Customer Experience has made significant progress in using metrics to earn accountability and respect. But the rise of Emotional Engagement demands new ways of thinking about metrics.Currently, measuring customer experience starts with a number. Organisations are all typically working towards a number – be this CSat, NPS or Effort.
But, when it comes to emotion, this approach isn’t going to work. The traditional metrics simply aren’t enough. If you want to understand your customer’s emotions, don’t ask them if they would recommend you, ask them how they feel.
The fundamental challenge for CX professionals is that traditional metrics are just indicators that you’re having engagements, not indicators of the substance or quality of these engagements. And they definitely aren’t indicators of customer suggestions or inputs to your organisation.
Emotion cannot be measured by numbers because the numbers cannot tell or explain everything that sits behind emotion. The numbers cannot reveal the reason behind the score – the emotional driver that led to the customer’s behaviour. The numbers also cannot tell you ways to improve – what could be done better and what you’re already getting right.
One way to understand if you’re effectively engaging with customers is to look at the number of conversations you’re having
Why measure the number of conversations? Because establishing a two way conversation leads to high quality reponses from your customers - essentially when it's emotionally charged. This is what we're driving at when we think and speak on Emotional Engagement. It all comes down to unpicking the verbatim that you receive from your customers. If only 50% of your customers are giving you insight, then this means that 50% of your customers are not engaging with you.
This could be down to the framing of the question. It could be down to how you’re asking for the feedback. It could be down to when you’re asking for the feedback. Regardless, what this is telling you is that 50% of your audience is not engaged. The key take away here is to make it as easy and convenient as possible for the customer to leave feedback and also to identify the right time to begin the conversation.
The success of your Voice of the Customer programme is actually an indicator of how engaged your customers are within your organisation
If you only have a 10% feedback response rate, it’s because 90% don’t feel the emotional drive to leave any feedback – essentially, they are not engaged, so they’re not inclined to give you suggestions.
To increase response rates, you need a VoC programme that engages more of your customers, more often and on an emotional level.
If you picture the emotional connections you have with one other person, as an individual, you’ll realise it’s very complex. Now imagine this scaled by the 1000 people working in your Contact Centre and your 3 million customers. It’s now become thousands of interactions happening every day. The challenge then becomes how can you scale and operationalise this?
This is where the role of verbatim and sentiment come into play. Ask customers to provide a single score and the reasons behind this score, in their own words (the verbatim). This can then be analysed, in real-time and at scale using a Sentiment Engine. Using this approach, you can start to understand what really matters to them, you‘ll improve your feedback response rates and you’ll gain insights into your scores.
Rather than looking for a number to measure Emotional Engagement, measure it in with a more holistic approach. Start by reframing what you ask your customers. Become obsessed with what they want to share, rather than the answers that you want to hear.
As a business, you want to know if you’re on the up; are you improving and creating a strong emotional connection with your customers? If you create a stronger emotional connection with a larger part of your customer base, you will be in a better position than your competitors to deliver a better customer experience and, ultimately, create a loyal and returning customer base.
To dive deeper into the world of emotion check out our most recent eBook 'The Essential Guide to Emotional Engagement: The Secret to Customer Experience Success' which explores the role of emotion in capturing the Voice of the Customer and how to emotionally engage your employees.
