Calculating ROI: A Simple Intuitive Customer Experience ROI Calculator

Calculating ROI on the customer experience typically takes the blind faith approach, where ROI on customer service is considered a given, and the sophisticated approach, where predictive models explain the links between service attributes, customer satisfaction and profitability. Such models can, in fact, be valuable as a means for understanding the associations among different service and profit factors. They can also provide insight into how service attributes interact with each other to influence customer perceptions. A major drawback, however, is that these models tend to have too many moving parts to function as a practical, day-to-day business tool, give the appearance of being far more precise than they actually are, and may be too sophisticated for some audiences.

Sometime managers need a simpler, more intuitive approach to estimating ROI on customer service.

First let me suggest the proposition that every time a company and service provider interact the customer learns something positive or negative and adjusts their behavior, again positive or negative based on what they learn. This is a behavioral approach to managing the customer experience, that by managing customer behaviors in profitable ways, service providers can maximize return on investment in the customer experience.

Using this behavior approach as a model, it possible to construct a simple intuitive ROI estimate of the customer experience.

List customer behaviors with financial implications

The first step in this methodology is to list all customer behaviors that directly drive revenues or costs. Ask yourself, “What specifically, do we want customers to do more or less of?” Don’t include attitudes, such as satisfaction, or feelings such as delight – only include empirically measureable behaviors such as purchase more, purchase more frequently, call for support less often, use more profitable channels, return merchandise less frequently, etc.

Before moving on to the next step, review this list and eliminate any customer behaviors that cannot be influenced through service interactions.

List service attributes that likely influence customer behaviors

Next, work backwards making a second list of specific , measureable service attributes that likely influence desired customer behaviors. This list should only include attributes for which there is a realistic cause and effect relationship between the service attribute and customer behavior. Ask yourself, “What can we (across all service channels) do more of, less of, or do differently to influence customer behaviors?” If it can’t be measured, if it can’t be trained (or programmed) or if it has no likely effect on measureable customer behaviors that affect profit, it should be removed from the list.

Consider how to influence desired customer behaviors (systems, skills, incentives, measurement & rewards)

Now, consider what specific systems, knowledge and skills are required to provide the service that will influence desired customer behaviors. Consider what employee incentives will be most effective in reinforcing the use of those skills and what measurement tools need to be in place to gather the metrics to trigger appropriate rewards.

Link list of customer behaviors to costs and revenues (incremental change)

Finally, link the first list (customer behaviors) to costs and revenues. To do this, calculate the financial impact of an incremental change in each item. For example, what would be the effect on revenue of increasing the average customer purchase by one dollar? What would be the effect on costs if the volume of complaints to call centers were reduced by five percentage points? It quickly becomes clear that even a small change in some customer behaviors can have a substantial financial impact. It also becomes clear which service changes will have the biggest effect.

ROI CALCULATOR: See the attached spreadsheet for an example of a Customer Experience ROI calculator based on this approach.

Thus far you have identified the customer behaviors you want to change, the general influence of each behavior on revenue or cost, and the dollar value of an incremental change in each behavior.
The major element missing from the formula is magnitude. How much change can the company expect to create? Can complaints be reduced by 1%, 5%, 10%? Will average purchase amounts increase by 50 cents? Ten dollars?

Also missing is the interaction among different variables. For example, aggressive up-selling may lead to a 10% increase in the average transaction amount, but it could also lead to a 2% increase in customer turnover, which might counteract the benefit.

The only way to answer these questions is to experiment.

Finally, this method excludes word of mouth customer behavior. In this ad of social media, increasing word of mouth (positive or negative) is an important customer behavior to manage. It’s been excluded from this tool do difficultly empirically measuring its benefits. See the attached post for a description of word of mouth measurement.