In this guest post, Qualtrics MD APAC/Japan Bill McMurray and principle consultant, customer experience, Kyle Groff, talk the four key customer metrics to measure for a successful voice of customer program.
As with any organisational initiative, measuring the success of your Voice of Customer (VoC) program is crucial to developing a strong and scalable program. Many organisations view voice of the customer metric selection as challenging and are unsure of what to measure and when.
Bill McMurray said, “It’s an old management truism that what gets measured, gets done. Organisations seem to remember this when setting key performance indicators but forget it when running VoC programs.
“In fact, putting clear and relevant measurements in place is the only way to run a good customer experience program. It’s essential to know both what you’re measuring and how to measure it, and then how to turn that information into actionable insights.”
Kyle Groff has identified four key customer metrics to measure for a successful VoC program:
1. CSAT
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) quantifies how well specific products or elements of the customer experience meet their expectations, usually by using a response scale.
2. NPS
Net promoter score (NPS) measures a customer’s intention and is derived from asking customers a single question: “How likely is it that you would recommend [company] to a friend or colleague?”
Using a rating scale, respondents are grouped into three categories: Detractors, Passives, and Promoters. Companies calculate the NPS by subtracting the percentage of customers who are detractors from the percentage of customers who are promoters.
3. CES
Customer effort score (CES) measures how much effort a customer has to use to get an issue resolved, a request fulfilled, or a question answered. This is a good measurement to track over time.
4. BD
Brand Drivers (BD) measures the importance of key product and service offerings across not only current customers, but also target future customers. This allows organisations to measure the viability of current and new product and service offerings to ensure the organisation is delivering to customers’ needs/wants and staying relevant in the market.
McMurray said, “Organisations that aren’t measuring these four metrics are unlikely to have a genuine understanding of how their customers and markets view them. As a result, they’re less able to respond to customer sentiment and may find it difficult to compete effectively.
“Measuring these elements doesn’t have to be difficult. For example, Qualtrics provides the balance of full-function capability, with a scalable and easy-to-use VoC platform. This enables organisations to have a flexible and agile program where the company can start small, implement that, learn and iterate and then grow the program out in terms of capabilities/customer touchpoints, scale and measurements.
“However, effective measurement does require a mind-shift for organisations that have not had a strong measurement culture until now.”
