At Hill City Global, we love customer experience (CX) and have experience executing CX programs at some of the world’s premier brands. In this 3-part series, we will lean on our expertise to tackle a few of the challenges you may face in developing or expanding your CX program. Our focus will be on the execution of your CX strategy. While CX is easy to articulate in a strategic discussion, its implementation can be difficult. We will cover the following topics: Managing unsupportive line-of-business leaders, making a case for your CX budget, and defining and measuring your CX program.

Defining and measuring customer experience (CX) related key performance indicators (KPIs) can be difficult. There are so many data points to choose from, how do you determine what gives you meaningful information about your customers outside of the core operational and transactional data you are already capturing? Can anything replace (or complement) just having a feel for your customer and talking to a few of them? These questions and debates will never end. We aren’t going to try and solve them here. Many great resources delve into the details of this topic. What we want to do for you here are layout three things to consider going into measuring your program.

Determine what metrics falls under the CX umbrella

The truth is, just about all metrics in your organization could be called “CX” metrics. So how do you determine what gives you a view of the customer? It is probably a mix of sentiment and transactional data at various signaling posts along the customer’s journey. But spend some time thinking through what metrics genuinely tell the story of your customer. You may already be capturing some of this data today. But don’t make the mistake of putting everything under CX. Some information is better left in their legacy buckets. But use them to help inform your CX data.

Determining what is moving the needle

You have captured data and noticed a change. Now you want to determine what changed it. Determining causality can be difficult. A researcher can run a statistical model to give you a good indication of the cause, but it won’t end the debate on what indeed was the reason for the change. Pair your data insights with a robust set of qualitative information and good old fashion experience to decide on causality. Then test it out. Again, this is where your research team can help.

How to use the data

Do you want to use the data to compensate employees? How about adding it to the executive scorecard that goes to the C-suite and to the board? Maybe you use it to determine whether a project was successful? The decisions made to use the CX data you capture has significant ramifications on the company culture. Think through “how” and “why” in some detail before rushing to use the data now that you have it.

Is your head spinning with uncertainty and confusion? That’s a good thing. Wrestling with these questions now will help you implement your program down the road.

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About Hill City Global:  Our mission is to see our client’s vision come to life through the implementation of their strategic initiatives by working alongside them as a trusted partner. We do this by providing project implementation and related consulting services through our easy to work with team that knows how to communicate and fits your culture. We are proud to call Sofia, Bulgaria home. Learn more at www.hillcityglobal.com. 

Company Leadership: Ryan Fischer, CEO and Founder 

Board of Advisors: Chris Daum, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors at FMI Corporation; Joseph Swarengin, Vice President and US CFO of Krispy Kreme; Adrian Donato, Ed.D, University of Southern California (USC) Lecturer and Founder of InterEd Strategic.