Blogs

Companies interested in loyalty often measure Net Promoter®; likewise companies interested in Customer Satisfaction measure CSAT, so it seems logical to ask with the current buzz around Customer Experience how should you measure the CE? This is an important question for without an adequate measure you risk not doing Customer Experience at all! After all if you don’t measure it, how can you know if you are genuinely creating value from your experience?

In customer experience management (CEM), one fundamental truth is that the customer experience is made up of two halves: rational and emotional. In financial services, one fundamental reality is that people want the greatest return but within their acceptable risk horizon. An individual’s acceptable risk horizon is determined by personal disposition and external factors like interest rates, economic stability and so forth. All of us in financial services clearly understand the importance and impact of the external factors.

When we start working with a client to improve their Customer Experience I am often asked ‘How long will it be before we see a result’. On the face of it whilst this sounds an easy question to answer it is fraught with difficulty… for example….

How many loyalty cards do you have in your wallet? Their purpose is not just for companies to send you irrelevant offers but also so they learn about your shopping habbits – what you like, need and what offers would please you most. Some companies are doing better than others but the American retailer Target seems to be in a league of their own as they figured out a way to look into people’s stomachs and find weather they are pregnant or not.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Japan even in through 20 years of recession continues to produce perhaps the world’s highest concentration of the highest quality goods and services in the world. The author, Tom Downey highlights several examples in the clothing and food & Beverage sectors.

What are the things that have made you cry at the movies? Was it the scene in Titanic when Jack dies and slips away into the icy water? How can you fail to be touched when you see pictures on TV of starving children in Africa? Who can fail to be inspired when they see disabled/handicapped people fight through adversity and undertake a feat of endurance? The human spirit is what defines us. It is the essence of our being.

Managing patient satisfaction is a key strategic goal for healthcare providers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Patient experience is undergoing a renaissance, especially in hospitals. In the US, this is being driven in large part by the implications of the HCAHPS patient satisfaction reimbursement rules. In the UK, it’s National Health Service (NHS) reforms. As such, hospitals have been eager to hear from experts and learn from other industries about the most effective ways to improve Patient Satisfaction. The body of publicly available patient experience info is growing and in many ways it parallels that of the broader customer experience space.

In a digital era where self-servicing and self-sufficiency become order of the day, human interaction is rightfully seen as a key differentiator for companies trying to engage customers.

The call centre experience is one such instance where human interaction can either seal or break the deal for many customers. Managing a call centre is a challenging task requiring managers and employees to be very stress tolerant at the same time full of energy and creative.

It strikes us how focused the majority of businesses are on getting customers through the door, thus spending hundreds of millions on advertising while at the same time not paying much attention to customers leaving from the back door. With the economic stagnation going on in Europe and USA and the sluggish organic growth prospects in domestic markets, focus is shifting to retaining existing customers.