Are You Measuring Customer Experience?

One of my LinkedIn group members recently got me thinking about a very interesting topic - the difference between measuring customer satisfaction and customer experience. Customer satisfaction is commonly measured on a per incident basis, with a survey being sent after an incident has closed. Measuring it this way allows you to collect the satisfaction levels and feedback from a customer based on the experience they had at the time with your support center. However, just measuring customer satisfaction isn't always enough.

Take this for example. Example Company A uses the HDI Customer Satisfaction Index Service to measure customer satisfaction in five areas. These areas are: Courtesy, Knowledge, Timeliness, Quality, and Overall. These five categories are heavily influenced by the analyst or technician who handled the incident through a certain channel. While the last category can also be heavily influenced by the analyst or technician, a question of this nature can frequently be influenced by other factors.

Example Company A maintains an overall customer satisfaction rating of 96% over 90 days. This percentage is determined by averaging the five categories they are measuring customer satisfaction for. Example Company A also collects additional feedback from their customers on the surveys they send, which allows them to look for other issues or challenges they may need to address.

Example Company B is similar, in that they use the HDI CSI Service, measure the same five categories, and also collect additional feedback from their customers. However, they have added one additional question to their survey, which states, "The experience I had with your company will contribute to my decision to become a return customer." While they also have high overall customer satisfaction ratings, the ratings from this question turn out to be 86%. What happened here?

Approaching the measurement of customer satisfaction from the customer’s perspective is useful in determining the gaps. How long were they on hold? How many times were they transferred or escalated to a different support level? Did they attempt to contact support through more than one channel and speak to more than one person? These are the types of questions that should arise from collecting this data.

Once you have the data, you can start turning it into actionable data to effect change. A customer’s perception of your company is everything. Managing that perception is quite a task if you are not measuring your customer’s experience, or worse, not measuring customer satisfaction at all.

Are you measuring customer experience?