Some of these experts had proven the correlation between employee loyalty and customer loyalty. The results were the ability to create the kind of work environment and employee behaviors that produce high scores on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and within companies, the ability to predict for example, which bank branch or sales territory will have the highest levels of customer satisfaction. Others were using statistical modeling to for example, calculate the customer value for new prospects or predict the defection of a customer in time to intervene and not only save the account, but grow it. After analyzing the common themes among these customer experience management experts, we came up with a manageable framework for how to evolve customer feedback systems to produce greater levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The framework includes 7 generations. They can be considered as stages or key milestones to achieving great customer experiences and they may not necessarily occur in this exact sequence. For example, generations 4 and 5 could happen anywhere between generations 1 and 6.

Generation #1 —The most common first step to improving the customer experience was to start surveying customers shortly after they interacted with the organization's customer service or support operations. The thinking was get it right where it matters most by starting with complaints management and customer service. They focused on collecting transactional customer feedback across multiple customer touch-points (e.g., live service agent, web self-service) and acting on it.

Generation #2 — Conduct a quarterly or bi-yearly customer relationship survey monitoring, measuring, and improving all key areas of the business that impact the customer experience.

Generation #3 - Conduct employee satisfaction surveys with a keen focus on issues that impact an employees' ability to serve customers like the right tools, systems, processes, and training. Analysis of the correlation between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction is conducted for even greater levels of insight into predicting customer loyalty.

Generation #4 — Executives in the organization get very serious about their overall customer satisfaction scores and tie a percentage of executive and employee bonuses to achieving a certain customer satisfaction score. For example, an overall average customer satisfaction score of a 6.5 to a 6.99 (using a 1 to 10 scale with 10 being outstanding and one being poor), would equal a 50 percent bonus payout with higher scores being rewarded. Real time dashboards are used by executives to monitor customer satisfaction and manage proactive executive call campaigns to key accounts to influence loyalty. One note of warning is that a “light touch” linkage between satisfaction scores and incentive compensation is best.  Otherwise, executives can be tempted to tamper with or corrupt the measurement system. 

Generation #5 — The organization has evolved its ability to collect, analyze, and react to customer feedback to the point of achieving market leading customer satisfaction. This data is then used in the organization's marketing and selling efforts. To back-up the data further, the organization uses third party validation such as having its services operations validated as achieving a certain level of service excellence by some type of globally accepted certification program. These awards are then exhibited and used in further branding the organization as providing superior customer service.

Generation #6 — The organization has now not only empowered itself to collect, analyze, and react to customer feedback but it is now sharing its knowledge of how to design and manage the idea customer experience with its partners so that they can replicate the success. The end result is an ecosystem of suppliers capable of delivering a high quality customer experience on behalf of the organization. This level of customer experience management requires a great deal of sharing of customer feedback with selling and servicing partners and a high level of trust between the organization and its partner community.

Generation #7 - These organizations have really opened up the dialogue with customers to the point of continuously providing “feedback on the feedback.” Research shows 95 percent of companies collect customer feedback but only 5 percent go back to the customer and tell them what they are doing to address the feedback the customer provided. Some executives would believe actions speaker louder than words meaning just fix the problem instead of telling customers you're going to fix it, while others have devised very personalized approaches to addressing all customer feedback using each event as an opportunity to delight the customer and change the customer experience in an instant. Know matter which approach, companies that have achieved this level of customer experience management readily share the results of customer satisfaction surveys with their customers going so far as to create portals that allow a customer to monitor its own level of internal satisfaction with a supplier and hold the supplier accountable to certain levels of service.

If your organization is executing on all seven levels, the various executives we spoke with at the CustomerSat Leadership conference, would concur that your organization is providing a world class customer experience and is in a position to continue to reap the financial benefits.

In a January 2006 salesforce.com customer relationship survey conducted by CustomerSat, Inc., almost 40 percent of the 926 respondents stated on demand customer satisfaction surveys were of interest to their organization. If you're in need of systems and tools for managing Customer Satisfaction Surveys, visit the AppExchange for a number of options pre-integrated with Salesforce and easy to evaluate and deploy for any size organization. We also encourage you to contact our friends that inspired us to craft this blog post at CustomerSat Inc., at 650.237.3300.

As always, comments and questions are welcome. Have a CRM question? Askwendy@crmsuccess.com.