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CX: The Art Behind the Science

May 08, 2019

Sam Richardson

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CX measurement software has made it possible for virtually any company to collect feedback from its customers and distribute it to the organization. The efficiency and scalability of customer experience input has been welcomed by CX practitioners and insight professionals – attracting multi-billion-dollar valuations and acquisitions. While this has been a positive development for the CX discipline, many companies have not realized the Customer Experience and financial gains they expected. Why? Because technology alone is not enough to drive results. Here’s a few reasons why:

It Takes More than Tech to Maximize the Value of CX

Measuring and understanding Customer Experience (CX) can be as much of an art as a science, something lost with a “tech-only” approach.  Technology is a tool in the process and an indispensable one, but in and of itself it’s not enough to maximize the value of CX for companies and brands.

What do you lose?  A lot. This “one-size-fits-all” approach means you give up the ability to evolve and customize your program right out of the gate and as the market changes.  Behind the tool there is, or should be, an advisory process that helps fine-tune questionnaires, integrate the data, and apply the appropriate analytics for each brand’s specific needs.  A  tech-only platform puts a heavy burden on the company, which may or may not have the internal resources to follow through. The result is an incomplete picture of the customer journey.

What, not why

Technology platforms are built for operational customer experience management. They’re fast and effective at providing feedback to managers in the field.  But they lack the strategic dimension that a knowledgeable insights firm brings to the task. They talk only to current customers ( “during” the journey), and fail to capture data on the “before” and the “after” of the customer experience.  They don’t have the capability to incorporate the longer-term influences of ‘brand’ in the process, and brand, as we have repeatedly seen, is a critical element in influencing buying decisions.

The result is that the  operational CX program delivers little or no insight into the company’s potential customers and their movement along the customer journey. This translates into lost sales.  Much the same is true of former customers: there’s no ability to answer the critical question “why”?  Why are they no longer customers?  Could something have been done to prevent their defection?  Is there an offer that would potentially win them back?  The platforms can identify who is no longer a customer but the critical insight into the motivation behind the churn is lost.

There is also the question of “future proofing.”  A tech-only platform will only evolve so fast in keeping with broader market demands.  CX measurement software firms   are reluctant to make changes just to accommodate a single user.  Once again, companies are forced to rely on their own internal resource to address versioning issues, another example of how what is billed as a relatively simple solution can quickly spiral into something much more complex and demanding.

Data is everywhere

At this point, capturing CX data is no longer an issue for most companies.  Platforms in place are delivering massive amounts of information to brand teams and marketing managers in something approximating real time.  Maximizing the insights derived from that data will separate companies that are capable of delivering an exceptional customer experience from those that are just average. That can’t be done with technology alone.

Brand Health Measurement: Developing Your Brand's Core Strength

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Thriving in a Transformational Time

April 09, 2019

Sam Richardson

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This year’s Food Marketing Conference at Western Michigan University focused on the ongoing transformation of the industry, which is being driven by the maturation of omnichannel shopping behaviors and expectations. Below are some important takeaways that resonated with me during my time at the conference:

1. Learning isn’t hard; forgetting the old ways of doing things is hard

The fact is, the new realities call for lots of letting go. Among the most important things to forget? Thinking that (a) “channel” comes before “shopper,” (b) today’s competitors are your biggest threats, and (c) your brand is tied to a specific physical product. As an example of this last item, one alcohol beverage company is riding the wave of cannabis legalization by transforming its purpose to “mood management.”

2. There’s a big difference between digital sales and digitally-influenced sales

The first may be small for many brands, and the second may be large. Today’s omnichannel path to purchase (P2P) creates many interactive touchpoints, with instore and online research and purchasing influencing each other. As a result, many ecommerce teams are misreading shoppers’ online research as missed sales when they are actually a purposeful part of the P2P. Understanding this interaction is critical to mastering the omnichannel P2P.

3. The Customer Experience (CX) grading curve isn’t the same as the academic grading curve.

The speaker’s example: 99 – 100 = A; 96 – 98 = A-; 93 – 95 = B; 91 – 92 = C; < 91 = F. He further suggested that this “Tiger Mom” scale is going to further tighten as shoppers raise their expectations based on the best customer experiences they encounter. If you’re not creating better and better customer and brand experiences, you’re falling behind.

4. Know whether your Brand is in line with the experiences your customers are expecting

Customer Experience is the new Brand, and vice versa. Brands are becoming retailers through direct-to-consumer platforms, and retailers are becoming (stronger) brands through their own-label products and an increasing array of services, like delivery. Brand equity is created – and tested – through every experience in which consumers and shoppers experience the brand. Is your premium brand is found in off-price stores, that’s a disconnect. And if your “better for the environment” brand is advertised on a show or network that downplays the risks of climate change, that’s a disconnect, too.

5. When it comes to omnichannel, are you all in, or just all over the place?

As businesses accelerate and execute their omnichannel strategies and tactics, there’s often more emphasis on activation than integration. Make sure your efforts are coordinated and evaluated holistically. Being “all in” in omnichannel means seeing it and building it from the shopper’s perspective, making the most of each touchpoint, and knowing which ones matter most to shoppers and your bottom line.

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Empower Employees Win Customers

March 20, 2019

Sam Richardson

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Win in the Age of the Customer with Empowered Employees

Learn how measurement and analytics can lead a winning customer strategy by empowering employees with the information that matters most to meeting customer needs. Enjoy the following sections:

– Introduction from Jan Carlzon, former SAS CEO and visionary customer-centric management author

– Exclusive perspective from Forrester CX analysts about CX competencies in the “Age of the Customer”

– How to scope your CX measurement program to drive change in the business

– Practical tips to prioritize the CX actions that drive satisfaction and growth

– How to bring a CX strategy to life by empowering employees to meet customers needs.

Download here



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3 Signs Your DIY CX Measurement is Weakening Your CX Strategy

February 13, 2019

Nepa CX Measurement

Sam Richardson

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Developing a customer experience strategy is easier said than done. It’s a process that needs to be built on a strong foundation, and your measurement will continuously guide the broader CX strategy. As companies grow and evolve, resources are needed to evaluate current performance and chart the path ahead. Dedication, accuracy and clear KPIs that are aligned with overall business goals all play an important role in building your success and supporting long term goals.

Companies that overstay their time on a DIY CX Measurement program risk losing ground to competitors and create operational inefficiencies internally.

Here are three benefits that many companies experience when upgrading to professional CX measurement.

1. You need to focus on what matters most

You know your business inside and out. But are you looking at the bigger picture? Or are you focused on the right metrics? It’s one thing to be an expert on you, but when it comes to developing a strategy for your customer experience, you need to be an expert on them. Understanding your industry benchmarks, advancements, setbacks and overall target customer behavior is key.

Choosing the right CX partner with a flexible model will provide an outside-in perspective on your most relevant focus areas. Having a CX expert in your court will allow you to configure the technology to your needs and ultimately streamline your efforts understand your customers by asking the right questions at the right time.

2. Get full value from your CX data

Disparate tools and insights may give you the basic information you need, but advanced technology, data science, and industry expertise provides the holistic view of your customer base that unlocks growth.

Your CX program should be producing continuous feedback to align with the other sources of data in the business. If these areas are not in sync, you run the risk of only analyzing a piece of the puzzle. Advanced machine learning techniques combined with industry knowledge prioritize which actions will produce bottom line results.

3. Start leveraging your measurements to direct strategy

When it comes to CX, most organizations attack the symptom, not the cause. The symptom could be an upset customer because your company did not accept their credit card of choice.  However, more importantly, the cause could be a lack of overall payment options. Many organizations focus on short term goals and how to quickly and efficiently address a customer’s issue. While perfecting the response to a bad experience is important, it’s just as important to identify common issues and put plans in place that prevent these bad experiences.

Businesses with a successful CX program have mastered the art of identifying and meeting customer needs while at the same time, delivering results. CX Measurement is a critical piece of a CX Strategy that professional CX technology and services can help you master – so that you can fail fast and identify opportunities to adapt to win customer loyalty in the long run.

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Dressmann Chooses Nepa for Customer Experience Measurement

October 09, 2018

Sam Richardson

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Holistic CX measurement solution and extensive retail experience leads to another client partnership

Stockholm 

Nepa, a leading Consumer Science company providing customer experience and marketing optimization solutions, has been chosen by Dressmann to provide continuous customer experience insights.

Nepa’s CX Tracker product will collect, analyze and report customer feedback data from 400 Dressmann stores in Sweden, Norway and Finland.

“Nepa’s solution helps deliver the best experiences to our customers in the areas that matter the most by aggregating feedback from thousands of customers across all of our locations. The system gives us better understanding of our customers key demands and helps us make the right priorities to ensure a convenient shopping experience from their perspective.” Knut-Erik Kolberg, Dressmann.

“After a long collaboration with Dressmann on brand development we’re thrilled to add them as a CX partner as well. Fashion retail is one of the many industries driving demand for our Brand and CX solutions. Nepa has specialized CX solutions that help these companies deliver on their financial targets by developing their customer experience.” Fredrik Östgren, CEO at Nepa.

Contact Information:   

www.nepa.com

 

Fredrik Östgren

CEO

Maria Skolgata 83 118 53

Stockholm, Sweden

+46 733 345 069

fredrik.ostgren@nepa.com

 

P-O Westerlund

Deputy CEO, CFO

Maria Skolgata 83 118 53

Stockholm, Sweden

+46 706 404 824

p-o.westerlund@nepa.com

About Nepa

Headquartered in Stockholm, with offices in Norway, Finland, Denmark, UK, USA and India, we help some of the world’s most reputable brands in more than 50 countries to optimize customer experience investments and get more effect out of their marketing and sales. Nepa has been awarded DI Gasell’s award for organic fast-growing companies in 6 of 7 years since 2011 The company is publicly traded at the Nasdaq First North Stockholm stock exchange since 2016. Erik Penser Bank is Nepa’s Certified Adviser.

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Time to Assess your CX Measurement Program?

September 27, 2018

Sam Richardson

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As we post this blog, our industry is celebrating CX Day 2018 and gathering at the Forrester CX Forum in San Francisco. These events will surely cause many CX Professionals to reflect on the value that CX measurement brings to the business – but really, we should always be challenging ourselves to be up to date and provide our companies with CX advantages.

To help you reflect – we’ve listed some questions we pose to CX professionals that approach us weary that they may have outgrown their existing CX measurement programs. These questions will also help those new to CX measurement build a system that will make an immediate impact and be ready for future CX development.

We’ve categorized our questions into 3 areas:

  • Tracking – The pipeline of customer feedback
  • Empowerment – The distribution of CX insight to the business
  • Optimization – The prioritization of CX investments for revenue and profit

Here’s the list:

Tracking

Is CX measurement eroding experience?

Poorly designed CX surveys (i.e. ones that are long, not mobile optimized, or have poor UX) could be doing harm while trying to do good.

Are you validating survey insight?

Customer surveys are a core component to structure customer feedback for reliable insight – but customer, operational, and social media data (to name a few) are necessary to validate survey insight.

Are you getting feedback at the right frequency?

CX programs should be producing a continuous stream of feedback to align with the data rivers that exist in the organization (e.g. sales and operations).

Are you bringing in the right context?

Many CX surveys have focused too heavily on operational touchpoints and lost sight of the overall customer relationship and understanding of the customer’s relationship with your competitors.

Empowerment

Are you empowering employees to improve CX?

79% of CX Professionals surveyed by Forrester state that CX Metrics don’t help employees improve CX.  Successful measurement analytics predict and communicate the  actions that will lead to greatest financial return, not just improvements in KPIs.

Does your program reach everyone it could?

Because of the trend toward operational CX – many programs are focused on service recovery and are missing opportunities to inform strategic planning with senior management, marketing and other groups.

Are you enabling tactical action?

Don’t get us wrong based on the questions above – dashboards and closed loop feedback systems are key components of a CX program. If you’re not using them – you should be. Just don’t stop there.

Are you speaking the right language?

Improving NPS or C-SAT will get the attention of executives and front-line, but when the goal is hit the music stops. Financial metrics are evergreen in business – so you should know and communicate the financial impact of CX.

Optimization

Are you identifying the moments that matter most?

Smart survey design and advanced analytics will help you to identify the moments that drive customer’s experience perceptions.

Do you know how to make customers happy and make money?

A common weakness in CX measurement is that analytic models work in a silo of customer feedback. Analytic models should incorporate sales data to identify the opportunities that improve experience and sales simultaneously.

Are you winning in local markets?

Geo-location and competitor data are increasingly available. CX measurement programs that take advantage of it can tell the business what makes customers pass one store for the next. Understanding these customer “detours” can make or break individual stores.

Can you quantify the financial-value of hello?

By connecting financial performance with customer data on service interactions, you can identify the service standards that are creating value and those that are not.

We hope these questions helped you to reflect on the value of your CX program. In fact, we’d love to hear about your reflections and perhaps help you think through them. Contact us if you’re interested in connecting.

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5 Traits To Strive For in a Brand Health Measurement Program

September 19, 2018

Nepa Brand Tracking Suite

Sam Richardson

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Brands are dynamic entities – never static. Marketing professionals need to nurture them and provide constant attention to support their development and protect them from threats. Marketers must act like parents and maintain responsibility for their brand even when it is owned by consumers out in the “real world.”

Here’s why.

A strong brand can still mean the difference between instant credibility or skepticism. Great brands can command a premium price and rake in higher margins. Brand recognition can open opportunities to new placements and partnerships that propel the brand to new heights.

However, it’s harder than ever to maintain a strong, healthy brand.

Whether a brand is established or emerging, it now exists in an increasingly complex media landscape and competitive environment. We see some mature brands struggle to adapt to the new environment and open the door for many hungry upstart brands to steal market share.

In either case, marketers need to have access to reliable brand intelligence that helps the business act in ways that support growth and development.

Successful brand tracking programs in today’s jungle usually have the following traits:

1. Conscious

Another reality of the day is shorter attention spans. Brand health data must be sourced using the most efficient methods possible – by focusing on what matters most and delivering the most value with the least amount of the consumer’s time. In short, keep your survey short by focusing on what is important.

2. Continuous

Everything moves at a much faster pace today – especially for marketers in the era of programmatic advertising and social media. When every data source is always on, checking in on brand health once a year doesn’t cut it. Brands that continuously measure their brand health can act faster to developments and have an edge over others that do not.

3. Correct

Sample and sample quality may not be the sexiest topic of the day – but it may be the most important. Consumer research data has undergone dramatic shifts as people moved online, then to mobile, and now stay connected in a myriad of ways. Simply put, not all research is reliable and today’s brand tracking champions are relying on panels that follow ESOMAR guidelines to produce reliable data.

4. Connected

Brand health data adds a powerful dimension to help marketers seeking to connect with consumers, but only when its connected in smart ways. For example, Marketing Mix Models that once relied on media spend and sales data to assess short term sales effects of media are now incorporating brand health data to optimize the media mix for long term sales. Brand health measurement and operational business performance data are both better when connected.

5. Compelling

The ultimate success sign of brand health measurement is that it compels the business to take action that helps the brand connect with the right consumers in the right way. It’s not enough to include brand metrics in a dashboard or company town hall. Programs must result in changes to the media mix, overall spend, brand strategy or marketing communications to be a useful tool for the business.

Continuous brand health data that is reliable and connected to other sources will compel the business to act.

If you’re uncertain if your company’s brand health measurement program has these 5 traits – take our brand measurement assessment to find out. This fast and easy assessment takes less than five minutes and will let you know how your program aligns to today’s best practices. Click here to get started.

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Plantagen, European specialty retailer, announces customer experience partnership with Nepa.

September 04, 2018

Sam Richardson

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Retailers seeking an advantage over local competition turn to Nepa’s Consumer Science Platform

Stockholm 

Nepa, a leading consumer science platform providing customer experience insights and marketing optimization solutions, is pleased to announce a new customer experience engagement with Plantagen.

Nepa was selected to be the specialty plant retailer’s research partner to help facilitate data collection, analysis and delivery of customer experience insights. The program will use Nepa’s Consumer Science Platform to help the company understand CX at store-level and in aggregate to pinpoint areas for improvement in the Swedish market.

“We’re thrilled to help Plantagen grow their CX program using our deep roots and experience providing insights to large retailers with multiple distribution points. We’ll start this project immediately by integrating Plantagen’s customer data into a bespoke solution built by our team that will continuously collect additional CX information, delivered via personalized dashboard to individual stores and the HQ. After the core program is deployed, we hope to connect financial data to give the client even more clarity.” Hanna Wallin Nepa CX Product Owner

“Our growing client-base in Europe and the US is evidence of a growing demand for next generation CX driven tools and consulting. Our team is working to meet the needs of our increased client base and further improving our offerings.” Fredrik Östgren Nepa CEO

www.nepa.com

Fredrik Östgren
CEO
Maria Skolgata 83 118 53
Stockholm, Sweden
+46 733 345 069 fredrik.ostgren@nepa.com

P-O Westerlund
Deputy CEO, CFO
Maria Skolgata 83 118 53
Stockholm, Sweden+46 706 404 824 p-o.westerlund@nepa.com

About Nepa

Headquartered in Stockholm and with local presence in Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, London, Mumbai, New York, Miami and Denver, we help some of the world’s most reputable brands in more than 50 countries to optimize customer experience investments and get more effect out of their marketing and sales. Nepa has been awarded DI Gasell’s award for organic fast-growing companies in 6 of 7 years since 2011 The company is publicly traded at the Nasdaq First North Stockholm stock exchange since 2016. Erik Penser Bank is Nepa’s Certified Adviser.

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Important Customer Experience Learnings From The CXPA Insight Exchange

May 22, 2018

Sam Richardson

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It’s been two weeks since we’ve returned from New Orleans where we connected with over 300 other customer experience professionals at the 2018 CXPA Insight Exchange. The overarching theme during this two day event was to create business value – something that we really relate to at Nepa.

A keynote delivered by Graham Tuttom from Comcast was a great start to the two day immersion into CX. He is no stranger to these events and his experience in CX is impressive. His philosophy is that organizations should think of CX as their best product. According to him, the holy grail of CX is having all business units behave as a team and employees that are empowered to empathize with customers. This makes CX part of the company culture and employees feel like owners. At Nepa we agree that our mission as CX professionals is to create tools that provide information and opportunities for empowerment. For the majority of the organization, CX is a strange and complex animal, it’s our job to make it more approachable with better tools and technology.

Another great talk by Bruce Temkin of Temkin Group, was a state of the union address for the CX Industry. Titled Past, Present, Future of CX(PA) he expounded where the CX profession is heading and stressed four principles for making CXPA grow within a well managed organization:

● Focus on people

● Connect CX to business and brand

● Stay positive and passionate

● Support our collective community

His main point was that we as CX professionals have a great opportunity to take our rightful place at the C-level discussions, but in order to achieve that goal we need to continue to push our industry forward by following the four principles.

If you were at CXPA to meet new partners, you were in the right spot. It was a who’s who of vendors providing a broad array of services from CX design to Customer Service solutions, to CX feedback platforms. It was great to see many complementary solutions that we use as inputs in our CX analytics applications. If you felt a little overwhelmed by the number of partners, drop us a line – we’ve worked with many and are happy to share our experiences.

The most valuable takeaways came from the opportunities we had to exchange ideas with other CX professionals during shorter round table discussions and one-to-ones. In smaller groups, we explored a diverse range of subjects from creating a CX cultural change to the growth trends in the industry to methods on how to calculate ROI on CX investments. In discussions with our fellow CX professionals, we sense a budding optimism that organizations are realizing how important CX is for future business success, but with attention comes expectations.

A CX professional needs a diverse set of skills: change management, business development, analytics, technology, story telling, financial, design etc…the list goes on. We need to understand how to improve the experience and drive business efficiently. Are CX professionals the birth grounds for future CEO’s?

We can talk CX all day. Have a question? Email us at sales.us@nepa.com.

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CX Next Recap: Empathy, Emergence, and Money

May 11, 2018

Sam Richardson

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As Customer Experience (CX) professionals gather in New Orleans for the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) 2018 Insight Exchange, I’m still reflecting on key themes from the recent CX Next 2018 conference in Boston. This exclusive event, which Nepa was honored to Chair, featured heavyweight CX thought leaders and a great roster of practitioners. Here’s what still resonating two weeks later:

Empathy is the bedrock of Customer Experience

Understanding and embracing customers’ needs and their context is the basis for delivering great experiences. Katherine Deschene of Steward Healthcare preaches that hospital staff must first connect with the patient before completing the task. Marijke Maartense from Philips Healthcare doubled-down on this point with an insightful talk about how to keep it human amidst a sea of technology and digitization.

CX professionals have an obligation to help every person in the organization understand their customers and their context. CX Author & Thought Leader, Kerry Bodine, introduced a bold vision for moving from orchestrated experiences to emergent experiences, guided more by simple principles or rules than a detailed playbook. Kerry borrows the concept from emergent properties in the natural order, best exemplified by the beautiful formations of starling flocks. Every employee in your company should act as individual starlings do –  following a simple set of shared rules – to create beautiful customer experiences. Companies that are already doing this, like Zappos.com and Southwest Airlines, are already reaping the customer retention benefits.

Delivering on Customer Experience is heavy lifting

While empathizing with customers and having a vision for better experiences is the starting point, there is a lot of nuts-and-bolts work behind the scenes to make improvements a reality.

Dave Hodgman, Digital Transformation Strategist at Comcast, shared what goes into meeting his team’s goal of having customers spend less time on routine service requests (like paying a bill or changing a plan). Enabling new experiences for customers requires applying a deep understanding of available tools, data management systems, and corporate policies to customer needs. And, creating new experiences is not enough – CX professionals need to drive the customer adoption of new service methods. This work requires collaboration across many groups at Comcast, and without it, dreams of better experiences would not become reality.

Customer Experience Professionals need to learn a new language

The standard measurements for Customer Experience success – C-SAT, NPS, Customer Effort Score – are no longer sufficient to gain the commitment of executives. The essential metric of business is money, and we must point to financial results – including increased revenue and decreased costs – to earn the investment required to deliver better customer experiences.

Diane Magers, CXPA CEO, hammered this point in “Building and Executing a CX Strategy in an ROI Driven World”, a workshop on mapping techniques that lead you to the business value of a strategy. Diane cited an example of a CX professional who delivered on their goal of improving NPS. The program was then closed, in favor of other investments that visibly demonstrated cost savings and/or increased revenue.

The good news for CX professionals is there are many opportunities to demonstrate how their strategies and programs are driving bottom line results. There are also new ways to translate your CX measurements into financial values – a topic that I spoke on in my “Level up Your CX Measurement” presentation. The key is to link each aspect of customers’ experience to its financial impact on company financials, which both validates the current impact and enables further optimization. It’s all available in our Cultivating Customer Experience Measurement eBook.

I’d like to thank Knect365 for organizing this great event and for asking Nepa to chair this gathering of CX professionals. Look forward to next year!