Customer experience measurement, and the need for an outcomes-focused approach

Marketers have always been taught to place the customer at the heart of everything they do, which makes customer experience of paramount importance to the whole profession. Happy customers are often repeat customers, and positive customer experiences have a transformative impact on a business. Research carried out by Forrester reveals that a one point increase in customer experience scores generates an impressive $49-118 million in additional revenues.

In order to capitalise on its potential benefits, it is therefore imperative that modern marketers are equipped with the necessary tools to measure customer experience. Although this may seem straightforward to the layman, measuring customer experience in relation to positive business outcomes is surprisingly hard.

A study from Microsoft and the CMO Council found that just 10% of marketers feel they are measuring customer experience extremely well in relation to business outcomes, and only 24% feel they are measuring this moderately well. This indicates that while there are multiple tools at marketers’ disposal when it comes to measuring customer experience, especially in the digital age, finding the right measurements is still difficult. 

In order to maximise the effectiveness of their customer experience measurements, marketers should look to use key performance indicators that are not just quantifiable (i.e. number of views), but also indicate a high quality interaction with a customer, such as acquisition-rate improvement. Even a small increase in these customer interaction-focused KPIs can have significant lasting effects, with research from Bain & Co showing that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can also increase profits by anything from 25% to 95%.