Two Questions….Lots of Insights: Turn Customer Experience Observations into Valuable Insight

Customer experience researchers are constantly looking for ways to make their observations relevant, to turn observations into insight. Observing a behavior or service attribute is one thing, linking observations to insight that will maximize return on customer experience investments is another. One way to link customer experience observations to insights that will drive ROI is to explore the influence of customer experience attributes to key business outcomes such as loyalty and wallet share.

The first step is to gather impressions of a broad array of customer experience attributes, such as: accuracy, cycle time, willingness to help, etc. Make this list as long as you reasonably can without making the survey instrument too long.

For additional thoughts on survey length and research design, see the following blog posts:

Click Here: Maximizing Response Rates: Get Respondents to Complete the Survey

Click Here: Keys to Customer Experience Research Success – Start with the Objectives

The next step is to explore the relationship of these service attributes to loyalty and share of wallet.

Two Questions – Lots of Insight

In our experience, two questions: a “would recommend” and primary provider question, yield valuable insight into the relative importance of specific service attributes. Together, these two questions form the foundation of a two-dimensional analytical framework to determine the relative importance of specific service attributes in driving loyalty and wallet share.

Loyalty Question

Research has determined the business attribute with the highest correlation to profitability is customer loyalty. Customer loyalty lowers sales and acquisition costs per customer by amortizing these costs across a longer lifetime – leading to some extraordinary financial results.

Measuring customer loyalty in the context of a survey is difficult. Surveys best measure attitudes and perceptions. Loyalty is a behavior not an attitude. Survey researchers therefore need to find a proxy measurement to determine customer loyalty. A researcher might measure customer tenure under the assumption that length of relationship predicts loyalty. However, customer tenure is a poor proxy. A customer with a long tenure may leave, or a new customer may be very satisfied and highly loyal.

Likelihood of referral captures a measurement of the customer’s likelihood to refer a brand to a friend, relative or colleague. It stands to reason, if one is going to refer others to a brand, they will remain loyal as well, because customers who are promoters of a brand are putting their reputational risk on the line. This willingness to put their reputational risk on the line is founded on a feeling of loyalty and trust.

Any likelihood of referral question can be used, depending on the specifics of your objectives. Kinesis has had success with both a “yes/no” question, “Would you refer us to a friend, relative or colleague?” and the Net Promoter methodology. The Net Promoter methodology asks for a rating of the likelihood of referral to a friend, relative or colleague on an 11-point (0-10) scale. Customers with a likelihood of 0-6 are labeled “detractors,” those with ratings of 7 and 8 and identified as “passive referrers,” while those who assign a rating of 9 and 10 are labeled “promoters.”

In our experience asking the “yes/no” question: “Would you refer us to a friend, relative or colleague?” produces starker differences in this two-dimensional analysis making it easier to identify which service attributes have a stronger relationship to both loyalty and engagement.

Engagement Question

Similar to loyalty, customer engagement or wallet share can lead to some extraordinary financial results. Wallet share is the percentage of what a customer spends with a given brand over a specific period of time.

Also similar to loyalty, measuring engagement or wallet share in a survey is difficult. There are several ways to measure engagement: one methodology is to use some formula such as the Wallet Allocation Rule which uses customer responses to rank brands in the same product category and employs this rank to estimate wallet share, or to use a simple yes/no primary provider question.

Methodology

Using these loyalty and engagement measures together, we can now cross tabulate the array of service attribute ratings by these two measures. This cross tabulation groups the responses into four segments: 1) Engaged & Loyal, 2) Disengaged yet Loyal, 3) Engaged yet Disloyal, 4) Disengaged & Disloyal. We can now make comparisons of the responses by these four segments to gain insight into how each of these four segments experience their relationship with the brand.

These four segments represent: the ideal, opportunity, recovery and attrition.

Ideal – Engaged Promoters: This is the ideal customer segment. These customers rely on the brand for the majority of their in category purchases and represent lower attrition risk. In short, they are perfectly positioned to provide the financial benefits of customer loyalty. Comparing attribute ratings for customers in this segment to the others will identify both areas of strength, but at the same time, identify attributes which are less important in terms of driving this ideal state, informing future decisions on investment in these attributes.

Opportunity – Disengaged Promoter: This customer segment represents an opportunity. These customers like the brand and are willing to put their reputation at risk for it. However, there is an opportunity for cross-sell to improve share of wallet. Comparing attribute ratings of the opportunity segment to the ideal will identify service attributes with the highest potential for ROI in terms of driving wallet share.

Recovery – Engaged Detractor: This segment represents significant risk. The combination of above average share of wallet, and low commitment to put their reputational risk on the line is flat out dangerous as it puts profitable share of wallet at risk. Comparing attribute ratings of customers in the recovery segment to both the ideal and the opportunity segments will identify the service attributes with the highest potential for ROI in terms of improving loyalty.

Attrition – Disengaged Detractor: This segment represents the greatest risk of attrition. With no willingness to put reputational risk on the line, and little commitment to placing share of wallet with the brand, retention strategies may be too late for them. Additionally, they most likely are unprofitable. Comparing the service attributes of customers in this segment to the others will identify elements of the customer experience which drive attrition and may warrant increased investment, as well as, elements that do not appear to matter very much in terms driving runoff, and may not warrant investment.

By making comparisons across each of these segments, researchers give managers a basis to make informed decisions about which service attributes have the strongest relationship to loyalty and engagement. Thus identifying which behaviors have the highest potential for ROI in terms of driving customer loyalty and engagement. This two-dimensional analysis is one way to turn customer experience observations into insight.