Why customer analytics should be in your toolkit

Customer experience strategy

Today’s typical customer is time-poor. They appreciate responsiveness and agility from a business and, most of all, they desire convenience.

Ahead of CX Network’s release of the 2018 Big Book of Customer Insights and Analytics, Editor in Chief, Chanice Henry sat down to discuss convenience with Customer Experience influencer Shep Hyken.

Shep: “First of all, let’s talk about the concept of ‘out-convenience’ ­–  that’s the whole topic of the new book coming out shortly called The Convenience Revolution.

“Some companies still haven’t gotten it yet, but many companies understand the importance of delivering an amazing customer experience.

“The customer now knows what a good experience is based on the best experience they ever received from anyone.  Companies are now being compared to firms in other industries and, as a result, they’re recognising they’ve got to up their game.

“From the standpoint of analytics and feedback, we are not talking about tracking how people are coming through a system or buyer behaviours. What we are interested in tracking is buyer satisfaction, buyer evangelism and loyalty. You can use feedback like the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

“NPS is a great indicator, but all this number does is show intent. We know that if they give us a nine or a 10 out of 10 they’re likely to recommend us.

“The question is, if everybody is pushing to deliver great service and everybody is getting high net promoter scores – what is the next thing to take it to a whole new level? That is to be more convenient to do business with.

Customer data and analytics

“So once you hit a good experience, you need to look at the next big hurdle to get over: is there any friction that your customers go through in their journey with your brand? How do you find this out? You ask that question of every customer to find out the basic number for what I would call objective type analytics.

“You now need to go to subjective and ask them what I call the ‘one thing’ question:  ‘Is there one thing you would suggest that would make doing business with us easier?’ The wording here is important. I used to say: ‘Is there one thing you can think of?’, but no-no I don’t want them to think of anything; I want them to make a suggestion. ‘Is there one thing you can suggest that would make doing business with us easier?’ - Not better, but easier.

“If they gave us a low NPS score, I would like to know what we can do to be better, because then, firstly, we know how to improve so they view us as a good customer service experience organisation. The next step is getting them to see we are also the easiest to do business with.” 

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