A practical guide to turning customer experience insights into business growth

It happens everywhere, from restaurants to retail stores: unexplained declines in sales or business performance—even though your team seems to be doing everything right. Yet, something, somehow, is falling short.

This disconnect between what we think we’re offering and what customers actually experience is the central challenge of customer experience (CX) in today’s market. Customer insights can be perplexing, but they’re also a powerful tool to help businesses grow.

Just as a chef needs to understand more than ingredients to prepare a memorable meal, business leaders need to grasp not only the data, but how it translates into real, tangible improvements that make a difference in the experience of customers and employees.

It’s easy to think of a business as purely transactional. After all, whether it’s a meal, an oil change, or a basket of groceries, it’s a purchase. But these are also interactions between customers and your brand, and the factors that influence customers’ opinions are as human as the people involved. In this article, we share practical strategies for turning customer feedback and CX data into a recipe for business growth—no matter where you are in your CX journey.

The power of actionable insights

In today’s data-rich, tech-assisted environment, the real challenge isn’t collecting information. It’s extracting meaningful insights from the data, and translating those insights into actions that make a difference. Here’s how successful CX practitioners put the data to work:

Combine quantitative and qualitative data

Numbers can tell you what’s happening. Customer feedback helps you understand why.

By blending these types of data, you get a more complete picture of the customer experience. For example, on the data side, you might see a drop in your net promoter score (NPS), a customer loyalty measure. But to learn why, it may take an analysis of customer feedback to reveal the reason for the drop.

Sometimes, those reasons can be unexpected—and surprisingly simple to address. Seemingly mundane details can make the difference between “meh” and memorable.

Measure what matters most

In today's data-rich environment, it’s crucial—but not always easy—to identify what’s most important to measure and monitor. While there are many CX metrics, focus on the measures that most directly impact your business goals. Here are a few useful common metrics:

Overall satisfaction (OSAT): A basic measure of how satisfied customers are

Likelihood to recommend (LTR): Gauges word-of-mouth and customer referral potential

Customer effort score (CES): Measures how easy (or hard) it is for customers to interact with your business

Leverage the power of artificial intelligence

Modern tools can process vast amounts of feedback, helping you identify trends and sentiments that might be missed by human analysis alone. This is especially useful for businesses with high transaction volumes or multiple locations.

Artificial intelligence excels at extracting deeper insights from customer comments and conversations. By analyzing text from surveys, social media, chat logs, support tickets, and other sources, AI can detect subtle emotional undertones, recurring pain points, and emerging issues before they become widespread problems. The addition of AI capabilities goes beyond simple keyword matching to understand context and nuance—flagging not just what customers are saying, but how they feel about their experiences.

Turning insights into action

Collecting the right data is just the first step. The real value comes from translating the insights into operational changes. Here’s a step-by-step approach:

1. Identify pain points

Use your data to pinpoint the specific issues that affect the customer experience. Prioritize them based on frequency, severity, and potential impact on your business.

2. Create action plans

Identify strategies that directly address the pain points you’ve uncovered. These could include process improvements, staff training initiatives, or technology implementations.

3. Implement change

Roll out your improvements, starting with quick-win tactics that can show immediate impact. This helps build momentum and buy-in for larger, long-term changes. Start with just one or two changes at a time, so it’s easier to pinpoint what makes the greatest impact.

4. Monitor, measure, and adjust

Don’t stop collecting the data and feedback. Improvements are continuous, so keep gathering the data to measure the success of your changes—and to identify other opportunities for further improvement

Industry-specific CX improvement strategies

Different sectors face a range of unique challenges that impact the customer experience. Here are some targeted tactical approaches that often rise to the surface for immediate improvement:

Quick-service restaurants (QSRs) often need to implement changes that help improve speed of service without sacrificing quality. Ensuring order accuracy, especially for digital orders, is fundamental to customer satisfaction. And as customers increasingly interact across multiple channels with QSRs, a seamless omnichannel experience is a basic customer expectation. Mobile apps need to accurately reflect real-time menu availability, drive-thru operations need to sync with kitchen capacity, and loyalty programs need to recognize customers whether they're ordering through your app, at the counter, or via a third-party delivery service.

Grocery and retail stores are also finding they need to more seamlessly blend digital and in-store experiences—but perhaps one of the highest-impact areas in retail is the checkout. Streamlining self-checkouts while maintaining a human touch is, for many retailers, the challenge of the day. Using data to personalize offers and interactions is another way to stand out against the competition.

In consumer services—like the automotive and fitness industries, for example—interactions between employees and customers are at the heart of staying competitive. Investing in employee training and implementing technologies that enhance human interactions can make a big difference in the customer experience.

Employee experience (EX) and it's critical connection with CX

One often overlooked aspect of CX is its deep connection to employee experience. Happy, engaged employees naturally provide better customer service and more pleasant, memorable interactions. Keeping a pulse on EX is one way managers and leaders can be proactive about CX.

By regularly collecting and acting on employee feedback, providing tools and training to help employees succeed in their roles, and recognizing those who deliver exceptional customer experiences, you can build a customer-centric culture—and a positive cycle where EX improvements naturally lead to better customer experiences. The EX-CX connection isn’t just crucial for customer satisfaction. Great EX can also reduce staff turnover, increase operational efficiency, and ultimately, strengthen business performance.

Navigating change and future-proofing your CX strategy

The dynamics of fast-changing business environments make a robust CX strategy more important than ever. Whether facing economic fluctuations or adapting to technological advancements, your CX insights can be key to staying competitive.

During economic downturns, CX data can help you identify and focus on your most valuable customers, optimize operations for cost savings and efficiency, and adapt to changing customer needs.

On the flip side, as customers and technologies become increasingly sophisticated, the future of CX brings real-time insights, precision-targeted personalization, and predictive analytics to stay ahead of expectations and deliver experiences that keep customers coming back.

Remember, transforming CX insights into business growth is an ongoing process. Regularly revisit your strategies and be prepared to adapt and respond quickly. As you continuously refine your approach, your CX data can become a powerful engine for business growth.

Take the first step toward leveling up your CX strategy by downloading our guide, Putting customer experience insights to work. It’s a deeper look at how to transform customer feedback and CX data into tangible, measurable business results. Whether you’re just starting your customer experience journey or need to do more to bridge the gap between your CX data and the most effective actions to take, this guide is your place to start.

Download the guide now