Companies Fail the Test with Metrics
New research from the Temkin Group suggests that while executives at many companies feel they are doing a good job with their customer experience metrics, very few of them are actually passing the test.
Temkin's research, presented in the report, "The State of CX Metrics, 2011," found that while 41 percent of respondents believe they are doing a good job with their customer experience metrics programs, only 10 percent earned good or very good ratings in the CX metrics assessment. The assessment grades CX metrics programs for consistency, impact, integration, and continuity.
"Most companies are not using metrics effectively to make business decisions," says Bruce Temkin, author of the report and managing partner of the Temkin Group. "They're tracking their metrics, but they haven't found a good way to use them to run their businesses."
Companies scored the lowest in integrating their CX metrics with financial data.
"Many companies have started to collect customer experience metrics, but very few have figured out how to use them to make good business decisions," Temkin says..
One of the key findings in the report was that less than one-quarter of companies measure the emotional reaction of customers after interacting with their company. This, Temkin says, is a huge missed opportunity. "The emotional reaction is something you have to follow," he says. "Trust is a big one for banks, for example."
Each customer interaction, he adds, has three components: functional (was the customer able to do what he wanted); acceptable (was it easy to do); and emotional (how did he feel while doing it).
"You want to do a really detailed deep dive into the emotional aspects at least once every 18 months if not every year," Temkin advises.
Other findings from the study include the following:
- Less than one-fifth of companies effectively measure wireless interactions, and less than one-quarter effectively measure customer interactions that go across multiple channels;
- Only 19 percent of companies think they do a good job making trade-offs between financial and CX metrics;
- Executives in only 41 percent of companies review CX metrics more frequently than once every three months;
- 84 of companies use satisfaction and 76 percent use "likely to recommend" as their metrics;
- 60 percent are effective at measuring customer service, 39 percent are effective at measuring new customers, 25 percent are effectively measuring emotional responses, and 24 percent are effective at measuring cross-channel interactions;
- 52 percent are good at collecting and communicating CX metrics.
When it comes to collecting customer feedback data, Temkin can't emphasize enough the role of speech and text analytics. "Historically, people have used multiple-choice surveys," he says. "Speech and text analytics are now practical to use."
Both forms of analytics can help companies make sense of the "tons of data assets" they have from their phone, email, chat, social media, and Web interactions, Temkin continues. "All of this unstructured data has insight that is much better than anything you could get from a simple survey."