundamentally is a high tech world. Those businesses that tap into an individual’s emotional intelligence as the main criteria for selection during… Read more »
Introduction When implementing a customer focus strategy one of the greatest challenges is to evolve ownership away from the Boardroom and into operational areas of the business. Our experience has shown that the most effective way of doing this is to identify a team of individuals who can represent the customers and the customer experience… Read more »
Introduction In today’s competitive market place there can be few organisations who do not desire to be customer-focused, and even fewer who do not recognise how important employees are in delivering this. The bad news is that still few are truly succeeding in creating a customer focus culture where the customer is king. This focus… Read more »
Introduction Should a company reward its employees for providing excellent customer experiences, or should that just be seen as part of their job? If they are rewarded additionally, should the same measure be used across all employees, or should it be targeted? Does linking employee reward and recognition to the customer experience lead to long… Read more »
In today’s increasingly multi-channel customer contact environment, many companies are now trying to utilise the online channel to gain customer feedback. In fact technology’s impact on the voice of the customer is of growing influence. But in order to maximise the value we need to understand how online surveys differ from traditional surveys? What are the… Read more »
Effective internal communications Assuming that essentials for any customer satisfaction programme are in place, such as active management support, a key element of success is ensuring that individual employees at all levels engage with the results. Employee engagement comes in the form of recognising what they can do individually to improve the customers’ experience and… Read more »
With the plethora of tools to provide direct access to customers asking for their feedback online, do they provide a threat or an opportunity to research professionals? In 1986, Colin Bates, now MD of Customer Champions, introduced one of the first online interactive research tools. It was called Interview and utilised view-data technology by placing small screens… Read more »
Introduction We’ve previously discussed the plethora of single measures of Customer Experience, but one that has recently been receiving revived coverage has been that of Customer Effort. We therefore thought it was worth reviewing this customer experience management measure to help guide both our customers and other visitors to our website. What is Customer Effort? Customer… Read more »
Introduction Increasingly companies are realising that it is easier and cheaper to sell more to their current customers than to try and gain completely new customers. There is however a subtle difference between selling more of the same to the same customers and trying to cross or up-sell products and services to current customers. This… Read more »
Introduction Today the vast majority of companies will have a firm belief that they need to be increasingly customer focused in order to be competitive within their market place and that customer strategy development is vital. Evidence of this may be seen in companies’ annual reports, in their press releases and even in their communication… Read more »
Introduction Whether we are in a recession, economic downturn, or period of prosperity, every company has a time where it has to pull in its costs. When the finance department look at where they can claw some money back, they always look at marketing cost reduction as an easy target; and it is always an… Read more »
In times of recession all organisations need to focus on their customer needs, and everyone is looking to maximise the return they can get from budgets that are under increasing pressure. So is there an opportunity to get a better return from money invested in gathering customer feedback by linking customers to strategy? The answer… Read more »
What is Customer Value Management (CVM)? CVM is a measure of a company’s customers’ view of the perceived value for money delivered relative to that of their competitors’ customers. It is sometimes known as a Customer Value Added (CVA) approach. Why use Customer Value Management (CVM)? CVM is a powerful business tool as it links… Read more »
In the past decade, businesses around the world have started placing a renewed focus on customers. They’re doing this because they see that customers have more choice than ever before. If customers don’t perceive that a company’s offering is worth what they’ve paid for it, they’ll take their money to a competitor who offers better… Read more »
Research carried out amongst major European businesses by Customer Champions has found that nearly all large companies claim to gather some form of customer feedback. Yet, as we all know through our day to day practical experiences as consumers, there is extremely limited improvement in the service levels that we receive from these companies. Companies… Read more »
Our own research and experience has shown that the vast majority of companies today capture customer feedback in some form. This may be a formal customer satisfaction programme, or ad hoc analysis of customer comments, but the focus is on trying to support the company putting the customer at the heart of its strategy. However,… Read more »
It would appear that age is a strong determinate of how satisfied we are with the customer service we receive. In our survey people were asked to indicate from a list of thirty-six different service industries in the UK which they felt provided below average customer service. When we looked at attitudes to customer service… Read more »
Men may boycott your company for 10 years if you don’t resolve their complaint! Men who are unhappy with how a supplier deals with their complaint will boycott that organisation for an average of 10 years – double the time for women. With a strong focus on developing CRM systems so that customer lifetime value… Read more »
Introduction For some time now there has been much hype and hopeful news that Net Promoter Score (NPS) was perhaps after all the Holy Grail of customer satisfaction measurement: one single question with a link to business KPIs. Yet over time the number of sceptics has grown, and they have become more vocal. As professionals… Read more »
In a market dominated by customers making supplier switching decisions primarily on price, the key challenge facing all suppliers within any of the utility markets is to understand the customers’ perception of total value received, and not just the lowest price. Without this few companies will survive profitably in the long term with such a fixation… Read more »
When organisations are trying to gain a better understanding of their customers they frequently overlook an invaluable source of knowledge – employee insight. It is particularly surprising when you consider employees’ knowledge of their company, their market and, vitally, their customers is a cache of accessible information. What’s more, gaining feedback on customers from employees… Read more »
In a B2B environment it can be a relatively small number of customers who represent a significant proportion of a company’s revenue and profit. Therefore, while without doubt it is important to establish overall levels of corporate loyalty of the total customer base, it is just as important to understand them at an individual customer… Read more »
For an increasing number of companies today a major challenge is to identify the key customer messages from an ever increasing complexity of multiple customer data sources and then look to develop these messages into an overall customer story. It is all too easy for the greater message to become hidden by the latest single… Read more »
Of course all of our customers are important, but as the 80/20 rule applies throughout business some of our customers are more important than others. Perhaps in a B2B environment this distinction is even greater and this may be because of their impact upon your revenue stream or perhaps they are of particular strategic importance… Read more »
With the recent 70th anniversary commemorating the outbreak of Second World War and a recent visit to the Cabinet War Rooms, there were some lessons from those dour days that we could all learn in these challenging days of recession. One of the highlights of the Cabinet War Rooms is the Map Room where teams… Read more »
Introduction Within a business to business (B2B) environment the role of account management is a vital component of not only keeping the customer or client, but also growing the value of the business with your organisation. With account management acting as the primary interface with the customer it represents all functions of the business and acts… Read more »
As companies refocus on their core business, they are looking to outsource what are seen as non-core yet business-critical functions. These can range from IT to estate management; from finance to catering; but on the receiving end of all of these outsourcing agreements are their customers. Outsourcing will only ever work if the end customer… Read more »
A holy grail of a customer service strategy has been to measure the ROI that can be achieved through delivering customer service. Whilst measuring customer service ROI remains tantalisingly out of reach, following the Institute of Customer Service’s (ICS) research into this area it appears that definite strides are being taken towards it. However, as… Read more »
So what is the single measure you should measure from customer feedback? There’s plenty to choose from – Satisfaction, Recommendation, Trust, Ease of doing Business, Customer Effort, Value, Loyalty … We’ve reviewed the alternatives out there and summarised what might be the best measure for you and your customers. In our view, the overriding factor has to… Read more »
There is pervading evidence of businesses and brands recognising the critical importance of listening to the voice of the customer (or VoC). As customers and consumers ourselves you have, no doubt like me, noticed the increased presence of calls for our feedback be they pop ups on websites, invitations given to us at the shop… Read more »
We have all felt the growing frustration of waiting unnecessarily, being ignored or facing inefficiency when shopping. In these tough times, customers are more and more likely to reject bad service when a competitor can offer the same products and price without the hassle. Retailers can no longer view customer service as an option and… Read more »
Increasingly companies are recognising the value of a customer complaint in that it is free feedback on their experience, and an opportunity to not only resolve a problem for that particular customer but perhaps also for a much larger number of customers. A quote we often share with our clients on the value of a… Read more »
Sometimes it is too easy with a standard customer feedback questionnaire to simply ask customers for their opinions on a particular supplier’s performance to date, without fully appreciating that we are human and not machines. There is an emotional aspect to how we assess things as well as a rational one. We like to think,… Read more »