Metrics: Output vs. Outcomes
Y’all know I’m a big fan of metrics. Long before I was in CX, I was in Process Engineering (Lean Six Sigma and Operations Research), and long before that I was an analyst. My BS is in Mathematics, and I teach Statistics at the Air Force Academy. So yea, I dig numbers. I write about them a lot.
I was chatting with a colleague the other day and he had an awesome turn-of-phrase regarding metrics that I’d never heard of before. He’s the leader of an international organization and we were talking about strategies and how important it is to ensure that leadership’s highfalutin strategies and visions are made real to team members in their own day-to-day work. This is a standard theme in leadership and management: Sure, we can design strategies and missions and visions for our organizations, but of course it’s the folks working on executable actions every day that are the champions who carry the deliverables across the goal lines.
Naturally, that turns to metrics. But simply having metrics isn’t enough. If you leave it to the visionaries and the leaders (CEOs, Presidents, Boards of Directors) to name the top-level KPIs but don’t boil down what that means that I, as a part of the team, am supposed to do, we’ll never get anywhere. Turning numbers into results requires communicating, and sometimes translation. My friend offered a great way of framing the challenge of driving higher-level metrics into operational, measurable goals.
He said, it’s the difference between Output and Outcomes, and it helps frame out how we all work together to deliver for our Customers. […]
Channel Surfing
I have covered my experience using Twitter to solve a support problem in a previous article. For many CX (and definitely Customer support) professionals, the channel is ‘the thing’. We often talk about switching channels, being multi-channel, being omni-channel. It sometimes seems like an obsession.
A colleague recently posted in one of the online discussion forums to which I belong in all caps (which I’ll spare you here) that “nobody” likes being moved from one channel to another. I suppose among a lot of CXers, it’s an article of faith that you should never, unless absolutely necessary (and, they’ll say, it should never be absolutely necessary) switch a Customer to another channel. Furthermore, some will say that you should be available and excellent in every channel.
I’m not so sure. […]
How do you answer surveys as a CXer yourself? Today’s #CXQOTD
Whoa… scandalous, @jtwatkin!
I'm literal with that (oftentimes ridiculous) top-line question, but then always offer much more constructive insights in the open-text (for those willing to read it!) pic.twitter.com/7MXhxqsZ7w— ✵Nicholas Zeisler (@NicholasZeisler) January 28, 2021
A letter you never sent
Dear Customer:
Thank you for your recent feedback. We always enjoy taking the time to better understand where we fall short of expectations as it offers us the opportunity to do something we love to do: Improve how we serve our Customers. As such, your insights and thoughts are incredibly valuable to us.
Incidentally, although it may seem counter-intuitive, we’re also grateful that you’ve told us explicitly that you’re “never going to buy anything from [our] terrible company again.” While we regret to see you go, by making it abundantly clear (from that statement as well as the other quite colorful things you had to share with us in your letter) that we’ve lost you “forever” as a Customer, you’ve actually saved us resources and energy in attempting to make things right for you in particular with this specific situation. Since, thanks to your telling us so unequivocally, we know there’s “no way on this green Earth or the entire Universe” that you’ll “ever spend another red cent” on our products, our Customer service and support teams can better concentrate their limited resources and time on other priorities—and our remaining Customers—instead.
So again, thank you especially for saving us those resources.
Furthermore, and quite helpfully, the specific problem you brought to our attention highlighted an issue that we discovered is bothering a lot of our (otherwise, still existing) Customers. Being so dedicated to our (again, existing) Customers’ satisfaction, we very quickly went to work and not only fixed that problem in our processes, but made the entire experience even better!
In fact, this improvement we’ve made to our system won’t simply make things better for those Customers we still have. It actually saved us money as we uncovered not only these things that are aggravating from a Customer’s perspective, but also inefficient and wasteful of our own resources, time, and money in and of themselves. It’s a win-win! As a result of these improvements, we’ve been able to pass along these savings to our enduring Customers by way of issuing them a 25% voucher when they return to buy from us again. Come to think of it, since it won’t be necessary to extend this goodwill gesture to you (since you’re no longer a Customer, and according to your decision never again will be no matter what we do), you’ve saved us even more money!
Of course, the irony here is that we also recognize that none of this would have been possible were it not for your—vivid—note to us calling our attention to our initial failing. So, as a token of our appreciation, please find enclosed a $20 gift card for Starbucks. There’s likely a location near your home where you can take it to enjoy a drink or snack. You see, we hold a weekly contest here for our front-line team members to come up with thoughts on improving our Customers’ experiences…this is the usual prize we award to the best idea. We hope you enjoy it because with your efforts you certainly earned […]
Employees are NOT your Customers
Can I start a controversial article being completely uncontroversial? Thanks. Here goes: Good employee engagement is an absolute requirement in order to drive good CX. Okay… now, feel free to refer to that as you read on, because I’m not trying to say that engagement isn’t fundamental; in fact, it’s a bedrock necessity if you’re going to provide a good Customer experience that you first ensure you are providing a good employee experience.
With that throat-clearing out of the way, I was shocked (shocked!) when a nontrivial number of contributors (all CX pros) to a forum in which I recently participated seemed confused about the difference between Customers and employees. […]
Processing your survey results
Recently I fielded a question about NPS survey data: How do you process it? How do you use it? I popped off a quick response, but I’d like to go a little deeper on the topic here.
First of all, it’s not a specific NPS question. It doesn’t matter what sort of survey you send out or (exactly) what sort of question(s) you ask. I’m also limiting this article to a discussion about survey data per se. There are tons of other sources of data that should be part of your broader Voice of the Customer (VoC) program. But this is just about the data that comes from your surveys. From those surveys, at the end of the day, you’ll likely be faced with two different types of data, each with its own purpose: Score data and Amplification data. […]
