Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue II, 2012 | Page 78
CustomersCount
BY JACK MACKEY
What’s Next?
Four trends in customer experience management
A
t the recent Multi-Unit
Foodservice Operators Conference, Service Management
Group (SMG) conducted interviews with executives on how their
customer satisfaction efforts are working.
These conversations ended with the question, “What’s next in customer experience
management?” Here are four key trends
that emerged from our study.
Trend 1: Executives are looking for
more than just scores from their
customer satisfaction measurement
programs; they want to know
how to improve the customer
experience.
Multi-unit managers know unit-specific
improvement plans are needed. These
plans should be based on improving
the customer experience where those
improvements will have the biggest
impact on raising average transaction amount, driving frequency, and
stimulating intent to recommend. In
other words, improving satisfaction
scores is not the real goal; it’s a means
to an end, which is improving business
performance. Your franchisor most likely
can provide you with statistically valid
service improvement tools for focusing
your efforts where they will yield the biggest payoff. Ask!
One especially large improvement opportunity lies in customer service recovery.
Mistakes happen—no company can drive
mistakes and customer complaints to zero.
But losing customers because of mistakes
is the real problem, and that can be vastly
reduced. With technology today, companies are setting up automatic “alerting”
systems based on customer comments.
This process drives much faster response
to complaints; and a quick, concerned response to an unhappy customer is the key
to turning a disappointed customer into a
fan of your company.
Takeaway: Multi-unit operators require
customer experience information systems that
can 1) prescribe the best proactive service improvement plans, and 2) accelerate reaction
time to service recovery.
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Multi-Unit Franchisee Is s ue II, 2012
Tr e n d 2 : Ve r b a t i m c u s t o m e r
comments add a qualitative element
to customer experience scores, but
most executives can’t seem to tap
into the opportunity.
Customer comments can have a huge
impact beyond the numbers because they
communicate the customer’s emotional
response to a positive or negative experience. The most advanced franchise organizations are measuring the sentiment of
comments—from very positive to neutral
to very negative. These comments are also
aggregated into performance categories such
as cleanliness, speed, and friendliness. This
way, operators can see in real time where
positive and negative trends are emerging,
then drill down to the verbatim comments
by day of week and time of day.
But many leaders are still not applying the available text analytics that are
crucial for multi-unit operators as the size
of their organization grows. If you don’t
have access to advanced text analytics yet,
ask your franchisor executives about their
plans in this area.
Takeaway: By applying text analytics to
customer comments, franchise organizations
can spot emerging problems in real time and
understand the causes quickly.
Trend 3: Customers are interacting
with brands through social media
as well as in physical locations, and
they expect to be heard beyond the
feedback given in surveys.
Measurement of the “in-store” customer
experience remains the most important
method of gaining customer feedback.
However, executives agree customers also
give very candid feedback to their employees
in the stores, as well as through a brand’s
customer contact center and when they
post comments on review sites like Yelp!
and on Facebook and Twitter.
Proactive firms set up methods to relay
all the feedback they hear from customers
into a central location. With all the data in
one spot, franchisees can see, and quickly
act upon, customer satisfaction trends.
Takeaway: To harness the full power of
the customer voice, leaders need a dashboard
containing all customer experience data in an
“at-a-glance” format.
Trend 4: As customer experience
measurement becomes more
prominent in franchise organizations,
franchisees must get data they can
believe in.
Nearly half of the executives we talked to
believed their employees try to manipulate
the results of their customer survey
scores. These attempts at “gaming”
the system, by employees or even customers, can give a false picture of the
customer experience. Organizations
with a “zero-tolerance” policy toward
cheating let all employees know that
gaming is an integrity issue with serious consequences for violators.
All executives we interviewed pointed
to the need for data integrity systems
that can detect fraudulent data before
it is ever reported. Old methods, such as
capturing the IP address of a computer used
to take a survey, are simply not enough.
What’s needed is advanced technology,
more akin to computer virus protection,
that analyzes incoming data in real time
and quarantines suspicious data.
Takeaway: Customer experience measurement must have advanced data integrity technology to give executives confidence in the results.
The practice of customer experience
measurement is evolving, and so must
the attitudes and practices of operators.
Multi-unit leaders especially must take
their programs to the next level.
SMG Vice President Jack
Mackey helps multi-unit operators improve customer loyalty and drive growth. To request “Want Better Insights
from Text Analytics? Start by
Eliciting Better Comments,” contact him at
816-448-4556 or [email protected].