Why your CX program lacks impact

You’ve laid the groundwork for your customer experience (CX) program. You’ve deployed the surveys with lucrative incentives. You’ve collected every piece of data imaginable and your team is working hard to make sense of the feedback you receive. But time is passing and you’re not seeing positive results—and definitely not an impressive ROI you can brag about to your C-suite or board.

WHAT GIVES?

There may be several reasons your CX program isn’t having the impact it should, and today we’re going to touch on three of the most common.

Front line is not empowered

Front line associates play a significant role in the overall customer experience. It’s true in restaurants, retail stores, and every B2C industry in between. Yet so many businesses do a poor job of coaching their customer-facing teams in ways that can measurably improve CX.

Questions to Consider

Consider these questions:

• Is your front line privy to the metrics being used to gauge success?
• Are your front-line tools, training, and technology up to snuff?
• Are you regularly cascading CX feedback and results to your front-line employees?
• Do you provide front-line employees with tangible ways they can help?

If the answer to any or all of these questions is no, don’t be surprised if you see dips in motivation and disengagement from the CX program.

What we’re saying here is: these employees should understand the humongous role they play in creating a positive customer experience, and they need persistent guidance to make it real.

Unable to demonstrate competitive advantage

Shedding light on performance—both positive and negative—relative to your competitors isn’t always easy, especially if they are investing heavily in their own CX programs. But to get a clearer picture of where you stand within your specific industry (and then communicate it to your higher ups and other stakeholders), it’s important you find a way to do so.

Use Benchmarking

One potential direction? Use benchmarking to compare your CX program to those of your competitors. Benchmarking allows you to determine what’s most important to your most-likely customers, where your brand is coming up short, and where you should focus your efforts to be better than the competition …

Because anyone who says “winning isn’t everything” probably hasn’t spent a day of their life working in customer experience.

Trouble getting actionable insights

CX programs generate a lot of data, and it can be tough to know which metrics are most meaningful and how to turn that raw information into actionable insights.

Now, don’t get us wrong. Collecting as much customer data as possible is essential. But housing it all in a centralized platform, interpreting it, and figuring out how best to act on it to improve your business outcomes? That’s the REAL challenge. It’s what separates the good programs from the great. The “meh” from the “whoa!”

Need a CX vendor, not just DIY tools

It’s also why partnering with a CX vendor—one focused on providing top-notch services rather than a host of DIY tools—is so critical to your program’s success. SMG’s forward-thinking approach to innovation will help you turn today’s customer feedback into tomorrow’s improvements.

Request a Demo of SMG

Ready for fewer letdowns and better results? Request a demo today.