How Do You Measure the Customer Experience?

Viewpoint: Voice of the Customer

How Do You Measure the Customer Experience?

By TMCnet Special Guest
Elaine Cascio, VP, Vanguard Communications Corp.
  |  February 01, 2011

This article originally appeared in the Feb. 2011 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY Magazine.



As a customer advocate, I’m happy to see so many organizations focused on improving their customers’ experience. But whenever I talk to customer experience professionals, they say they struggle with how to show improvements and how to measure success. Often, they feel overwhelmed and worry that surveys, focus groups and other methods will be costly. Well, here are 10 ways to measure whether you’re delivering a compelling customer experience that won’t break the bank.

Quality monitor your speech self-service calls just as you do agent handled calls. Create scores and action plans. Double back with agents regularly to inform the customer experience across other channels. Examine trouble tickets and e-mails to understand patterns that can be addressed in self-service and other channels. Use simple web tools or more complex social media tools to gather data on complaints and kudos.

Not having success with after call surveys or robo calls? Try texting a survey link to a customer’s phone immediately after a transaction. Keep the survey short and sweet.

Understand why customers may use multiple channels and how improving channel design can enable them to complete their task on a single channel.

Create baseline customer experience maps that you can use to measure success. Continue to map customer experiences across channels for continuous improvement.

Measure how well you meet customer expectations at key moments of truth in the customer lifecycle.

Understand the costs associated with key metrics – the cost of a transaction that isn’t once and done, on each channel and across channels, and how much each customer complaint costs you.

Finally, make sure that all of these roll up to clear measures of success that your CEO understands. Measures should be customer-centric, strategic – and make a difference in how the business operates.

Elaine Cascio is a vice president at consulting firm Vanguard Communications Corp.


TMCnet publishes expert commentary on various telecommunications, IT, call center, CRM and other technology-related topics. Are you an expert in one of these fields, and interested in having your perspective published on a site that gets several million unique visitors each month? Get in touch.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi