The Right Way to Measure Your Customer Experience

Attempting to measure the customer experience with a single metric such as customer satisfaction or customer advocacy is overly simplistic and risky.Instead, companies should dig deeper and establish a portfolio of measures that can determine how each touch point contributes to the overall experience.

The Total Customer Experience is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

The customer experience is a complex process that can consist of multiple touch points; a process that can be broad, long-running, span multiple channels, and can be influenced by any combination of internal and external factors.

Effectively measuring the total customer experience requires a more acute understanding of its individual parts.

The customer experience process does not begin and end at a store, sales representatives, web site or call center.It extends from the moment the customer becomes aware of your company and is comprised of multiple independent interactions, transactions, and contacts along the way.

Each customer experience is made up of any number of touch points and customer encounters, each of which should be measured independently to determine their contribution to the overall experience.An issue encountered at any one of these points can dramatically influence the overall experience.

For example, the quality of an automobile is an aggregate measurement of the quality of the individual parts combined with the integrity of the overall design and assembly process.If any one part fails to perform properly, the overall perception of quality is diminished.Likewise, even if every part is perfectly manufactured but isn't arranged or assembled in a useable manner - the perception of quality will suffer.Only when quality manufacturing is guided by quality design will the experience truly be maximized.

Although overarching metrics such as customer satisfaction and customer advocacy are quickly becoming standard metrics in today's companies, attempting to measure the customer experience with a single metric can be overly simplistic and risky.Effectively managing the customer experience requires effective measurement and management of a portfolio of metrics that will provide insights into what is - or is not - working.

Identify Your Touch Points

The customer experience is a collection of touch points encountered by the customer that includes the attraction, interaction, and cultivation of customer relationships.

Touch points may include advertisements or promotions, online and in-store shopping experiences, transaction and bill processing, and post-purchase delivery, usage, and support.

The total number of touch points that the customer encounters goes well beyond the point of sale.Establishing an accurate inventory of all of your company's touch points - both intentional and unintentional - can mean the difference between success and failure.

Defining when and where the customer experience begins and ends is perhaps the most difficult task facing any business.Too often, companies define the lifecycle and customer touch points too narrowly, leaving critical elements of the customer experience to chance.

A touch point is defined as any customer interaction or encounter that can influence the customer's perception of your product, service, or brand.A touch point can be intentional (an advertisement) or unintentional (an unsolicited customer referral).In this era of broad customer skepticism, the unintentional touch points often matter the most.Which would you trust more: a company's ad pitch or your best friend's personal referral for a product?Both are touch points, but one carries much more value than the other.

When your business interacts with a customer, it's often easy to overlook what is really going on; you are touching them in many, perhaps subtle, ways.When it comes to customer experience management, the right touch can make all the difference.To do it right, you must first identify all of your potential touch points and then work to measure and optimize each one.

Measure Individual Touch Point Effectiveness

Each customer touch point is typically designed for a specific operational purpose.

An advertising touch point may be designed to build brand awareness or to identify prospects.A point of sale touch point may be designed to execute transactions.A call center touch point is designed to resolve customer issues.Each touch point is unique and contributes to the overall customer experience in different ways.

Effectively measuring each touch point requires a holistic approach to understand the contribution to both operational and customer relationship objectives.For example, the operational side of an advertising touch point may be measured in terms of a conversion rate.The customer relationship side of the same touch point may be intended to influence the customer's perception or awareness of the company's brand.

Measuring the effectiveness of each touch point should balance both operational and customer experience objectives.Operational metrics are typically easily identified, while customer relationship metrics can be elusive.Ideally, timely and recurring customer feedback is collected and compared to operational results to provide a more complete picture.In doing so, companies can obtain a better understanding of how each individual touch point is contributing to the overall experience.

For example, let's say a business establishes a goal to achieve a 5% click-through-rate (CTR) with their pay-per-click campaign.If the actual campaign achieves 100% of that goal, they might consider it a success.However, customer perceptions might not be so rosy if the ad promised a product, promotion, or discount that isn't readily available or is difficult to obtain.As a result of customer confusion and aggravation, the company may achieve only 50% of their revenue goals for the campaign.

Measure the Overall Customer Experience

In order to effectively measure the overall customer experience, companies must accurately measure the contribution of each individual touch point as well as the overall level of customer satisfaction and advocacy.

At times, the results of one touch point may have an unanticipated affect on other aspects of the experience.

Consider how the individual touch points associated with a fictitious product launch might impact the experience at an electronics store:

* Product Innovation: A key manufacturer is developing a leading-edge product that will be innovative in the marketplace.

The media learns of these developments and publishes reports that an amazing new product is coming soon.Consumer excitement and anticipation is driven to extremely high levels, although actual ship dates remain unknown.(Score: 10/10)
* Electronics Store: Employees at the store and call center are inundated with inquiries about the pending new product but are unable to provide any additional information regarding availability nor can they accept pre-orders.
(Score: 3/10)
* Marketing: The product launch date is set and marketing begins to actively promote the new product and its innovative features.
Consumer anticipation is again driven to new highs as the launch date approaches.(Score: 10/10)
* Product Purchase: On launch day, consumers flood the store and web site to get the new product.
Those customers that are fortunate enough to purchase one are extremely satisfied.(Score: 10/10)
* Out of Stock: Initial euphoria quickly turns sour as the store runs out of stock and thousands of customers are turned away without one of the highly coveted and heavily promoted products.
Customers are told to check back again in a few weeks.(Score: 1/10)

For a handful of customers who were able to purchase the product, they are extremely satisfied with their experience and are willing to tell all of their friends about their latest purchase.

Conversely, however, many other customers who were turned away empty-handed are now frustrated and highly dissatisfied with the experience.

Relying solely on customer satisfaction or customer advocacy measures may not illuminate how each touch point contributed to the overall experience.Simplistic customer satisfaction and advocacy scores may mask the underlying factors that either contribute to or detract from an exceptional customer experience.

Evaluating how each individual touch point contributes to the overall experience in this scenario can help to identify specific areas for improvement.While touch points 1, 3 and 4 scored high, touch points 2 and 5 clearly have room for improvement.

Focusing only on an aggregate metric without understanding or managing the contributing factors can yield unpredictable results.Companies seeking to improve their overall customer experience should establish customer experience measures that correlate individual touch point results to overall customer experience measures.

About the Author

Robert Howard is the Founder and Chief Executive of ClearBrick LLC, a leading provider of customer experience solutions, research, and online customer experience advice.

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Book Marketing: The Importance of Selecting a Great Book Title

Choosing the right title for your book can make a huge difference when it comes to marketing and selling your book.It's far easier to sell a book with a great title - even a poorly written book - than it is to sell a great book with a poor title.

Generally, there are two elements to composing a book title.The main title should be short and catchy while the sub-title basically tells the reader the benefits of reading the book.Some titles are self-explanatory and don't really need a sub-title.However, many authors, particularly new authors, neglect to use a sub-title and as such are losing out on a primary marketing tool.

An example of a great book title that fires the imagination is "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill.This book has no sub-title yet most people who read this title are intrigued to discover just how thinking can make you rich.

However, one of the titles that was originally considered for this book was "Make Oodles with Your Noodles".Somehow, it doesn't quite have the same appeal, does it?I doubt that if this title was used for this book that Napoleon Hill's classic would be as well read as it is today and that would indeed be a shame because so many successful people have been inspired by this book.

But it's not just new authors who make the mistake of not choosing a great title, bestselling authors can make the same mistake as well.For instance, Robert Allen, author of the bestselling "Multiple Streams of Income" once wrote a book which he initially called "The Challenge".

Now, "Multiple Streams of Income" is another example of a great book title.How to make money is always a popular topic and who wouldn't want to learn how to create multiple streams of income?The sub-title of this book is "How to generate a lifetime of unlimited wealth".It's what is generally called a "no-brainer".

However, the title "The Challenge" is another matter.Robert Allen himself later admitted that this was a "terrible" title.A major problem with this title is that it's too vague and yet it's not intriguing enough.In addition, many people are sub-consciously put off by the issue of a challenge.People are looking for solutions rather than challenges.

"You don't walk into a bookstore looking for a challenge."Nothing Down" was great "Creating Wealth" was great but "The Challenge" where did that go?"
Robert G Allen

Sixty thousand copies of "The Challenge" were originally sold which would be a respectable number of books for many authors but not for someone in Robert Allen's league.

Also, had this book been written by a less well-known author with less book marketing experience it would have probably sold fewer copies.

The publishers gave him back the rights to the book and he later re-released it as "The Road to Wealth".It was much more successful selling hundreds of thousands more copies.

So don't underestimate the power of your book title to drive book sales.It's probably one of the most important decisions you'll make regarding your book and your book marketing strategy.There's just one caveat to this.Choosing a book title is not a decision you should make entirely by yourself.

When it comes to deciding your book title, seek expert advice and also seek the opinion of your target market.It is often the case that your target market will not be attracted to the same title as you.And no matter how painful the decision to go with a title that you may not be enamoured with it's far less painful than having your book bomb.

About the Author

For more expert book marketing advice check out the Book Marketing University.

And for a FREE teleseminar on how to turn you book into an Amazon bestseller visit Becoming An Amazon Bestseller.

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How to Target Keywords for Your Product?

Keyword is a word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant results.Many web sites offer advertising based on keyword targeting so an advertisers banner will only show when a specific keyword is entered.Keyword stands for much more than its literal interpretation.Choosing the right keyword is one of the most important factors to market online. 

How to choose the most effective keyword phrase for your product and service?

Tips for finding a name that is just right.

1.Your keywords should always be relevant to your site, product or service.

2.Know who and where your audience is.Different keywords speak to different parts of the country.Different terminologies are used all over the world so you should try to use these keywords according to your target market.For example, sweaters are also called sweatshirt, jumper, pullover and jersey.But remember, avoid using internal business jargon or region slang that your potential customers may never search for.

3.Think as your customers.Ask yourself several questions: How your customers search?What words do they use?What's their intent?Pretend you are your customer, you wanna purchase a certain kind of product, what keywords do you like to use?There are many channels to work on it.Your customers' feedback, consultancy from customers, salesmen, your agents, etc.You can even ask employees or colleagues to simulate customers and collect their keywords as a list.

4.Consider regional keywords.If your product or service belongs to a particular region, then your keywords should contain the city or state.For example, you are running a bookstore in Los Angeles, "Los Angeles Bookstore" looks better than "Bookstore".

5.Don 't depend on yourself to choose the right keywords.Your audience may not use the same keywords you think they'd use.In this case, why not turn to some friends outside your business?Or ask your customers for some recommendations?They may give you some very useful suggestions.

6.Stay away from general keywords.Before you are trying to choose very common and often-used keywords such as "computer" or "table", think about the following points.Firstly, generic keywords bring more competitors.The competition must be fierce.Is that what you want?Particular phrases are much better than single keywords which help you stand out among never-ending search results.What's more, searches show that when a consumer wants to purchase something, he or she will type exact title instead of single keywords.For example, your friends want to buy the DVD of 007, which do you prefer, DVD, DVD of 007 or Pierce Brosnan DVD of 007?

7.Consider your individual goods or services.Find some words to mark the characteristics of your own goods or services.Keep in mind that it's not only a name of products, but also a way of advertising online.If you are selling vanilla chocolate then use "vanilla chocolate" rather than using "chocolate".People who search for "chocolate" may be looking for black chocolate, coffee chocolate, hazel chocolate or any other kind of chocolates available.If vanilla chocolate is your concerned business category then getting an inquiry for coffee chocolate is worthless.It would be better to have fewer users interested in vanilla chocolate rather than high users interested in other chocolates.

8.Consider the age-group consumers.If your product or service is related to a particular age group, you'd better include it with your keyword phrases.For example: Kids T-shirt, Baby Shampoo.

9.Consider season-targeted keywords.If your products vary with season like apparel, you should mention the season name in the phrase.For example: Ladies' Winter Coats.

10.Take a general keyword and add a specific word to it.If you just favor general keywords, write a list of those and add some specific words to it.Different combination of keywords work out different results.

11.Know what keywords are your competitors using.Sometimes you might omit some words.At this moment, collect the typical websites of your competitors, see what keywords the are using and how they rank in the search engines.Of course you do not need to copy their keywords, you just go through those tags and pick out one or two keywords that may be helpful.

12.Use Keyword Tool (e.g.https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to better your keywords.

13.Give your keywords time to rank.There are many factors affecting the ranking.So do not expect your site, product or service rank well immediately.

14.Once you've determined your keyword phrases, keep it on.Never leave it alone.Do not think your keywords are always perfect for your site, product or service.The world is changing.Internet is changing.Consumer is changing.Our competitor is changing.You should continue to re-evaluate your keywords and see which are well-done and which are failing.Find their ranking in the search results and analyze how comes.

About the Author

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ecvv.com is an innovative and comprehensive business portal in China, dedicated to saving costs for Chinese SMEs to find buyers and export to overseas markets.

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