Academics, service practitioners, consulting companies, corporate strategy teams, folks with "customer" in their title, and yes, even enthusiastic individual contributors (through blogs like this one), have written volumes about how, when, and what to measure about their most precious asset - the customer. NPS (Net Promoter Score) once associated with the National Parks Service, now rolls of most folk's tongues in the context of their customer experience programs. "Hey John, did you hear that the NPS for the GenX Product within the Eastern Region improved by 0.318... I bet your due for a big year-end bonus".
Please don't get me wrong there are some very good insights and dialogue in this area. In fact one of my favorite thought leaders in this area, Bruce Temkin, has a very comprehensive blog of his own, Customer Experience Matters. As expected, he comments on the NPS science, along with other customer-centric topics, and is quite comprehensive, especially in the consumer products domain. But what strikes me in all of this discourse is the relatively little attention given to the rest of the story, that is, the critical intersection of customer satisfaction with operational performance, and strategic account significance... perhaps measured by revenue growth and total spend. Being able to quickly analyze your business and customers within the context of a three-dimensional Customer Experience Map (see below example) by any relevant dimension (segments, product-lines, regions, business units) enables alignment of execution with strategy, targeted resource prioritization, and the identification of meaningful growth opportunities.
Let's pose some simple questions:
- How do you quickly understand the operational performance of your team, services, or products for strategic customers with a demonstrated propensity to spend across your offering portfolio?
- How does actual operational performance compare to customer perception and satisfaction scores?
- How do you effectively perform root cause analysis for poor performing areas?
- What is the real or actual cost-to-serve for each customer or segment?
- Can we provide better insight and communicate more effectively with customers?
- Who are the most profitable customers and segments and are we allocating the appropriate resources at these accounts?
- Is our NPS distribution across the customer base "okay", what should the targets be, and what constitutes a sustainable NPS improvement program?
Relevant and I imagine top-of-mind questions, for any business leader. I would not expect much argument on this point. The real challenge is how effectively and quickly can you reply to these issues and chart the right course? Does measuring NPS or any other customer perception / satisfaction score in isolation get you there? Of course not... you need a 360 degree view of the customer and a prescriptive customer execution journey to nourish and leverage your most important asset.
Based on years of working in customer facing roles at General Electric, including leading a global support business and driving the Six Sigma Customer Dashboard initiative, I found there are five principle tenets required in any successful customer initiative:
- Get The Metrics Right --- Take the time to understand and implement meaningful customer defined metrics and processes... you need to ask!
- Data Breadth & Reporting --- Provide interactive, intuitive, and accessible measurement, analysis, and reporting solutions that considers all cross functional data and sources
- Customer Experience Mapping --- Deploy a dynamic Customer Experience Mapping (CEM) rigor that integrates customer, operational, and financial information for a 360 degree customer view
- Enterprise Accountability --- Instill a culture of customer accountability across the enterprise... it is not the sole responsibility of the services team
And my personal favorite
- Action & Response Plans --- Don't ask for your customer's input or relentlessly measure your teams, processes, and operations unless you have the bandwidth and focus to implement and communicate fixes with achievable timelines.
"You can't create a reputation on what you are going to do"... Henry Ford
I will expound on each of these foundational bedrocks in upcoming blog posts here. Stay tuned, and until then, keep those assets smiling!