I was at a wedding recently, in that lovely environment with all the moving speeches and all the warm fraternity floating in the air. It’s one of the rare occasions where it doesn’t feel awkward to speak to strangers.
The Wedding Conversation: A CX Insight
I was sitting with a mixed group of people at the dinner table and at some point, somebody asked me what I do for a living. My most casual and simplified version of my elevator speech would normally create some interest and provoke some questions. But in that wedding, I was actually bombarded by all of these business owners asking me for quick tips on how to boost their business.
I was trying my best to answer them, explaining the importance of understanding customers’ needs and motivations before coming up with a pragmatic plan to put in place, bring real tangible improvements to delight customers and ensure retention, and therefore, revenue. However, I realised that wasn’t the right environment to talk in those terms, so somehow, I split what I think it was a perfect summary and most understandable explanation:
“Either your business is a success or it’s in trouble, at some point you want to find a way to know exactly why the customers who come back to you do so, and why those customers that don’t come back don’t. The moment you have a complete understanding and you are confident to answer those two questions you are on the run to distinguish yourself from your competitors. You just need to use that golden opportunity to actually come up with a plan of action to become the go-to for those customers.”
Understanding Customer Retention and Acquisition
The penny instantly dropped in all of those business owners’ minds and I understood they clearly got the message. Sometimes it’s not about going through all the technicalities but just offering something that the audience can relate to.
It’s true, the first step in the CX strategy needs to be around the customer. Probably every step in the strategy, but clearly it’s at the beginning where we solely need to concentrate on the customer, completely ignoring the product, the industry, and even the business.
The way to do that, by the way, is not necessarily going straight to build a survey to send out asking why people stay and why people stay. The public had enough surveys, in case you didn’t notice. So you had better survey your data, your staff, and your systems before bothering your customers with your stupid surveys.
Beyond Surveys: Smart Feedback Collection
The way to interrogate the information you already have is:
- Learn from customer complaints: It’s absolutely crucial to have in place an effective process to gain knowledge from the complaints. When you finish the investigation, and the resolution and take whatever actions you have to take, your next step is probably the most important one: you need to build knowledge out of that episode, and combined with others, you need to be able to identify trends, pain points, quick wins and hot ideas for improvement. With all of that, you will be in a position to run a periodic plan to tackle all of those and bring realistic improvements with a clear impact on your customers’ experiences. And all that without bothering them with your insistent invitations to complete your last silly survey!
- Scan feedback: There are plenty of tools nowadays to monitor your emails, your chats and any means of communications you may use, alongside social media comments, public reviews or mentions of your brand in videos or blogs. You can go as big as you wish with this, but you can use technology to gain honest feedback and direct insights, again, without even asking directly. This is called “unsolicited feedback” and it can bring a tone of value.
- Ask your staff: Your teams are normally a hidden gem when it comes to having at least a slight idea of what your customers think of your brand, what they struggle with, what they appreciate, what they need support with, what they feel unfair and a long list of valuable information. Especially your front-line people, who are in permanent contact with your customers, can give you what they hear and see and what your customers’ opinions go about. Let alone the invaluable feedback that your staff can give you from their own perspective too.
Only those three would be a great start for you to measure the temperature and be aware of your customers’ perception of your brand. If still it’s not enough and you feel like there are particular pieces of information that you can’t capture without asking, then go ahead with your survey and complete a holistic approach that gives you a full vision for you to answer those imperative two questions: why customers stay if they stay, and why customers leave if they leave.
Making Informed Business Decisions
With all that information on the table, you will be better prepared to make crucial decisions on what to action, what measures to take and what improvements to implement.
