Measure what matters: Building a customer feedback program that works
Now more than ever, maintaining a tight feedback loop will be key (and the learnings relevant for years to come).
There is no denying the impact a good or bad customer experience can have on your business, especially when it comes to brand perception and loyalty. According to PwC, “one in three consumers (32%) say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience.” And, in the midst of a crisis, the customer experience matters more. In a 2018 piece, Forbes’ Blake Morgan elaborates: “It is the times where the customer is the most stressed that we need to create the least stressful customer experience. Customers come to us during good times and bad. Our job is to made [sic] the bad good and to make the good better.” Today, as we face a global pandemic, insurers must do more with less to deliver the solid experience customers have come to expect.
But how? By asking your consumers for feedback. Now more than ever, maintaining a tight feedback loop will be key (and the learnings relevant for years to come). It is, therefore, important that feedback programs measure the right metrics and provide the right insights. A one-size approach does not fit all, and insurers would do well to reconsider and optimize their existing processes.
However, it can be difficult to decide which route is best for your specific needs and brand objectives — there are many aspects to consider when building a successful program.
Loyalty or satisfaction?
There are two main metrics that most businesses tend to value.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS is used to gauge customer loyalty based on a single question about the customer’s likelihood of recommending a product, company or service to another person. NPS offers the ability to segment customers into detractors, passives and promoters.
Consumer satisfaction score (CSAT): CSAT measures whether products or services meet and exceed customer expectations and are usually multi-question in style.
When considering your main metric, be sure to align with your businesses’ overall way of measuring change and impact.
How will the information be used?
Understanding what you need the feedback for and how it will be applied to the business will help to determine what metrics to measure and insight to gather. This could include process improvements, employee training updates, and product refreshes. No matter what you choose, ensure that the feedback is being put to use and isn’t simply gathered and forgotten.
How flexible do you need to be?
NPS measurement is highly standardized — specific wording and scale must be used. Any deviation in this lessens the survey’s impact and makes the measure less meaningful. CSAT is more flexible and allows you to define your own scale and customize your questions depending on the insight you’re looking to gather.
Big picture or granular insights?
Consider what insight you’re looking to capture. As a brand loyalty measure, NPS tends to capture longer-term sentiment, as shaped by a given experience. However, because of the simplicity of NPS surveys, additional follow-up and consumer research may be required to capture more specific feedback.
Comparatively, CSAT responses tend to reflect the shorter-term customer experience with the specific event, product or service in question and allow businesses to capture input on multiple variables.
Pulse checks — those mid-experience surveys that ask customers how things are going — can help businesses get a feedback snapshot in the middle of the customer experience, which can then be compared to the feedback gathered at the end of the experience. This enables businesses to better determine where there might have been a failure if the score goes down or success if the score goes up. Note: If considering pulse surveys, only send out one. By trying to ask too many questions along the process, customers can get overwhelmed or annoyed.
It is also worth noting that NPS is more sensitive to shifts in the distribution of answers, meaning individual responses can have a large impact on overall score. Conversely, CSAT measure is less variable from one score to the next when averaged out. However, there can be concerns about accuracy based on customers’ different interpretations of satisfaction.
No matter what you choose, timing is important. The closer to the event the survey is sent out, the better the quality of the feedback you are likely to receive.
How much data do you need to feel confident?
Because if its single-question format, NPS surveys tend to have higher response rates, around 30-40% on average across industries. CSAT, which requires more engagement from the customer, has a response rate in the 10-30% range. Further, the customers that are willing to commit the time to a multi-question survey tend to be those that have had a negative experience — they want to complain and have someone hear about it. Take this into consideration.
Are channel and branding important?
Customer feedback surveys can be delivered through text messages (SMS) or web experience, or administered via phone or email. Given the proliferation of smartphones, the former two are your best bet and there are advantages to each.
Surveys distributed through the SMS channel tend to have a higher response rate because it is easier for customers to respond — about 40% for SMS versus 20% for web-based surveys. That said, web-based surveys enable your brand to deliver a richer experience and include multiple questions.
As you work with your CX teams to determine your needs, consider a blended approach that includes both NPS and CSAT, SMS and web-format surveys. For instance, when the service event is completed, follow-up in short order with an SMS NPS-based survey; from there, provide your customers the option to open a more detailed web-based platform with multiple CSAT questions. In this way, you can capture NPS right of the bat, but give customers the option to provide more detailed feedback that can be additionally helpful to you.
Are you willing to go the extra mile?
While survey feedback is often leveraged to make changes to internal processes over time, there are ways to use it to make an immediate impact.
Consider creating a team that is solely responsible for following up with customers who have indicated through their scores or comments that their experience was poor — work to win back theses customers by listening to their concerns, apologizing and trying to make the situation right. Help them feel involved and important. As Warren Buffet once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Mathieu Pirio is a product manager at Agero. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
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