Ease of doing business

According to a recent Gartner study, the vast majority of companies surveyed (89%) believe that the customer experience is the new area of focus for 2016. Today’s customers are busy. Organisations that value their time and provide an effortless experience across all customer touchpoints are likely to both satisfy and retain these clients. As a result, ease of doing business is beginning to replace customer loyalty as the true indicator of ‘happy, stable’ customers in the B2B world.

That said, it is important not to tip the balance too far. While quick, painless customer service is essential, in the digital age where everything is automated, it is easy for interactions with customers to become too impersonal in a quest for efficiency.

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In this complex environment, B2B organisations are struggling to define and implement customer service approaches that meet their clients’ evolving needs. Many businesses need to work harder to understand the real experiences that their customers are having on the ground; and gauge how successfully these are living up to expectations. Armed with better insights, companies can rethink their strategies for minimising churn and building lasting customer relationships.

Measuring the customer experience

The best way to find out how a customer feels about your business is by asking. However, you have to ask the right questions in the most relevant way. Otherwise you’ll run the risk of leaving your clients feeling frustrated because they’ve made an effort to provide feedback, but this has not been heard, understood or acted on.

All this considered, what is the most effective way to measure the customer experience?

Metrics around customer loyalty, satisfaction and experience are transforming to keep pace with changing customer behaviours and expectations. Let’s take a look at some of the most common metrics that B2B experts are currently using to benchmark and improve their customer experience strategies:

Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT):

Companies have been conducting customer satisfaction surveys for decades. The more generic a survey is, the easier it is to roll out to a wider audience and to later collate and compare the results. While this method is useful for gathering feedback on how customers are currently feeling about the service they have received, it is not a metric that can be used to forecast customer loyalty. This is because CSAT measures customer satisfaction at a certain point in time; but can’t tell you whether they’ll be attracted by a competitor’s offer next week. If you want to measure loyalty, you need to ask questions that relate to future customer behaviour.

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Net Promoter Score (NPS):

NPS is designed to go beyond asking how satisfied your customers are to measure future loyalty and advocacy. This simple tool asks just one question: “How likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague? (Please rate on a scale from 0 to 10).” Respondents are then divided into categories: Detractors (those who scored 0-6), Passives (7-8) and Promoters (9-10); and the percentage of Detractors are subtracted from the percentage of Promoters to calculate your Net Promoter Score. The beauty of this metric is that it is easy to understand and amenable to standardisation. It allows you to compare scores across departments or to track progress over time. However, it is best viewed as a starting point for further discussion – as you still need to understand why customers feel positive or negative about your company so that you can take steps to improve the customer experience.

Customer Effort Score (CES):

CES has evolved to measure ease of doing business. Also adopting a single question format, CES asks customers how much effort they personally had to put in when approaching the company to handle a request or issue. Again, they answer using a rating scale from 1 (very low effort) to 5 (very high effort). The value of this metric is that it is simple and can be focused on pinpointing areas where customers are finding it very easy to engage with the company; as well as areas where they’re not. This provides actionable insights for improving the customer experience. CES is also a good predictor of future behaviour. Harvard Business Reviewii found that of the customers who scored low on effort, 94% intended and 88% expected to spend more.

NetEasy Score:

This metric is based on both the NPS and the CES with the aim of identifying whether customers are finding it easy or tricky to deal with your business. It asks one question along the lines of: “Overall, how easy was it to do business with us today?” This is answered on a scale of 1 (extremely easy) to 7 (extremely difficult). As with NPS, the percentage of 5-7 scores is subtracted from the percentage of 1-2 scores to produce a single NetEasy Score. Like CES, this is a simple and pragmatic approach to measuring the customer experience. However, these metrics are more focused on specific customer service events and do not evaluate the customer experience as a whole, which includes many other factors that influence customer loyalty.