If you are reading this blog, you have probably been challenged to quantify the value of Customer Experience at some point in your career. Any project requires the due diligence of a Cost-Benefit analysis in today's corporate environment (and rightfully so).
However, it seems to me that operational projects and specifically Customer Experience projects go through another layer of scrutiny. They go through political and cultural barriers of needing "guaranteed" results that marketing seems to be immune to.
Other than quoting other studies and looking at your own customer past behavior data, there are other things you can do as well.
Other studies: There are quite a few out there. I will try to post as many as I can here as I run across them.
Past Customer Behavior Data: This can be very challenging to get to your own data that is retained in data management systems that are harder to penetrate than the political and cultural ones that exist with people. However, this is where the facts and the experience reside. Just make sure you have a control group to stand up to the scrutiny of the eggheads within your company.
I did an analysis where I wanted to promote self-service and how customer behavior would change. Showing two groups of customers with similar, tight credit ratings and how the customer purchasing behavior was different between the two groups based on the channels they chose for service. Those that used on-line, low effort servicing, spent 3 times more than those that did not. Both groups had made purchases on the internet, but the servicing x-factor moved this company up for those that performed self-service.
Best-Worst-Most Likely: One thing that has been very useful for me is to provide a range for people to see and visualize within their own skepticism. If your worst case scenario is still positive, you are in good shape. If it's not, while unfortunate, it does provide your analysis with another degree of credibility that you are just not cooking the books for your own hidden agenda. Working with your biggest critics to define this lower limit also pays huge dividends.
Personal Experience: If you still have your skeptics
Best solution: Use all of them. Triangulating to a solution and then putting a personal experience story on top of it is likely to deliver the fastest approval from the decision makers.
Due Diligence can not be overlooked in today's economy. Make sure you are putting tangible numbers and a documented approach in front of the decision makers as well as a post-implementation measurement plan so the results will speak for themselves. They always do and they are most often, very positive.
Forrester actually published a Bank of America study on the change in customer behavior by length of low effort, online banking. I'm sure B of A spent a lot of time and effort to prove this would happen beforehand.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great article. I was involved in a project for the satellite TV arm of Rupert Murdoch's UK business (Sky TV) and managed to show a 60% improvement in customer satisfaction following my call centre initiative. I know that this would result in reduced churn, but that was never quantified. However, operational efficiency was also improved - about 20% as I recall.
ReplyDeleteThe point I make is this - a "perfect business" model is 100% aligned with what customers want - and they hate one thing, and that is an inefficient business. If you had options in an IVR for the required duration of the call to reach a solution the customer wants, they'd all select the shortest duration.
I have the model that delivers this, but few businesses - for reasons I fail to understand - commit to attaining a very simple goal: delighted staff and delighted customers. It can be done and I proved it.