Designing a CX Program for Business Results

Editor's Notes

• #6: Customer Experience Management is the discipline of embedding customer insight into every critical decision, improving how you perform at every level of the organization. As the leader in this market, I’d be happy to elaborate on the critical elements of Customer Experience Management and the outcomes it delivers.
• #8: We believe there are 5 core competencies organizations must possess to deliver CX success. Together, these competencies comprise world class customer experience management. They are as follows: Culture and Leadership CX Management System Customer Intelligence Connected Employees Culture of Innovation
• #9: Customer experience management begins with culture and leadership. Programs must have leadership and sponsors at the executive level that provide a consistent vision for the program. Departments must be aligned on a common set of objectives, values, metrics, and systems. Planning must be based on an honest assessment of competitive performance and strategy. Qualtrics possesses the thought leadership, subject matter expertise, and client support to ensure you build and maintain CX Leadership. EXECUTIVE SPONSORSHIP The customer agenda should be a priority at the highest level. If it is, then executives are held accountable to CX metrics and regularly communicate successes and account for shortcomings widely to the company. They communicate consistently in internal and external channels to keep the organization accountable. They recognize CX as a key leverage point for durable competitive advantage and routinely undertake strategic initiatives to improve. ORGANIZATIONAL ALIGNMENT Leadership is visible in the way teams work together to improve CX metrics and objectives. In leading CX organizations, departments share the same customer experience vision, though each addresses different aspects of the challenge. These companies are aligned on common processes and data sharing practices. They treat accountability to customer as a shared responsibility. Organizations typically empower a team responsible for the central management of CX to ensure integrity of the system, standardized measurement, and robust goal setting. The team receives sufficient resources and ultimately has the support of executive leaders. COMMON CUSTOMER METRICS Organizational alignment requires common metric targets that are accepted across the organization. The type of metric used matters less than the degree of consistency across teams. Metric performance must be widely shared across the organization and implemented in ways that are relevant to individual team performance. Strong alignment on common metrics allows organizations to compare historically, across teams, and against competition. Leaders are able to easily and objectively identify over- and underperforming teams, understand gaps in relation to peers, and track progress over time. PUBLISHED CUSTOMER VALUES Leading CX organizations communicate CX values at every level of the organization. Values should be specific, with a short vision statement that clearly conveys priorities and how these priorities translate to action. Organizations may consider publishing values to customers to communicate the vision and increase accountability.
• #10: CX Management System is the systematic measurement of interactions at each critical touchpoint and moment. It is the infrastructure that ensures each team and function has the customer and operational metrics they need to optimize how they perform. In addition, it requires the case management to ensure customer feedback is responded to at scale. Qualtrics provides the most dynamic, end-to-end platform for customer experience measurement, from intuitive survey building capability to omnichannel distribution, flexible role-based dashboards and closed loop follow up. We have powered some of the best brands and sophisticated solutions across every geography. OMNICHANNEL MEASUREMENT Customers expect to be able to give feedback wherever they interact with an organization. Capturing feedback at the time of the experience and through the appropriate channel contributes to greater response rates and overall response quality. Below are several channels where feedback is critical: // Contact Centers—Leaders use customer feedback and operational insights to provide data-based coaching and drive greater satisfaction and productivity. Agents have the case management tools they need to close the loop with customers. // Locations—Post-transaction feedback, site-specific measurement, and mystery shopping insights enable retail locations to understand and accelerate purchase behavior. // Website—Your customer experience often begins on your website. Digital measurement is critical to understanding the barriers to satisfaction and conversion on your digital sites. // Mobile & In-App—Customer engagement is increasingly becoming app-centric. Capturing feedback during the app experience and through SMS is particularly critical for younger demographics. // Social—Customers often give valuable feedback over social channels that would otherwise be unavailable to you. Capturing feedback over social channels ensures what is expressed externally can be quickly understood and addressed. KEY DRIVERS AND ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS Ensuring efficient resolution of individual customer issues is necessary but not sufficient for long-term improvement. Rather, organizations must be dedicated to understanding and resolving the root causes of customer dissatisfaction. Customer experience measurement, whether it is conducted after a transaction or simply at a key moment, typically allows customers to indicate their satisfaction, what is influencing that sentiment, and what can be done to improve. When merged with operational and transaction-specific data, organizations have full context into the drivers of customer behavior and sentiment and can take appropriate action. Customers often provide valuable feedback in free-form text. Text analysis tools parse the data to identify common themes and priorities. Sentiment analysis provides an additional layer of understanding to customer feedback. One approach to root cause improvement relies on identifying the underlying drivers of customer pain and delight across the experience as a whole. When drivers are combined in a 2x2 matrix, this construct allows leaders to prioritize improvements in areas that drive the greatest impact to customer satisfaction. These “make or break” areas of improvement boost customer delight and minimize customer pain. Other improvements may be deemed more hygienic, because they simply reduce customer pain. Improvements that increase customer delight but fail to remediate pain are also of secondary importance in comparison to the top right quadrant. Of course, satisfaction drivers that fail to significantly influence customer delight or pain fall to the bottom of the priority list. The increasing volume and dispersion of data mean that organizations increasingly have to rely on statistical analysis to get to the root of customer issues. Advanced tools make it easy to identify correlations, explain variables, and gauge statistical significance. ROLE-SPECIFIC MANAGEMENT Customer experience programs embed relevant customer and operational metrics into each level of the organization. Flexible role-based dashboards ensure real-time insights and operational metrics are displayed to the right teams and individuals. With relevant customer information, teams can optimize how they operate in ways that improve customer and business outcomes. For example, executives have access to high-level business and operational metrics and key drivers at a geography and business level. Managers view how their team is performing and provide data-based coaching, while customer-facing employees can see account-level detail and take action based on automated alerts and real-time feedback. Role-based management means tailored views for each function, specific to the business objectives of each team. For example, sales organizations might display customer feedback at a representative and account level, with insight into the key drivers of win rate. In contrast, contact center organizations benefit from customer satisfaction metrics side by side with first call resolution and other productivity metrics, allowing leaders to coach teams and make decisions with full context. CLOSING THE LOOP AT SCALE Mature programs close the loop with all customers, not just detractors. Typical case management systems provide both managers and agents the tools they need to track open tickets and take efficient action to respond to individual customers. Managers are able to track ticket metrics by team and representative to ensure customer feedback is resolved efficiently and effectively. With the ability to track performance vs. target and trend, combined with automated alerts and reports, managers are empowered to drive performance and coach with data. At the individual level, employees can view open tickets and easily take appropriate action. System integrations and mobile interfaces allow staff to be productive in any setting. Front-line team adoption is largely influenced by how well case management systems are embedded in existing processes and tools. Integration with CRM systems in particular helps merge customer follow up with standard account management practices and enriches customer data. Employees should be able to easily view customer tickets and account information, and then make updates that translate across systems. OPERATIONAL INTEGRATION Operational integration is key to driving adoption across the organization and ensuring customer measurement results in tactical action. Critical integrations include CRM systems, communication tools, and analytics applications. CRM integrations ensure customer feedback automatically syncs with customer account detail and transaction history, and that data modifications made in one program are reflected in the other. Automated alerts and surveys can be triggered based on customer account conditions, resulting in greater front-line responsiveness. Communication tool integrations provide an additional incentive for organizational adoption. By connecting customer tickets with standard message channels and allowing relevant users to easily view and discuss customer data, teams are able to collaborate and take action in ways that are natural. Analytics applications allow programs to integrate data with customer feedback in ways that provide rich context. Digital teams can engage online customers based on behavioral and profile based criteria, while these same fields are available to build segment specific profiles and explain the relationship between variables.
• #11: Customer Experience Management requires deep, actionable Customer Intelligence that extend beyond touchpoints. It requires the ability to conduct research to understand customer topics, the analytic engine to understand key satisfaction and behavioral drivers by segment, and the ability to understand key relationships. This competency relates to the ability to capture deep insight that combines both operational and customer data to support strategic, cross-functional change. Qualtrics provides the most sophisticated, intuitive research platform on the market. With the most advanced survey builder and a full analytics engine featuring statistical, data, and text analysis, we empower you to leverage customer intelligence to drive strategic improvement. JOURNEY MEASUREMENT Customer satisfaction is more than a summation of touchpoints. It is also a reflection of key moments across the customer experience. Mapping customer journeys by segment allows organizations to understand the unique paths customers take. These views provide a basis for measuring the following: Barriers customers face to accomplishing the tasks they undertake Drivers of satisfaction or dissatisfaction overall and at each key moment Drivers of customer acquisition, retention, and upsell/cross-sell Relative importance of each key stage of the customer journey Relative importance and customer volume for each journey Leading CX organizations tie journey performance metrics to actions, ensuring that teams optimize the experiences that matter. Central measurement teams form partnerships with functional teams that allow journey performance to become real and impactful. STRATEGIC RESEARCH Deep research on core customer topics is critical to understanding customer feedback. Mature organizations are able to tie transactional customer feedback and insights to research that seeks to clarify root causes of satisfaction and loyalty, and create the level of intelligence necessary to support action. This alignment often requires close collaboration and data sharing across research and functional teams, which must work in concert to identify topics, launch meaningful research, and enact relevant research findings. A second component of strategic research is relational measurement, which enables organizations to have a holistic view of key account health and satisfaction. Most relevant for B2B companies, regular assessments of relational satisfaction provides customers an opportunity to indicate their likelihood to renew or increase spending, and key drivers of satisfaction. Relational surveys also provide an important opportunity for account managers to capture feedback and have an early alert for at-risk customers. COMPETITIVE BENCHMARKING Performance improvement must be measured against competitive benchmarks if improvements are to translate intomarket gains. Organizations that capture specific, operational level benchmarks empower leaders to beat the competition where it matters to customers. In addition to industry benchmarks, internal comparisons versus historical performance allow organizations to isolate which performance gaps originate from internal competency, and which result from pure competitive differences. Leaders are able to identify sources of best practice and focus improvement on the appropriate individuals. ADVANCED CUSTOMER ANALYTICS Sophisticated customer intelligence requires advanced customer analytics. From regression-based driver analysis to cluster and factor analysis, analytics can help identify the key insights necessary to take strategic action. A significant portion of customer feedback exists in open-form text. Topic analysis tools allow organizations to connect related issues to better understand root causes, while sentiment analysis tools allow for an additional dimension of understanding from verbatim responses. Success depends on the ability of leaders to translate and display these results in ways that help front-line teams take tactical action. Statistical analysis plays a similar role with quantified data, allowing organizations to identify drivers of satisfaction through regression analysis. Organizations can explore relationships, test statistical significance, and interpret results. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION Regular cross-functional collaboration is a hallmark of superior CX organizations. This alignment is a product of integrated systems, common processes, and a commitment to an open culture. Data is readily available and shared across teams to encourage joint participation in program and research efforts. Enhanced data sharing results in a more nuanced view of the customer and customer interactions. Teams are able to address common challenges, better identify research topics, and more readily collaborate on improvement opportunities. DEDICATION TO CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT A culture of continuous, cross-functional improvement ensures strategic research leads to action. Improvement mandates must be embedded in incentives and supported by leadership, creating an environment that encourages innovation. Regular benchmarking often provides the context and incentive organizations need to direct investments for customer experience improvement. Mature organizations also recognize the need to see beyond benchmarks to the financial targets and business objectives that provide the ultimate goal of research activities.
• #12: Connected, engaged employees are critical to delivering customer experience. Organizations need to routinely capture employee feedback to understand the barriers to greater employee engagement and performance. This information must be visible to each stakeholder and the org in general, so that leadership can be held accountable and take action in ways that empower employees to deliver great customer experience. Qualtrics provides the only experience platform that allows for both customer and employee measurement, analysis, and action.
• #13: Continuous innovation is a competency that is easier said than practiced. It pertains to the organizations focus on data quality and research methodology rigor. CX programs must constantly adjust to the needs of the business, focusing on the topics and visualization that enable them to stay a step ahead of the market. Organizations must support a culture of research testing and iteration, where the goal is continuous improvement. Programs that innovate enable the broader company to innovate. Qualtrics provides the only truly flexible, end-to-end platform for customer experience management. With the ability to easily design, test, and launch sophisticated research, modify dashboards, and expand to new channels, Qualtrics allows you to scale and evolve with the needs of your business. DYNAMIC SAMPLING Mature CX organizations are thought leaders; they are committed to data quality and research methodology rigor. Distribution methods, samples, and methodologies are constantly tested with an eye toward optimizing data quality. Adding new channels and making changes to methodology is simple and intuitive. Collection and measurement programs progress, learn, and adjust without required vendor involvement. DYNAMIC REPORTING As leadership and business priorities change, reporting and dashboards must be able to respond. Users must be able to adjust reporting easily and ensure the appropriate views are never offline. Viewing and interacting with reports should be intuitive, flexible, and able to drill-down to the insights that matter. SCALABILITY Mature CX programs scale easily and quickly to capture new products, expand to new geographies, and incorporate new teams. The intuitive nature of the tools and dashboards encourages adoption and makes implementation natural. CULTURE OF INNOVATION Leading CX organizations are built on a foundation of testing, innovation, and research expertise. They create a culture that values learning, iteration, and a commitment to continuous improvement. These organizations constantly seek to improve how they use customer insights and analytics, not just for their own sake but to improve business and financial performance. This drive influences how they invest in customer experience management and the capabilities they seek to build. From cross-vertical analytics to advanced data integrations, the program is never ‘complete’. Likewise, customer experience is never perfected, it is simply enhanced one step at a time.
• #14: I’ll give you one more example: I mentioned JetBlue has increased their NPS by 12 points since switching to Qualtrics. In calculating the ROI of their program, they’ve attributed nearly $100 million in increased revenue to delivering a better customer experience.   JetBlue wanted to take ownership of their program. They wanted to A/B test new touch points, new questions, new surveys, and new ways to reach their passengers. They needed control to move fast. 
• #15: Here we have a snapshot of JetBlue’s key customer experience results.
• #16: Taking it step further, JetBlue wanted to connect their data. They think about four pillars in their VoC program: Customer satisfaction, net promoter score, market research and they also pull in their operational data. Top right: In a separate airport, they noticed negative comments and a lower NPS at gate A18. They dug in and found the terminal speaker was broken and passengers couldn’t hear what the gate agent was saying. With Qualtrics, they sent an automated alert to the airport maintenance crew and it was fixed the same day. Scores went back up. For them, having the ability to dig into customer comments or NPS trends means they can get into the details and make a difference. Bottom Right: JetBlue has the slogan, “Most legroom in coach.” They were dedicated to this  this slogan, but they also knew reducing legroom could help them increase profitability. So they used Qualtrics to measure the experience as it relates to legroom. As a result, they were able to slightly reduce legroom without impacting the in-flight experience. By making the slight changes to legroom, JetBlue will be able to fit an extra 12-15 seats on each aircraft, which will increase revenues in excess of $300 million per year. By bringing together the market research team and their customer experience team, they worked together to create a huge win for the organization. Bottom Left: They took it step further and combined flight frequency and pricing studies and found that 82% of their passengers don’t really care about free bags. They would rather have a cheaper plane ticket. Now they’re now rolling out different rate structures resulting in $100M each year. Since their most frequent flyers do care about bags, they offer different pricing options to their most valuable passengers. Top left: Before Qualtrics, JetBlue had no link between transactional and relational data. Reporting was limited and they struggled with root cause analysis and goal setting. Using Qualtrics, they combined their relational data (brand purchase drivers) with transactional data (experience and satisfaction) in a centralized hub where they could pinpoint their biggest impact areas. They now bring in employee engagement and other touchpoints to tell a holistic story and reduce friction across the customer journey.
• #18: A well designed CX Management system will deliver business outcomes. Powerful technology combined with industry expertise and capability – you’ll be working with