You'll Never Satisfy Your Customers — or Grow Your Business — Without Doing These 3 Things

The future of customer experience (CX) is all about growth. We recently asked our clients and wider contacts what they considered to be the most important factor in their CX programs and what they saw as the No. 1 challenge or thing that keeps them up at night — and some of the answers surprised us.

Many of them said customer experience is crucial for success and creates a key competitive advantage — we expected that answer. Many have cut costs, leaving the service and sales experiences as key differentiators. These teams are focused on action and building capability and can show a direct link between improving CX results and business KPIs.

What we didn't expect was what they told us about their No. 1 challenges. Perhaps you can relate to these pain points in your own CX program.

We expected to hear that they have too much data, not enough action and not enough time to implement the action needed based on said data. These pain points are rated in the top five challenges, but they told us that 1) engaging customers to provide meaningful feedback , a.k.a. response rates, and 2) motivating team members to take ownership of their results have moved to the top of the list. Survey fatigue is real — customers are tired of constant requests, and staff often dismiss feedback as irrelevant or outside their control.

So what are the top three strategies that help to address these challenges and help you achieve what we call "feedback for growth ?"

Related: The Only Way to Win Over Customers Is to Become Their First Choice. Here's How to Do It.

1. Implement action-driven accountability

The first key strategy is taking action with accountability , so it's all about your team. Your CX approach should remove any guesswork out of the "why," "what," "who" and "how" of what happened in each experience. Individual team members must know what action is required and how their behavior makes customers feel. To improve response rates from customers and generate a minimum of 50 words per feedback response, there are some important keys:

1. Make sure it's on brand and feels like a virtual conversation.
2. Keep it short — it should take no longer than three minutes.
3. Only ask questions related to the purpose of that visit.
4. Ensure the tone of your survey questions feels authentic, empathetic and appreciative of their time and input.
5. Allow them to complete the survey or feedback response when and how they choose.

The results you receive following these simple steps will help you understand how they truly felt and you can measure the impact of each behavior on loyalty and advocacy. For one client (a specialty retailer with 400 locations), we identified seven key behaviors that created the ideal experience. The customer wanted staff to recommend appropriate additional items. The top 20% of stores had a 34% higher add-on rate and achieved 143% higher year-on-year comparative sales growth compared to the bottom 20% group. Happy customers buy more — and they love the service experience!

Related: 4 Secrets to Turbocharging Revenue Growth Every Executive Must Know

2. Engage your teams

As mentioned, feedback for growth will only happen when your teams are inspired to keep improving. Customer feedback collected via video, voice or text will help you link results to specific actions for your team members, plus develop e-learning opportunities . It also reinforces why it matters. When staff see the relevance to them and feel accountable for those results, they're more likely to act.

For example, one international client in homewares introduced a question that asks "Based on the expertise, friendliness, knowledge and advice of the team member who served you, how willing would you be to be served by them again?" We compared the results against sales conversion rates (i.e. how many shoppers became buyers) and found the top performers for this question had a 36% higher conversion rate.

The key to growth is to address what may be standing in the way, be it skill, confidence or capability, and address the issues that are holding teams back from being fully engaged.

Related: Business Growth Stems From Getting the Right Customer Feedback. Here's How to Get It.

3. Empower comprehensive growth

The third recommendation is to go beyond tracking scores to focus on the behaviors driving the outcomes. Use your CX program to acquire new customers, retain existing ones, increase average spend per customer, improve conversion rates, increase referrals and boost positive reviews on social media to attract more new customers. When you can identify the key behaviors directly impacting customer loyalty or dissatisfaction, you can move from chasing scores to focusing only on the actions required to drive improvement. You can learn from and use proven best practices, identify mid-range scores and see what's missing between what some call "vanilla" experiences vs. your "Wow!" service, and you can address negative feedback more effectively.

As an example of how this approach drives growth, for one of our clients in car service, we compared the results for the top 20% and bottom 20% against their annual sales and found out where their new customers came from (called " path to purchase "), their NPS scores and Google ratings. The top 20% group achieved 24% higher annual sales, 78% of new customers came from referrals and they mentioned seeing a positive review. They had an NPS score of 96 vs. 64 for the bottom 20% and a Google rating of 4.8 out of 5.0.

The key is to focus on actionable feedback , make each individual accountable for their behaviors with your program results linked to resources to address skills and focus on what you want more of — recognize your best practices and center on behaviors more than scores (which are outcomes). Remember the key to encouraging more customers to respond is about how you personalize the survey questions by customer type making it conversational and giving them a true voice to tell you what matters most to them. Finally, growth is about understanding the impact of achieving all key standards consistently.