This is my second in a series of posts focused on the essential role the CEO plays in both employee and customer experience initiatives.

You already know that when employees consistently deliver great customer experiences, you’ll not only create and retain more loyal customers, odds are you’re going to keep your star employees as well. But how do you engage team members to deliver on your vision and ensure the desired brand experience is lived every day? Through strategic recognition.

The CEO’s role in experience management is to drive consistency, to ensure employees at every level understand their role in delivering the customer experience (whether they’re on the front-line or in a supporting role), and to reinforce the very behaviors that differentiate the organization from its competitors.

A CEO can leverage strategic recognition to:

• align employee attitudes and behaviors with company values
• engage individuals to consistently share, recognize, and repeat best practices that impact business results,
• create learning opportunities through storytelling that helps to replicate high-performing employee behavior and supports the company’s business strategy.

How is this done?

#1. Create a culture of accountability.
Design the customer experience by defining non-negotiable behaviors at specific touchpoints. Make sure employees can perform these behaviors and understand their role in the customer experience. Hold them accountable for delivering the desired experience, and hold managers accountable for making sure best practices are captured and shared.

#2. Recognize and socialize success stories.
Recognize employees for doing their job well, going above and beyond, and especially when they deliver experiences that significantly impact bottom-line results. There are numerous platforms that automate this process (including ours), but technology alone will never replace the power of receiving a phone call, email, hand-written note, or face-to-face thank you from the CEO.

While it’s nearly impossible to do this with all employees, when CEOs give their personal attention to a job well done, employee pride skyrockets. And it’s not all up to you dear CEO, your managers need to consistently recognize their direct reports and encourage peer-to-peer recognition throughout the organization.

#3. Link employee performance to customer experience feedback.
Gaining customer feedback is critical to your business strategy so be sure you’re sharing that feedback with employees on a regular basis. Engaging your workforce to understand both strengths and challenges will help create a stronger, more productive customer-centric culture that’s laser focused on living the brand.

CEO’s that make a conscious effort to integrate these habits and lead by example are better positioned to grow and maintain market share, attract and retain right-fit talent, increase customer loyalty and, that ever-so-magical word, profit.

The CEO.

A CEO-driven initiative is ultimately more effective than one led only by middle-management, because leadership truly has the power to drive culture transformation and ensure brand alignment with the company’s vision and goals.
A CEO can:

• align and engage an organization with the brand,
• set expectations and be an example for all to follow,
• help eliminate silos through greater collaboration,
• create a culture of accountability for delivering consistently positive employee and customer experiences.

I recently sat down with Bob Doyle, CEO (and Brand Integrity client) who really gets it. In the last year, he’s implemented a successful experience management initiative that has “improved both customer and employee retention rates, paying for itself many times over.”

Here’s what he had to say about culture transformation and why communication needs to start at the top:

“In order to be consistent, the message needs to start at the top and it must be delivered with passion. If you rely only on middle-management to deliver the message, you’ll get different interpretations of what the message should be. Of course you want your managers to believe, support, and participate in the delivery, but ask four people to communicate something for you, and you’ll get four different stories. So leadership needs to be personally involved to drive the message and ensure it’s communicated consistently and effectively.”

Creating Customers for Life

In order to create loyal customers, a company needs to deliver a great experience, or rather, they need their employees to deliver a great experience. Employees are your greatest marketing advantage. They distinguish your company in a way that helps customers experience the why and how you’re unique from the competition.

So what’s a CEO to do?

The CEO’s role must be one of brand champion. This role will help ensure that the company’s brand strategy is implemented, instead of becoming just another “thing” that everyone should do. Here are three things leaders can start to do today to ensure greater success:

#1. Be visible.
Employees need to see you (literally) leading the effort, they need to know that you truly believe in its value and its impact. Get out and develop relationships with your employees. This also allows you the valuable opportunity to hear what’s really going on from those that directly interact with your customers.

#2. Give feedback regularly.
Recognize employees often with specific feedback on what they did well. Help them connect to the purpose and how their individual efforts fit in with the big picture. Giving their work greater meaning helps them realize they’re working for a company they can be proud of. The CEO can drive a company culture that affects each of these.

#3. Demonstrate quick wins.
Make it a point to regularly update employees on progress. Show them how their feedback led to actionable improvements in process, employee, and customer experiences. You have to walk the talk and show you’re prepared to make changes that improve the experience. Once your employees realize their input is valued, they’ll open up more and be more motivated to follow your example.

In summary, engage employees to deliver the desired brand experience every day, and you’ll be better positioned to retain them. When those good employees deliver consistently great customer experiences, you’ll create and retain more loyal customers.

In the end, it’s all about people—retaining the right people, and empowering them to help differentiate your company from the competition. The right people keep you in business and grow your profitability.

I have come across a few cases of organizations attempting to measure customer loyalty in transactional (event-based) CEM programs. As you would expect, all of them utilize the “Likelihood to Recommend” question, specifically “How likely is it that you would recommend Company XYZ to a friend or colleague?”

Let’s try to understand what is going on in this case and what the potential risks might be.

Although there is a considerable amount of research devoted to the concept of customer loyalty, this is what it comes down to: Customer loyalty exists when a company can retain their customers long enough to retaliate against competitive offerings before the customer “jumps ship”, improve product/service features, correct errors and resolve outstanding issues. Loyal customers will give you a second (and potentially a third) chance, risking the costs of doing so by trusting that your company will deliver. A “just satisfied” customer won’t.

By definition, loyal customers are more passionate about your organization and its products and services and, as a result, they tend to talk more about it. Spreading the news via word of mouth, to some extent, as a natural extension of your marketing/advertising campaigns.

Research goes on to show that customer loyalty is the result of the sum of a customer’s experiences (the branded experience), formed over the long term of his or her engagement with your organization. In simple words, companies cannot build true customer loyalty if they perform well (or even excite their customers) in a single transaction. They will need to excite their customers over and over again as they engage in repeat business transactions. Over time, a consistent, customer experience will result in higher customer tolerance to occasional errors, and/or falling behind the competition in terms of features, price or both.

Said another way, a sign of a strong brand is customer forgiveness.

Accordingly, when an organization decides to measure the level of loyalty in its client base, it would make sense to obtain feedback from customers who have been engaged in business repeatedly, not just one time. Depending on the nature of your business and industry, this could mean reaching out to customers who have been around for a period of time, long enough at least to allow for multiple business transactions, often 6-12 months or longer. Obtaining feedback from these customers would represent a more trustworthy indicator of customer loyalty.

Upon the completion of the CEM program, you can safely argue that Customer XYZ is loyal because he has engaged in, for instance, seven business interactions over the course of the past twelve months and, as a result of the sum of the his experiences, he gave a “likelihood to recommend” rating of 9/10. You can trust that Customer XYZ will excuse an occasional error in your product or outage in your service so that when a competitor pops up with a more attractive value proposition, he will stick with you for a reasonable amount of time, at least enough to give you the opportunity to respond with an offer of your own.

On the other hand, attempting to measure customer loyalty based on a single business transaction will almost certainly generate very high variation of results, which will ultimately lead to inaccurate and untrustworthy feedback. When asking a customer to rate his or her likelihood to recommend your company based on a single transaction, you tie this answer, and thus your customer loyalty rating, to that transaction. This contradicts the very nature of the customer loyalty concept altogether. Let’s assume the very first transaction went well. Customer feedback will point to a very high likelihood to recommend, which will lead you to perceive the specific customer as loyal. Now, let’s assume the second transaction did not go as expected. Customer feedback will point to low likelihood to recommend, which will lead you to perceive the same customer as not loyal. So, at the end of the day, should you count this customer as loyal or not? High recommend rating variation will ultimately prevent you from being able to trust customer feedback and incorporate it to strategic decisions.

To summarize, customers become loyal over the course of multiple business transactions with your organization, not based on a single interaction. Organizations build customer loyalty over the course of many months, or even years. Asking the recommend question, which has been designed to capture customer loyalty, in transactional programs does not generate trustworthy results because it ties a single transaction to a metric inherently based on multiple transactions.

1.    Reservation
2.    Check in (online or offline)
3.    Gating (waiting to board)
4.    Boarding
5.    In-flight experience
6.    Deplaning
7.    Luggage pick-up

Ideally, the airline  would want to obtain experience measurements regarding all of the above. Doing so will give the airline the opportunity to identify strengths and weaknesses across the board and follow up with customers accordingly. However, obtaining feedback on seven different experience touchpoints will almost certainly require a lengthy assessment. Assuming that each experience touchpoint could include up to five or more satisfaction drivers, the assessment could end up being a grid of approximately 40 questions, if we include overall satisfaction/loyalty questions and a few qualifiers. Assigning an average of 5-7 seconds to answering each question, the airline would end up with a survey that is pushing four minutes to complete. Adding to that the time required to read the survey invitation, follow the links, and leave comments, participants could either drop out of the survey when they realize how long it is or provide inaccurate feedback as a result of “respondent fatigue,” a direct result of survey length. The second case is actually the most severe because it tricks the surveyor into believing that he/she has collected a lot of information, resulting not simply in low “feedback completeness,” but in inaccurate and untrustworthy findings.

One solution to this dilemma involves breaking down the integrated experience touchpoint assessment, which includes all of the experience touchpoints, into seven individual single-experience touchpoint assessments, one for each experience touchpoint. Instituting qualification (or no-send) sampling rules prevents the same customer from participating in more than one assessment. In our case of the airline, Customer A would only be invited to provide feedback on her reservation process, while Customer B would only participate in the assessment related to his check-in experience. These assessments can be about 5-questions-long, guaranteeing completion in under a minute, a much more inviting and participant-friendly proposition than a 4-minute-long assessment. Although the same customer might qualify to participate in all seven assessments, qualification rules prevent this from happening and ensure that customers are not over-surveyed.

The single-touchpoint solution does not come without drawbacks, some of which are indeed significant. The most important one, as you may have already guessed, is low feedback completeness, which is the inability of the assessment to obtain customer experience measurements across the entire customer corridor (all seven touchpoints) from the same individual. Using our example above, the assessment would fail to learn that Customer A faced significant difficulties during her check-in process, the touchpoint covered in assessment that Customer B took, simply because she was invited to provide feedback only about the reservation process. Although there are methods to minimize the impact of this limitation, it is, admittedly,  an important drawback.

To conclude, in designing transactional CEM program assessments, organizations will need to decide between integrated touchpoint and single-touchpoint assessment designs. Ultimately, this choice comes down to data completeness (integrated touchpoint) versus data trustworthiness (single-touchpoint).

The measurement part of the program usually requires large and representative sample sizes in order to confidently generate customer experience insights. Especially in the case of Overall CEM programs (a.k.a. “Relationship” programs) the ability to extrapolate insights to the entire customer base is rightly treated as one of the most important objectives. Besides, leadership teams won’t trust insights that are not “confident,” meaning  that the number of valid complete responses is not sizeable enough to support decisions that will apply to the overall customer population or high-impact sub-segments. However, large-size samples undermine the company’s ability to effectively follow up with the majority of respondents, both satisfied and dissatisfied, and fulfill the second function of the equation that points to resolving customer issues and driving referrals.

Ultimately, the solution to this challenge is based on a single keyword: balance. Vendors and clients need to work together to prioritize the objectives of the program and, at the end of the day, identify the mix of measurement and management that will define the program and determine its ultimate outcome according to the specific needs at hand. Although one cannot determine the golden mean between the two goals, I can confidently say that “all or nothing” won’t work well in this case. Completely taking either component out of the mix will severely limit the scope of the program and risk its bottom line success. For instance, complete focus on measurement could, if designed correctly, generate sufficient strategic insights to improve experiences but, at the same time, its inability to drive immediate action will definitely leave customers wanting more, something that can easily back fire. On the other hand, complete focus on management will almost certainly lead to short-sighted solutions, addressing current customer issues and generating referrals while risking the loss of the big picture, strategic experience improvements needed for long-term success.

In finding the right balance, organizations have two different tools: a) Sampling strategy, and b) Follow-up strategy. Sampling strategy determines how many customers to include in the program and how to select them. Instead of including every single customer, companies have the option to select a representative sub-sample that could generate confident insights without undermining the organizations ability to effectively follow up with respondents and address their needs and/or utilize them to generate referrals. Representation is only one way to define sub-segments. Any type of segmentation attribute such as demographics, psychographics, and retention-based or advocacy-based attributes can be used to define sub-segments. The follow-up strategy, on the other hand, determines the plan according to which the organization will follow up with respondents. This strategy does not require following up with ALL customers. For instance, severe detractors (respondents who provide a rating of 2 or below on a scale ranging from 0 to 10) are considered high-risk and require special attention. According to general industry guidelines, they should be contacted within 48 – 72 hours, depending on the nature of the industry and the severity of the issue at hand. Less dissatisfied customers (respondents who provide a rating of 3-6, on the same scale) still require attention, but the follow-up requirements are relatively more relaxed. Although customers in this segment should be contacted back as well, they have higher tolerance, which means a callback one week later could still suffice. This, again, is based on vertical and the nature of the program.

To conclude, implementing a Customer Experience Management program requires companies to find the balance between obtaining confident measurements and effectively following up with customers. Entirely focusing on either goal while neglecting the other will definitely undermine the outcome of the program. In finding the right balance, organizations need to combine sampling and follow-up strategies to ensure that the sample is large enough to support strategic experience improvements and small enough to enable effective follow-ups to resolve issues and generate referrals.

Allow me to take you on a journey of love. On this journey, you will discover what leads someone to love doing business with a company and what benefits are derived from such a love.

To prepare for this journey, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and consider the one company you absolutely love to do business with. This is a company you love to do business with because their people live the brand every day. When you interact with employees from this company, it is clear that they know what their company is and what the branded experience is all about.

Employees in this company not only know the branded experience but consistently act in conformity with it. This company you are thinking about is “out-behaving” the competition, which leads to incredible customer loyalty. Customers (like you) buy more, and more often, and are less price-sensitive.

Employees in this company also seem quite loyal. Employees recognize their company as a great place to work. They are productive and happy.

This company you are thinking about is managing an experience. You love to do business with it so much that you’ve probably rewarded it with the ultimate compliment—your referral. Perhaps your confidence in the experience you received led you to suggest that others should try this company. Or maybe you tell others about the company because it just feels good to do so. In essence, you’ve become an unpaid member of this company’s marketing department.

After reflecting for a few moments, make a list of all the companies you love to do business with and note why. What is it that they do to deliver that experience to you?

Leaders in these companies understand that knowing the brand and doing the brand lead to a stronger work culture and more profitable customer relationships. That is why these leaders do what it takes to define and manage the experience. Employees in companies you love doing business with recognize that they are on stage, orchestrating an experience. They appreciate that they have the ultimate responsibility and opportunity to deliver an experience that makes customers happy. And in most cases, it makes them happy too.

Here is an example of a company that consistently delivers great customer service and out-behaves the competition, leading to stronger business results.

On a Tuesday morning last month, I arrived at Detroit Metro Airport—stressed and very late. Delta had canceled my flight the night before, and I had been re-booked on a 6 a.m. flight. I was scheduled to speak to an audience of senior executives at 9 a.m. It was 8:15, and my drive to the event was estimated to be 40 minutes. I had speaking engagements in the surrounding area over the next several days, so grabbing a cab wasn’t an option.

There I stood—anxious and panicked—waiting for the Enterprise Rent-A-Car shuttle to pick me up and take me to the rental car facility. I am about to share with you a completely orchestrated experience that employees love to deliver and customers love to receive.

The shuttle pulls up, and out steps Bill.

“Hi, folks. Welcome to Detroit. We are glad you are here. My name is Bill, and I will take you to get your car. Does anyone need help with their bags?”

I took my seat along with several other passengers.

Bill continued with his speech: “We appreciate your renting from Enterprise. I will have you safely to the rental car facility in about 4 minutes. When you get there you will find fresh coffee and snacks waiting for you.”

Four minutes later we pulled up to the facility. I rushed off the shuttle and was first to walk into the facility. There I was greeted by Wendy.

“Hi, I’m Wendy. Welcome to Enterprise. What’s your name? Welcome, Gregg. Step right up to the counter. Elisha is ready to help you get your car.”

Elisha introduced herself, and I shared my dire situation. She was sympathetic, and less than a minute later she was leading me out to my car. She helped me carry my bags and did the walk-around to check for unreported damage while I got situated for the drive.

At this point—because of the friendliness of Bill, Wendy and Elisha—my trust in Enterprise was high enough that I didn’t think twice about not doing the inspection myself. I was confident Elisha would take care of it for me and act in my best interest, which she did.

At the exit, I had to stop to hand over paperwork to the gate attendant, Sandy. We had a quick dialogue about customer service.

“Hi, I am Sandy. How was our customer service?”

“It was great.”

Sandy handed back the paperwork: “Terrific. Thank you for renting from Enterprise. Have a great day.”

I responded, “Sandy, what if I had told you that the customer service was not good?”

“Well, I would have asked you what happened,” she said, “and if it wasn’t something I could have resolved for you, I would have connected you to one of my managers who would make it right.”

When I returned to Enterprise two days later, I had equally positive experiences with the drop-off attendant and shuttle driver. They were friendly, helpful and attentive—clearly demonstrating the brand.

Enterprise employees recognize that they are performing in front of customers. They have been trained to orchestrate an ideal experience at each point of interaction by playing the role of host. In doing so, they realize they are performing an experience—from the shuttle driver to the gate attendant and everyone in between.

This managed experience is created by a system for living the brand, an approach to defining an experience that employees can orchestrate at critical points of interaction—and an experience that will create customer love.

Recently published in the Rochester Business Journal.

If we want to be accurate about how we lead people, and how we manage the experience, we have to admit that we can’t actually “get” anyone to do anything. But we still need our workforce to produce, to deliver, and ultimately to help us obtain and keep customers.

So if we can’t get them to do it, what can we do?

We can provide clear, strong leadership that sets our people (and our business) up for success, both internally—among employees, and externally—among customers.

The Leader’s Role

Here are three critical ways leaders can set their people up to do “it”—that is, to deliver on customer experience promises:

1. DEFINE AND SET EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT “IT” IS

Start off by determining what you want your business to be known for. Define one or two basic beliefs to inspire each employee’s behaviors every day. For example, “We believe every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to offer a friendly, engaging experience that makes us the best place to shop.” If an employee doesn’t believe every customer truly deserves a friendly, engaging experience, that employee will have difficulty providing that experience.

Beliefs are critical because they drive behaviors. But beliefs are invisible. We can’t “see” or “do” a belief, so we can’t measure its effectiveness. Behaviors, on the other hand, are visible—and therefore, measurable. Behaviors drive the experiences that lead to a business result—more or less productivity, loyalty, and/or sales.

Determine specific behaviors that all employees can do consistently to provide the kind of “wow” experiences that not only satisfy customers, but instill the kind of loyalty that leads to referrals (the ultimate compliment).

Document these beliefs and behaviors. Make sure beliefs are simple, easy to understand, remember, and repeat. Make sure behaviors are actionable and visible.

Here’s an example of a basic, non-negotiable behavior every employee can and should do every day.

“Help customers find what they need.” (Good, but not great).

“Approach customers in the store and ask ‘Can I help you find something?’” (Much better! Why? Because it’s specific and visible).

2. COMMUNICATE

After you define and document the behaviors that make up the desired customer experience, COMMUNICATE them to all employees and set clear expectations.

In weekly staff meetings and informal huddles, on break room bulletin boards, and in staff newsletters, focus on one key behavior at a time, such as, “Acknowledge every customer with eye contact, a smile, and a sincere greeting.” Frequently mention “the experience” you want to deliver to customers, and remind employees of the specific behaviors that have been defined as “mission critical” to the company’s success.

Better yet, catch your people doing the right behaviors, and share those successes with the entire workforce. Recognizing people for doing the right things is the best way to educate employees on the company strategy, generate commitment, and stimulate positive actions that will be replicated by others.

3. HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE FOR DOING “IT”

Measure the consistency with which those behaviors are delivered on a day-to-day basis, and link those measurements to key financial results.

Make “the experience” part of every performance review. Have employees complete a non-confidential self-assessment once a year to rate themselves on how consistently they do the non-negotiable behaviors. This can be a great starting point for a conversation between you and your employee. Find out if they’re unclear about expectations – what to do, or how to do it. Identify areas where the employee might be struggling, resources or additional training they may need, and reinforce their crucial role in impacting the company’s financial results.

Good employees will try hard to meet performance objectives if they understand what good performance is. It’s your job as the leader to DEFINE good performance, clearly COMMUNICATE expectations, and courageously HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE for delivering “it.”

With a little forethought and a lot of commitment, travel sellers can make outstanding customer service an integral part of a winning brand.

No big concepts are needed; no fancy formulas – just basic common sense, said Gregg Lederman, author of Achieve Brand Integrity: Ten Truths You Must Know to Enhance Employee Performance and Increase Company Profits.

So whether you’re known for checking in with clients while they’re on vacation or following up with them afterwards, these are your branded behaviors that customers come to expect.

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In my last article, titled “Any monkey can survey; start building relationships,” I described the benefits of a fully operational customer experience management program and its key differences from traditional satisfaction surveys. I cautioned readers not to annoy customers by seeking feedback about their experience if they are not prepared or motivated to act on it. I also shared the fundamental mistake that companies make when they are irresponsible in surveying customers: Bombarding them with an endless list of questions using oversimplified-yet affordable-tools like SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang.

Since then I’ve learned an astonishing fact. According to research by MarketTools Inc., 98 percent of companies collect feedback from their customers, yet only 8 percent follow up with customers to do something about it.

Sending out a survey is easy. Inviting customers to give feedback and then effectively following up to uncover opportunities is much more difficult. I can only assume that is why such a small percentage of companies do it.
  
When I speak with business leaders about the importance of customer follow-up, they get it. They know it is critically important and will lead to terrific opportunities. Yet they still fail to do it the majority of the time. Why, especially considering it will lead to at least one of four opportunities to improve or grow your business? Those opportunities:

Resolve an issue. Learning about challenges or problems from the customer’s perspective and then taking action not only helps you improve operations but also shows that you care, which in turn makes customers happy and more loyal.

Up-sell or cross-sell products and services. Following up with satisfied and extremely satisfied customers provides instant permission and positioning for the “what else” question. For example: “Hi, Mr. Customer. Thank you so much for sharing feedback about your experience with our company. We are pleased you are so happy. We love to do business with you too. Just out of curiosity, what else might we be able to help you with?”
 

Get referrals. Again, you have instant permission and positioning for getting a referral or at least planting the seed that referrals really are the greatest compliment. “Hi, Ms. Super Loyal Customer. Thank you so much for sharing your feedback. … Who else do you know who might benefit from having a great experience with our company?”



Recognize and appreciate employees. Happy customers quite often have a story to tell about an employee who went above and beyond in delivering a great experience. Capture those stories and best practices, and share them. Doing so motivates employees by clearly connecting them to the difference they make for customers and your company.

Again, why is effective follow-up with customers done so infrequently, and what can you do about it? Here are four strategies to ensure your workforce is successfully equipped to execute a customer experience management program that will build stronger relationships with customers, drive sales and engage your workforce to become more customer-centered than you ever imagined possible:

1. Make sure employees have the knowledge about your company’s products and service offerings. A customer follow-up call-whether the customer is extremely satisfied, extremely dissatisfied or somewhere in between-is a unique and hard-to-regenerate opportunity to connect and build upon a relationship. Employees taking these calls should be in a position to answer (or find the answer) to any question related to your business offerings.
  
A dissatisfied customer may ask, “Why did it take so long for your company’s support representatives to answer the phone?” or “Why do your accountants charge so much for preparing personal tax returns?” Inability to address questions of this nature during the call can make even a satisfied customer reconsider his opinion of your company.


2. Empower employees to make things right. In many situations, there is an opportunity for immediate action to improve the customer’s experience. In these instances, customers want to see tangible results-especially considering they spent time and energy to provide feedback.

3. Use technology to automate “triggers” and track customer follow-up. Having the right technology is a must to manage customer follow-up. Employees responsible for following up need to have:

• Trigger alerts, automated messages indicating an opportunity to contact a customer.
 Access to customer scores and comments to help them prepare for the conversation.
• Ability to document information about the call (during and after), including specifics of the conversation and their perspective on the situation.
• 
Ability to record the status of the follow-up call and, once completed, its outcome.

In essence, your trigger and tracking system becomes a case management work flow that tracks in-progress activity and results. For instance, does someone else need to follow up with the customer next? If the case is closed, did the employee prevent the customer from dropping you as a preferred supplier? Did your employee establish new contacts in the account? Did he or she manage to identify a new sales opportunity?

4. Establish accountability by measuring and reporting on outcomes. What gets measured gets done. Determine which measures the employees who are responsible for customer follow-up should be most accountable for. A few metrics to consider include the time interval between feedback and initial follow-up, average time to “close the loop” with customers, and ratio of favorable to unfavorable outcomes.

A customer experience management program can seem overwhelming at first. Employees may initially react with an attitude of “Oh no, not another thing I need to do.” Ask yourself whether following up with customers to resolve issues, build relationships and uncover new opportunities is just another thing to do or the thing you should be doing.

Today we have access to a plethora of technology and tools that allow us to do amazing things with respect to connecting with customers. Don’t use technology to annoy customers with survey requests. Invite them to provide feedback, and follow up with them through a program that is specifically designed to build relationships and increase sales.

~Gregg