We’ve Got Excellent Grease
When customers tell their stories, it would seem they’re more inclined to share the troubling ones than the happy ones. Perhaps quality service is simply expected, and only the aberrations are newsworthy. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” as the saying goes, while the other wheels simply proceed without a sound—or, in your case, keep you in business. That’s their prerogative, and keeping customers satisfied will serve you well.
According to Zendesk, while 33% of customers discuss positive experiences with five or more people, 54% will do so when it’s negative. The rise of social media would appear to amplify this tendency, as 58% are more likely to discuss their customer service experiences than they were five years ago. And this is a concern because 63% of consumers will take note of such negative reviews—and the greater concern, by extension, is that 88% of consumers will be influenced by such reviews when they’re out looking to buy.
This tendency of customers to amplify the negative—their “unenthusiasm gap,” if you will—highlights the importance of Net Promoter Score (NPS®) in maintaining a strong and productive customer experience program. Demonstrating the likelihood of customers to recommend your services to others, NPS® is critical to long-term growth. Customers who come to you repeatedly, and advocate to expand your customer base, are like money in the bank.
It was with this fundamental truth in mind that one U.S.-based bank launched an ambitious voice of the customer program in 2015. Compared to other financial services providers, as benchmarked by analysts, this bank was experiencing substantially lower NPS®, and that simply would not do. The program relied on heightened collaboration between internal departments, executive support, clear communication of project objectives, increased accountability, and greater visibility into the customer experience. With personnel aligned behind a common goal of improving their image in the marketplace, the bank required technology that would provide insights into customer sentiment and motivation, and measure the effectiveness of their efforts.
When NICE learned they required these capabilities to increase their NPS® and ensure a strong wellspring of business for the future, we said, “No problem.” The bank implemented NICE Voice of the Customer (VOC) technology as the final key piece to ensure the program’s success.
NICE VOC expanded their visibility into the mindset of its customers, and quickly established “ease of use” as the primary attribute driving NPS® among customers. As a result, the bank focused its attention on reducing customer effort, and ten months after first implementing VOC, they’ve identified “customer effort” as being a demonstrated strong suit.
Here are a few other items they’ve established since last June:
- They are developing protocols to isolate which specific activities yield the highest NPS®.
- Combined NPS® across all activities and communication channels has risen by about ten points.
- The bank has isolated causes for concern across the customer journey, and having taken proactive measures to address them, survey responses indicate they are being successfully alleviated.
After launching their voice of the customer initiative, the overall volume of survey respondents has increased substantially, thus improving the value of their available customer insights. Furthermore, they have implemented a system of alerts to ensure specific customer issues are resolved within a short time. This mechanism has perhaps enabled the most profound improvement to their customer experience program: Among customers who have been re-polled following resolution of such issues, NPS® has increased by 71 points.
When there’s a squeaky wheel in your customer feedback surveys, I suppose you might say NICE VOC technology offers some very effective grease. Learn how NICE VOC can help your customer relationships flourish.