I have struggled to describe the power of Customer Experience Measurement (CEX) over the years. But I think I have it down visually now.

University of Michigan research shows that CEX winners among the S&P 500 grow 3.8X as fast as the average in the S&P 500. And of course, laggards are worse off. This looks like this:

Here is a slide based on a client of ours that went through the CEX alignment process. You can see how they hockey stick in year 5. This was a commodity space when they began. Knowing what we know, we can just cut to the chase and start with year 5 actions.

I believe this is what the business should be attempting to achieve with Customer Experience measurement initiatives. It starts with broad research, asking open ended questions. Targeted questions are fine, but the bias the sample. Open ended first, then targeted.

The University of Michigan ASCI index predicts exactly this sort of impact from CEX driving firms in the S&P 500. Of course, it isn’t the surveys that drive the growth, it’s the Operational Excellence and Commercial Excellence initiatives that come out of it that drive the growth. But without the surveys to drive actionable decisions you risk drifting and sub-optimal investment of capital.

This will seem like a plug, but you can’t measure this yourself. You can’t be objective because you know too much about your business and your processes. You cannot listen with the beginner’s mind, because you no longer are one. Have a third party do it. Besides, you don’t want to keep PhDs on the bench when you’re not running research. Let someone else aggregate this work and do it for you.

Call To Action

Do the following to grow at a multiple of your peer group:

1. Conduct scientifically designed open ended, telephone research with your customers.

2. Agregate their concerns using human minds, not computers, into buckets.

3. Commission initiatives/teams to address the top 1-3 items. Decommission teams doing other work. This will speed the improvements and growth and free up capital to do so.

4. Measure the results and course correct.

5. Celebrate your growth.

6. Use the information from the survey to right size your pricing. This will grow your earnings fastest and pay for more improvements.

I hope you found something to apply to your business in this MBR. Let me know either way.

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