Category Archives: Measurement

Customer Experience, Measurement

The Difference Between Customer Experience and Customer Feedback

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In every business, the most important factor to satisfy to be able to become successful is the customer.  They are the very reason why businesses are willing to spend millions, just to get the attention of the customers.  The purpose here is to convince the customer to patronize their products or services.  And to achieve that, businesses strive to provide good or excellent customer experience and harvest good customer feedback.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer experience to me is the interaction, between the customers and the business itself, through its people, logistic, system, and management.  This is the result of all the collective efforts of the whole team, against the experience of their customers.  This includes:

  • How the staff welcomes the customers.  This is a very important factor in business.  The first time a customer step in your establishment/office, they already think of getting something from you.  They already expect that they will be treated with kindness and that the business put value in their presence.  So, if the staff was so welcoming to them, they will be sure of a good customer experience in your resort.
  • How the staff addressed their concerns.  Another way to be able to provide a good experience is being able to address all your customers concerns. Such complaint as leaking, not cold AC, no hot water, etc.  If you are able to address their concerns fast, they will have a good experience.
  • How the staff provides support. Support from staff is a welcome gesture from the new guests.  Supporting your customers in many little things will give your business a good start.

Providing Excellent Customer Experience

Since customer experience is important, here are a few tips, on how to make sure your customers will have one good experience:

  • Familiarity with your products/services. This first step is the most important.  Customers will always appreciate when the staffs answer their questions about the products.  Sometimes, a customer’s doesn’t know the location of some items. 
  • Be friendly. Be friendly to anyone that enters your establishment.  A simple smile and greetings will make a difference.  You need to do that to get good feedback as well.  Do not be judgmental towards anybody’s looks.  Treat everyone as equal being as they are the same customers and paid the same amount of money.
  • Training. Training is equally important to provide your customers with good customer experience.  If your staff is trained on standard customer service, there is no reason your customers will not have a good customer experience.
  • Respect.  Respect your customers, and you will also get respect.  And the respect you showed your customers, will then convert into profit.  Customers when you show them respect, they will not forget it.  This will remind them of your resort/hotel when they plan to visit your place again.
  • Be responsive. Some staffs in many businesses are not so responsive when customers are asking for any details.  But, being able to respond accordingly to their queries will make them feel important.

What is Customer Feedback?

Customer feedback in my own opinion is the result of the customer’s interaction with your business.  It is written by customers, to be able to show their gratitude for the service offered or they provided feedback to allow customers, to get share their experience of a certain product or services.  They also bring this customer feedback to give businesses to work for improvement.

The importance of customer feedback on the business

  • It improves products and services. Customer feedback will result in improvement in products and services, because, through it, you will know, the defects of the product. You will have time to make improvements and adjustments regarding their services.
  • Helps to know how customers react.  This will also help you to know how your customers reacted to their experiences in your business.  Getting their feedback, positive or negative, is still beneficial to your business.
  • Shows that you value their opinions.  This signifies that you value what is important to them.  This will change their impression on your business.  This will give them the impression, that they are valued in your business.
  • It makes you aware of the capability of your staff, in dealing with your customers.  Most often, the problem lies in your staff.  They cannot promote your products and services that lead to poor customer feedback.
  • It helps you make adjustments in the operation and management of your business.  Once you get negative feedback, you just have to look at the entire system.  If you need to re-design the system, do it.  If you only need to put some adjustments, then be it.  Then, try to get more customer feedbacks until you have perfected the system.
  • It will be a factor in future business strategies.  Running a business is done in stages.   Getting feedback from customers will make you decide to proceed to the next stage or fixed the current stage before going to the next level.

Poor customer experience will always result in poor customer feedback.  The best way to give your customer the best experience in your business is to make him at home and comfortable, while they are in your establishment. 

Giving them the importance and being attentive, to their every need’s, will always result, to their satisfaction.  Once they are satisfied, they will always want to provide customers feedback.

The success of every business lies in the execution and the customer’s satisfaction.  Failure on this regard will affect the profitability of a business. Unless it is fixed, and customer service is given utmost importance, business is destined to fail.

A customer’s feedback is just the mirror of how you deal with your customers. Don’t be afraid to get customers feedback, as it will help you redefine your business. 

Customer Experience, Customer service, CX, Measurement, NPS

Understanding NPS, How It Works & Whether it’s a Measurement that Makes Sense

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Improving customer experience is one sure-fire way of expanding your business and establishing a credible brand name for yourself. After all, who doesn’t want their brand to be known for a great customer experience?! Great customer experience is essentially the key to a successful business. So why not use tools to help you improve your customer experience? There’s an abundance of tools available both online and offline that are designed to help you achieve the ideal you’ve envisioned for your clients. However, few can boast the power and usefulness that the NPS can provide you with.

So, What Is This “NPS”?

NPS stands for Net Promoter Score and it was developed by Fred Reichheld. It helps to create a clear and understandable customer satisfaction score which can then be used as a comparison between various businesses over even a single business across an extended period of time. This is done through surveys (we’ll get to that in a bit), and sometimes questionnaires, which are directly given to consumers so that accurate data can be collected. Of course, you’re probably wondering where this happens.

Well, think about any random time you ever got a pop up on your screen while you were visiting a website. Often times you will get questions like “would you recommend this product (or service) to a family or friend?”. Considering how little time it takes, you will probably answer and then continue your search. Well, that is the kind of surveys used to determine the NPS. They’re short, to-the-point and strategically placed by companies so that you answer them as honestly as you can as you’re doing your search.

Calculation


The NPS question given to the customer will generally include an 11 point scale from 0 to 10. Think of it as a rating with 0 meaning that you are not likely to recommend it at all to 10 meaning that you are extremely likely to.

According to the NPS guidelines, consumers can be broken down into three categories:

Category #1: Promoters


These are the people who will be giving your recommendation question a 9 or a 10. We call them promoters because they are very likely to spread the word about your product. 

These are the people who loved your customer service and will probably be advertising your brand to others through the word of mouth; never underestimate the power of word of mouth! It is a great, genuine and free advertisement for your business and as such makes promoters very valuable.

Category #2: Passives


Next up are the “passives”. These are the people who will give a score between 7 and 8. These are the most vulnerable of your clientele. Why? 

Because, unlike the promoters, they aren’t spreading the word about how great your brand is. They’re just there because. 

They don’t love your brand; they don’t hate it either, but they can be easily diverted elsewhere if the competition is offering the right price tag.


Category #3: Detractors


Detractors are the unhappy customers who’re giving you’re a score of 0 to 6. These are the people who can cause some serious damage to your brand. Like the promoters, they’re going to be spreading the word…of how bad your brand is. 

You need to make sure that you do not have a lot of detractors because they can seriously hinder the growth of your business.

In order to calculate your Net Promoter Score, you subtract the percentage of detractors from the promoters. The NPS is not expressed in terms of percentage. It needs to be an absolute number between -100 and +100. Generally, a positive NPS is considered good for businesses. In fact, many businesses aim to make sure that their NPS does not fall to zero or negative as zero shows that your business is stagnant while a negative NPS will show that your business’s customer experience is bad and that there are more detractors than promoters. This will, in turn, lead to a series of losses for you, so it is vital to make sure that your NPS is always positive.

By using this data, you can begin to plan a business strategy that improves your NPS.

Why Is It Important?


The biggest advantage of NPS is that it is able to provide a simple, yet holistic, understanding of your customer experience. This coupled with the fact that your customers are the ones directly answering questions without any filter, provides you with accurate data. 

The NPS is able to give you the real picture of how your clients perceive your business. Similarly, by comparing the NPS of other businesses, you can determine how well you’re doing. In some sectors, the NPS score rarely comes out to be more than +50 and even though this may not look good, if held up against the rest of the market, you will find that the NPS of +50 might actually be the score of the highest performing company in that industry. 

It’s relative yet it does not generalize or marginalize any competitor. You get a clear picture of what’s happening and that is great for business. There are many other benefits to the NPS which you can find here.

Does It Make Sense?


While it might initially take some time to wrap your head around it, once you get it you’ll realize the NPS is actually really easy to use and understand. While other tools can be very complicated, the NPS is simple, and its effectiveness lies in its simplicity. 

The results are pretty clear: the promoters are your loyal customers, the passives may be deterred away and the detractors are leaving. As we’ve already said before, you can use this to your advantage and establish an order that helps to grow your business. It accurately shows how your client feels.

KPI, Measurement

KPIs AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MEASUREMENT

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DMAIC

There is a great quote somewhere that goes something like – “If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it!” … this is so true and especially so in the Customer Service and Operations area. There are great KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and not so great ones. The key is choosing the right one for your business and you need to choose it from a CUSTOMER point of view. There is no use in choosing your KPI from any other area as if you lose your customers, you lose your revenue and obviously you lose your business!!
When defining a set of KPIs to control and measure performance, the most likely debate is probably around measuring KPIs. Another way to think about KPIs is that they are measurements designed to assess performance.
DMAIC is an abbreviation of the five improvement steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control and while it is a key mantra in six-sigma improvements, it is not only used in this methodology.

What KPI’s should I use?

Your choice of KPI’s depends on your intention and target audience. Which problem or issue are you trying to solve, who is it impacting, what is the impact and what outcome would you like to see afterward are all good questions to ask when building a KPI plan.

The Traditional Mantra is –

As we’ve already discussed in a previous section, DMAIC stands for
  • Define,
  • Measure,
  • Analyze,
  • Improve and
  • Control
You could shrink this to just “Measure. Analyze. Act” where KPI’s are the middle stage. While they might be at the middle stage, they are defined by the first and they should drive the third.
Sounds somewhat complicated but really they aren’t. You need to measure what is important to your business, the things that impact the bottom line, and your measurements should be repeatable and objective (appropriate to the job) and not just “management speak”. Talk to your staff – they are on the front line and can help guide you on what customers are really looking for!

1st Call Resolution & Downtime

Two common KPIs are 1st Call Resolution and Downtime (please note I have not said these are good ones – that is something you will need to determine for yourself depending on your interpretation of what’s important to your customer … this is something I shall discuss in greater detail in later posts). Similarly, KPIs should be measured over time and you should not expect your initial snapshot to give you the full picture as you will frequently have to ‘massage’ and/or revise your measurement criteria and focus until you are measuring the correct information.
1st Call Resolution –
Measurement of the %’age of customer issues resolved at the first call.
% Uptime/Downtime –
Measurement of the %’age of time the service is available (or not)
There are literally thousands (if not millions) of KPIs available, so there is bound to be one that actually meets the needs of your organization or business. A great resource to search if you’ve never used KPIs before is KPI Library. They offer free access to their library of KPIs and they have a very friendly and interactive community.