Category Archives: Customer Metrics

Can you continue to charge customers after they are dead?

Posted on May 16, 2018 by Dr Linden Brown | Leave a comment

Source: Chris Roy Taylor https://twitter.com/chrisroytaylor

Many company leaders don’t know the difference between front-line customer focus and real customer centricity (and some don’t seem to care). This leads to devastating results.

These days many companies collect a large amount of data from customers and use this to analyze to what extent they are customer-centric. This includes customer satisfaction data, customer advocacy metrics like net promoter scores and other customer feedback related to customer interactions with the company.

They fail to realize that these data averages are only a small part of the picture – and not the most important part.

Authentic customer centricity is a culture across all parts of a business that reflects a mindset that believes “what’s best for the customer is best for the business”. It also requires employee behaviors and company processes in every business unit, function, and level endeavor to meet the needs of their customers. Also to provide value for money and deliver a consistently great customer experience – before, during and after all customer interactions.

The current Royal Commission into banking practices in Australia has unearthed some very unsavory practices – charging fees to some customers for services they never received, continuing to charge fees on customer accounts after people have died – and continuing these practices over several years. It is also uncovering the “bad” advice for some clients by some financial planners – something already uncovered in previous investigations. This is clearly a failure of leadership either governed by self-interest or not really have the customers’ interests at heart.

Why is this persisting? It is because many leaders in this industry do not understand the difference between front-line customer focus and real customer centricity!

These same banking organizations have studied their own customer service scores and concluded they are customer-centric. They fail to realize that weaknesses in customer culture can be devastating. Even now at the early stages of this banking investigation, customer and community trust in banks is dramatically reduced and their share prices have dropped.

It is time leaders spend some time understanding this difference and taking action with all their employees to embed a true customer first culture in all parts of their businesses. If they don’t they will inevitably suffer the fate of the banks – more regulation, lost community trust, reduced profitability and customers lost to industry disruptors.

Find out how to do it in The Customer Culture Imperative.

Learn how to implement a methodology that measures and benchmarks your customer-first culture against the most customer-obsessed organizations across the globe.

Learn how to develop a customer culture roadmap and initiatives that will reduce your culture risk and create sustainable long-term customer trust and business performance.

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Posted in Customer Culture Failure, Customer Metrics, Market Culture Inaction

Tagged banks, cba, Customer Culture Failure, nab, royal commission

Why real-time customer feedback is the future for customer centric companies

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Dr Chris L. Brown | Leave a comment

Companies have been measuring customer satisfaction levels for many years and yet many of these same companies have not seen significant improvements or changes. One of the reasons is customer satisfaction research has been a static activity. Satisfaction levels are measured once a year or less frequency. The data is discussed and reviewed but is not integrated or used to drive business decisions. The result is a lack of action. Even worse customers make complaints which companies then try to address weeks after any useful resolution is available.

In fact this cycle of asking customers for feedback and doing little or nothing with it is one reason why most customers don’t respond to surveys. Why should customers spend the time providing feedback when nothing meaningful will be done?

One of the challenges facing companies trying to implement a more real-time approach in the past has been limited resources to apply to the challenge. Real time has required surveys been run more frequently and systems to be available to provide that feedback to the right people at the right time.

Thankfully with the technology available today, a number of companies are providing customer centric organizations with new tools to gather insights and feedback on the go.

A great example comes from the healthcare industry, more specifically hospitals. Patient Experience is something that Hospitals can no longer ignore as a large percentage of their at-risk income under the affordable care act comes from their patient satisfaction levels.

Eric LoMonaco, a great patient centered leader, from the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP) in Monterey recently implemented a real time feedback program using QR codes placed strategically around the hospital.

The challenge they faced was satisfaction was measured by an external body that would provide reporting after the fact. The result was patients left the hospital with problems that were never addressed. Eric saw the opportunity to implement a system that would allow CHOMP to gain real time feedback that could be directed to leaders in the hospital and responded to in real time.

The impact of this system on patient satisfaction levels has been dramatic and immediate. By scanning a QR code or simply sending a text message directly to a leader in the Hospital, Patients are able to provide real-time feedback that leaders can address immediately as issues arise rather than after the fact.

Eric shares the results CHOMP has been achieved so far in a great article he wrote here and a webcast here.

With this type of technology available, the excuses for real-time customer satisfaction improvements are running out.

It is the combination of a customer centric mindset, coupled with technology and processes that will determine the winners in today’s business environment. To learn more about creating the right culture in your business, check out our book, The Customer Culture Imperative.

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Experience, Customer Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, Game Changers, Market Culture in Action, Uncategorized

Tagged CHOMP, Customer Centric Hospitals, Eric LoMonaco, Patient Feedback, qr codes for feedback

3 reasons why customer centricity’s time has come

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Dr Chris L. Brown | Leave a comment

The world of business has rapidly transformed over the past 15 years. From a world where businesses controlled supply, controlled the message and could dictate terms to customers to one where customers have a much louder and more influential voice.

While we have always been advocates of businesses that act in the best interests of their customers, it seems market forces are now compelling all businesses to behave this way.

So why do we believe 2015 is the year for Customer Centricity? 3 reasons.

1. Customer Feedback Systems are going enterprise wide.

Companies have been measuring customer satisfaction levels for many years. Often these surveys have been conducted once a year, presented and then forgotten about. This type of survey methodology is rapidly changing, becoming real time and supported by great technologies to get the right feedback to the right person at the right time. In fact technology is enabling enterprise wide feedback mechanism that were never previously viable.

While this is a great positive trend for companies that realize they must become more customer centric, it is not enough for these to remain only the domain of customer service or marketing.

Being customer centric is a way of doing business that is not only about sales, marketing and customer service. It involves every department understanding their role in creating a great customer experience. Many forward thinking CEOs recognize this fact and are working on transforming their organizations to meet this challenge.

2. Convergence of customer experience and employee experience.

Today there is a recognition that employee experience impacts customer experience. If employees are not given the opportunity and tools to change the way they work, the customer experience will suffer. Being customer centric means understanding that every interaction with customers allows them to form an impression, good, bad or indifferent. It truly requires everyone in an organization to be engaged in delivering great experiences.

The bottom line here is that you cannot create truly engaged customers without truly engaged and passionate employees.

3. Recognition that Customer Centricity is a Leadership Competency.

Being customer centric, requires leadership that is customer centric. Leaders need to be engaged with customers first hand. Leaders need to immerse themselves in the customer’s environment and experience what customer’s experience. I wrote about Telstra’s (A $20billion telecommunications company) Executive team engaging in this practice previously here. We are seeing this become the norm in many other large businesses around the world.

There is also increasingly a realization that leaders of all disciplines need to develop their customer centric thinking and leadership competencies.

We were recently honoured that our Book, the Customer Culture Imperative was nominated as one of the Top 20 and later short listed after a public voting period to the final 5 for the Marketing Book of the Year – 2015. Perhaps some further proof that Customer Centricity’s time has come!

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Experience, Customer Insight, Customer Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, Telstra, Uncategorized, Voice of the Customer

Tagged customer centricity;strategic alignment;customer centric culture; customer centric leadership

The Customer Insight Lab of the Future

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Dr Chris L. Brown | Leave a comment

Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, like other large organizations has a powerful research, analytics and insights hub. Liz Moore, who heads that group in Telstra says

“You need deep seated curiosity to develop insights.”

So she has hired people with those characteristics and developed an operating model that links the data supplier with an “insight manager” and the stakeholder (decision-maker) to solve a particular customer problem and gain real insights into current and future customer needs.

This group provides insights from customer value analysis, churn analysis, market share changes, communication effectiveness of the company and its competitors’ marketing campaigns, financial modeling of key competitors as well as analysis of qualitative customer feedback.

Liz says “In research we have changed from the rear-view mirror to headlights” and with access to a panel of 15,000 consumers whose behavior is tracked, she can put together focus groups within a day of the request. Her group proactively shares analytics and insights on customers and competitors throughout the company using weekly bulletins. It also reacts to requests from decision-makers in the business to research, analyze and develop insights on particular customer and market situations.

Above all this group is action oriented. Liz says “We don’t build anything unless there is a pathway to execution and measurement.”

This really is a great model for the customer insight lab of the future. Rather that seeing this as an isolated research function, forward thinking companies are building a multi-disciplinary team of people focused on using deep customer insight to help move business forward.

Does your organisation know more about customers than your competitors?

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Foresight, Customer Insight, Customer Metrics, Market Culture in Action, Telstra

Tagged telstra;customer insights; future; understanding customers;customer culture

How to be insanely service centric – Lessons from Zappos

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Dr Chris L. Brown | Leave a comment

Zappos is renowned globally as a legend in customer service, partially for the e-retailer’s unique approach to customer interaction management. Zappos invests in the call center not as a cost, but as a marketing opportunity

Recently, Software Advice Analyst Ashley Furness sat down with the company’s Customer Loyalty Operations Manager Derek Carder. He said the company’s whole strategy is to create loyalty through incentivizing ‘wow’ moments and emotional connections. Here are the four KPIs they use to monitor, track and improve performance:

Measure Total Call Time, Not Time Per Call

Instead of valuing quick time to resolution or processing high call volumes, Zappos looks at the percentage of a time an agent spends on the phone. Agents are expected to spend at least 80% of their time in customer-facing communications. This measure – called personal service level – is a way to empower the team to utilize their time how they see best promotes customer loyalty.

Reps who achieve this target get receive rewards, while those who fall below the 80 percent line are coached.

Quantify and Reward Wow Moments

Zappos measures calls against a 100-point scale called the “Happiness Experience Form.” This is based on answers to the following questions:

Did the agent try twice to make a personal emotional connection (PEC)?
Did they keep the rapport going after the customer responded to their attempt?
Did they address unstated needs?
Did they provide a “wow experience?”

Agents are expected to achieve a 50-point average or higher. Again, agents earn incentives for meeting their goals, while under performers are required to take extra training.

Mine for Idle Chats

Zappos monitors “abandonment time,” or periods when an agent has a session open even though the customer already disconnected from the chat. Carder said sometimes agents do this purposely to avoid responding.

This strategy of looking for idle chats zeroes in on the cause of unproductivity. When agents aren’t productive, customers wait longer. And the longer they wait, the more apt they are to abandon the session.

Reward Perfect Attendance and Punctuality

Zappos uses a program called Panda to combat absenteeism. Employees receive a point for every day they miss work or come in late. Staff with zero points in a given period receive a varying number of paid hours off. These hours can be accrued and stacked for an entire paid day off, Carder explains.

The primary take away is that Zappos created metrics that emphasize creating a relationship with the customer rather than rushing them through the call. At the same time, these KPIs still successfully improve performance and make employees feel appreciated and rewarded.

This is what call center metrics look like when they are designed to maximize value for customers, rather than minimize costs for the company…..

Thanks to Ashley Furness for providing great inputs for the content of this post, for more on this story visit her here

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Posted in Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Values, Customer Experience, customer focus, Customer Insight, Customer Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Customer Value, Customer-Centricity, Empathy, Employee Engagement, Freedom, Market Culture in Action, Trust, Uncategorized, Voice of the Customer

Tagged empowerment; call centers; customer service; marketculture; customer culture; zappos;service metrics

7 ways to make a customer culture stick

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Dr Chris L. Brown | 2 comments

Research and experience show there are 4 stages to getting and keeping a customer culture: Initiation, Implementation, Embedding and Reinforcement. In my last two posts I outlined the actions to take at the initiation and implementation stages. In this post I focus on the 7 actions to take during the embedding stage.

The focus of this stage is on institutionalizing the customer culture through supporting systems, on-going training, increased employee empowerment and accountability of all individuals and teams for delivering an improved customer experience.

1. Formalization of customer culture through symbols, rituals and artifacts

This often includes organization structure changes, more open office designs, images of customers taking precedence over images of products, customer invitations to corporate meetings and cross-function teams evaluating new market opportunities.

2. Development of customer focus behaviors at leader and individual levels

Key performance indicators measuring the level of customer focus are formalized for performance reviews and designing personal development programs.

3. Delegation of decisions from the Customer Engagement Council (made up of senior and influential leaders) to all organization members

The power to make decisions on behalf of the company shifts to all employees within an agreed framework. This new empowerment and accountability is sometimes hard to accept by long-standing employees. Some companies have used a “buddy” approach to help less experienced staff gain new skills and confidence.

4. Measurement of customer culture

Culture change is not a “bolt-on”; it is a “built-in” process. Effectively done, it can’t be “unbolted”. Measurement covering the breadth and depth of the organization is necessary to determine to what extent customer culture has been built in.

5. Measurement of customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy against targets

Ongoing measurement is part of customer culture embedding and provides a frequent benchmark of customer engagement performance. It guides how the organization needs to adapt to changing market trends and customer needs.

6. Formal alignment of rewards and recognition with customer metrics

Remuneration systems and promotion is formally tied to customer culture behaviors and customer engagement performance.

7. On-going training program

This is valuable for two groups:

new and recent hires
pockets and groups within the organization found to be lacking a customer mindset and relevant skills

Documented case studies of successes and learnings are often used to demonstrate successful customer engagement experiences.

My next post will outline the actions required to reinforce the customer culture and avoid the complacency and arrogance that frequently occurs with sustained success.

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Posted in Culture Change and Social Media, Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Centric Values, Customer Experience, customer focus, Customer Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, Customer-Centricity, Market Culture in Action, Market Driven, Market Responsiveness Index, MRI, Uncategorized

Tagged culture change; customer culture; made to stick; change management

4 simple practices to build a customer culture in your company

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Dr Chris L. Brown | Leave a comment

This is a great short video interview with Tony Hsieh of Zappos discussing how the concept of culture and customers come together. Also thanks to Robert Reiss, host of The CEO TV Show.

The intersection of customers and corporate culture

The culture of an organization dictates how it will view customers and how it will treat them.

If everyone is expected to understand who customers are and what they value, then people naturally start doing this. Culture is a form of social pressure, it is the way you are expected to behave in a group environment, hence it is a very powerful way for leaders to create an environment of success.

Customer culture specifically looks at how much attention is being placed on bring the customer viewpoint into all decision making. It is a proven way to drive better business results as it ensures the business is aligned with its market.

Here are some great customer culture building practices that you can begin today regardless of the role you play in your company:

1. Put Customers on the Agenda

A great habit that gets everyone thinking is to start every meeting with a customer insight. Share one piece of feedback you’ve collected, one idea you have heard directly from a customer. These insights and stories can come from anywhere in the company. It does not have to be a deep conversation – just a way to get in the habit of brining the customer viewpoint inside before getting on with the rest of the meeting’s agenda.

2. Building Customer Empathy

Have someone share their own recent customer experience. Was it a positive one? What made it positive? Why did it stand out in their mind? How does it affect the way they think about that company and would it influence whether that would continue doing business with them? What does it mean for your company?

This simple exercise is a great way to build customer empathy in the team. By thinking like a customer you can make changes that will drive increases in value.

Steve Jobs and his leadership team conducted a similar exercise and recognized how dissatisfied they all were with their mobile phones. In their experience, phone’s were difficult to navigate, complex and basically not user friendly. This created the drive and inspiration to develop the iPhone.

3. Encourage Leaders to Share Customer Stories

Create a regular opportunity for senior executives to report on what they learn from their own conversations and interactions with customers.

There maybe extra leg work to translate what they heard into a useable insight, but it will be well worth the effort.

4. A Top Successes/Frustrations Customer Conversations Report

Create an ongoing forum for people to share what customers are saying in the form of a communication piece to the whole company. It should be in story form but can include statistics on key customer metrics ie things that are important to customers that your company helps them achieve. For example LinkedIn tracks how many new connections it helped people create on its professional networking site each day.

It should also include the top frustrations customers have when doing business with you. This highlights to everyone the priorities in terms of maintaining and improving customer satisfaction levels.

We have lots of FREE tools, templates and elearning modules to help build your customer culture here

What other practices do you use to drive a great level of focus on customers?

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Posted in Branding, C-Level Quotes on MarketCulture, Competitor Insight, Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Experience, customer focus, Customer Insight, Customer Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Value, Customer-Centricity, leadership, Market Culture in Action, Uncategorized

Tagged customer culture; customer focus; culture and performance; linking culture and customer, marketing, tony hsieh

How Hawaiian Airlines has built a Customer Culture

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Dr Chris L. Brown | 2 comments

Hawaiian Airlines – Customer Focused Culture

Charles Nardello, the SVP of Operations at Hawaiian Airlines, recently wrote about how they were able to drive improvement in the key metrics important to airline customers.

Hawaiian are now routinely ranked first by the US Department of Transportation among all airlines for on-time performance and fewest cancellations as well as garnering top marks for best baggage handling and fewest customer complaints.

How did Hawaiian achieve these outcomes? By creating a customer culture based on 3 strategies:

1) Really understanding the Hawaiian travel customer

2) Benchmarking Hawaiian on customer “moments of truth” regularly

3) Empowering Hawaiian employees to handle unexpected situations

Knowing your Customer

Hawaiian Airlines is infused with a customer focused culture that permeates everything.

“For every decision we make, from the most basic to the complex, the customer always comes first—they are the driver of our decision-making and strategic planning,” – Charles Nardello

A culture that brings the customer perspective to every decision acts very differently than a company where customers are an afterthought or are only considered when reacting to customer problems. At every level of the organization, whether deciding on which cutlery to use in the cabin or which markets to fly to, a deep understanding of the customers they serve and the experience they want to create drives the decision.

Benchmarking and Embracing Complaints

In order to benchmark, Hawaiian Airlines surveys customers every month on their experiences with the airline and factors the results into every employee’s bonus pay.

“Every employee receives a scorecard rating them on how well they’ve performed in interacting directly with the customer or, in the case of senior executives, on decision-making and strategic planning.” – Charles Nardello

It’s an approach that guarantees that everyone at the airline will remain focused on the customer. In particular they are focused on the key moments of truth that drive the most value for their customers. This includes check-in, boarding, the flight itself, baggage retrieval and how customers are treated via each stage of their journey.

The airline reinforces this customer focus via a streaming news ticker that runs on the lower part of computer screens and TVs in break rooms and crew lounges. The ticker show unedited, unfiltered, real-time customer reaction via social media.

Nardello suggests that he is grateful for complaints as it provides the opportunity to do something immediately to improve.

Unfortunately most customer’s don’t complain they just leave and the company wonders what happened. In fact customers are more likely to complain to someone else about the experience than the company directly. This creates even more of challenge for a company to win them back.

If a reaction is negative, the airline addresses it immediately. As Nardello points out, “Our speed in addressing the problem could make the difference between retaining that customer for future flights or losing him or her forever.”

Empowered Employees

No company can prepare for every situation that can trigger customer dissatisfaction, which is why those that excel at customer service train and empower their frontline employees to solve problems on the fly.

“We believe employees perform best when empowered to improvise and bring unmatched service to their customers in a sincere, personal way.”

This strategy has served Hawaiian well as it continues to be ranked among the very best airlines in North America. It was recently ranked 3rd most profitable on a pre-tax margin basis behind two other airlines know for high levels of customer focus – Alaskan Air and Southwest Airlines.

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Posted in C-Level Quotes on MarketCulture, Case Study, Culture Change and Social Media, Customer Centric Culture, Customer Centric Leadership, Customer Culture and Profit Link, Customer Experience, customer focus, Customer Insight, Customer Metrics, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Uncategorized

Tagged customer metrics; customer culture; customer value; customer centric leadership; customer culture

Customer Metrics: Measure what matters most to customers

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Dr Chris L. Brown | 10 comments

As business leaders we tend to pay a lot of attention to the metrics important to the business, that is, revenue, cash flow, profitability, growth and so on… but the real drivers of these business outcomes are customers.

So the obvious question becomes what customer metrics should I be tracking to make sure my business metrics continue to head in the right direction?

Well there are a number of key customer metrics that must be considered for every business:

1. Customer Satisfaction

As a first step it is important to track customer satisfaction, this will provide some inputs as to how well the business is performing on delivering what it promises. But remember customers have already paid for satisfaction, they expect to get what they paid for. So high levels of dissatisfaction are an obvious and immediate cause for concern.

Satisfaction is not enough, even highly satisfied customers can and do switch to alternatives so it is important to also look at Loyalty and Advocacy. That brings me to the next question (Fred Reinhold calls the “Ultimate Question“) How likely are you to recommend us? Loyal customers not only bring you repeat business, they also expand your customer base through positive word-of-mouth.

2.Net Promoter Score

The net promoter score is a simple tool designed to identify 3 types of customers, promoters (advocates with strong positive word of mouth), detractors (negative word of mouth) and those in the middle. The goal is to drive up the number of promoters as a way of driving business growth.

Many of the most customer-focused businesses in the world use NPS, see below a list of the current top 10 Netpromoter scores in the US:

USAA – Banking = 87%
Trader Joe’s = 82%
Wegman’s = 78%
USAA – Homeowners Insurance = 78%
Costco = 77%
USAA – Auto Insurance = 73%
Apple = 72%
Publix = 72%
Amazon.com = 70%
Kohl’s = 70%

Source: Satmatrix

3. Customer Value Analysis

This is a more advanced metric specifically looking at the value a customer places on what you offer. Value consists of an equation that includes CUSTOMER PERCEPTIONS of price, service and product quality. Customer value analysis looks directly at how customers view your business vs. your competition and provides you with valuable information on what you might need to adjust in terms of both product and service quality, as well as price, to increase market share and revenue.

4. Life Time Value of Customers

I talk about this in some more detail in these two posts:

Part 1: Understanding Lifetime Value of Customers

Part 2: Calculating Lifetime Value of Customers – a simple example

Something not covered however was some of the inputs to Customer Lifetime Value which in themselves are useful metrics:

Customer Acquisition metrics include customer awareness levels, the information sources customer use to make purchase decisions, and cost of acquiring a customer.

Churn (%) measures how many customers are leaving, that is, customer attrition. Churn is a commonly used metric related to customer retention. Specifically, this is about knowing how many customers are defecting and why.

Customer Complaints are usually an early warning signal that something is wrong. Most customers will not complain they will just take their business elsewhere. Complaints although often difficult to hear are a gift that can help course correct.

5. Your own Customer Culture

How customer obsessed is your organization? How would you know?

This is the question we received from a CEO of a Global 1000 company a number of years ago. It led us to the development of the Market Responsiveness Index (MRI) to answer that very question.

This is an organization-wide metric design to measure the behavior of employees and the level of attention they pay to customers in their daily work.

It is a one of a kind tool that allows you to benchmark your company versus the best in the world, you can check it out here.

What Criteria should I use when deciding on Customer Metrics?

The metric drives business results
The metric correlates strongly with business results
The metric is something you can influence
The metric can be measured accurately
The metric can be measured consistently
The metric can be measured cost effectively
All the stakeholders agree the metrics meet these criteria

Ultimately you want to choose the right metrics for your specific business, they should be tailored to the unique business drivers and business strategy.

Why implement customer metrics?

Tracking customer metrics is important for many reasons, but the most important reason is cultural. It gets everyone on the same page, aligns people across the different parts of the business, and leads to a customer-focused culture of success. You should celebrate wins when a key customer metric reaches a new and important milestone. Choosing the right metrics and celebrating progress against them are incredibly important to building a strong customer culture that can work together and grow rapidly.

What customer metrics are you using?