How Good is Good Enough? – how to know when you are really meeting customer expectations

Many organizations strive or claim to “meet customers’ expectations”, yet a significant gap often exists between how companies perceive their customer-centricity and how customers actually feel. In fact, 75% of senior leaders think their organisations are customer-centric, whilst only 30% of customers agree.

This is not necessarily a reflection of arrogance or ambivalence. We frequently find executives are exasperated that their CSat, NPS, Effort scores or sentiment data tell them a different story to the reality of their customers behaviour; with many companies surprised as they watch ‘satisfied’ customers leaving, and ‘dissatisfied’ customers staying.

Regardless of the mechanism being used to gather your CX data (from paper to high tech), there are 2 factors at play behind these disconnected perspectives:

1. WHAT you choose to measure or test via your Voice of Customer mechanism
2. HOW you measure/score performance

WHAT should you measure? Let the customer decide!

Customer loyalty and advocacy is driven by how well you meet your customers’ ideal (often unspoken) expectations, i.e., what is most important to them, not what is most important to you.

Most commonly, however, companies use off-the-shelf questionnaires or they gather feedback on features and functions they have assumed are important. Equally, whilst social listening and call centre analytics can do a great job at collecting data from ‘the vocal’ customers it misses the voice of the rest.

In either scenario, your collected data is likely to be fundamentally skewed or biased and could quickly have you chasing ghosts or making changes with suboptimal impact.

By contrast, initially gathering your customers’ expectations of an ideal experience gives you the fast path to loyalty. Not only does it reveal a blueprint of what good looks like to help you create a great customer experience, it also produces a list of experience attributes that are directly relevant to the customers priorities and which you need to measure.

HOW to measure: Contextual Scoring as a diagnostic tool

Traditional measurement methods produce a single score for each question / facet of the customer experience being explored. Most companies, understandably, feel compelled to fix the areas that receive the lowest scores.
However, fixing the lowest scoring items may address areas which are not a priority for customers, whilst ignoring higher scoring features that are actually more pressing.

The result means your CX improvement efforts can be easily misdirected whilst the customers’ overall perception of their experience doesn’t move them towards loyalty behaviours.

At Promising Outcomes, we have been measuring performance against expectations for years, using a special scoring method that incorporates Zones of Tolerance.

Not only do we qualify what should be measured by gathering expectations of an experience directly from the customers, but our unique Zone of Tolerance measurement acts as a diagnostic laser beam.

Zones of Tolerance exist everywhere. Take your heating system, for example. Most people will have a temperature range that feels comfortable. Temperatures that go below that range make you feel cold & irritable, whilst temperatures above that range mean you are too hot and wasting energy.

Customers react to their experiences in a similar way. They will all have an internal ‘performance range’ that they deem acceptable for different aspects of their experience. Their behaviour will be governed by the extent to which you operate within that range (or not). In fact, regardless of what experience you are measuring (CX, EX, Products, Suppliers or Internal Teams), the same principle applies.

In simple terms, performing within the Zone of Tolerance indicates that you are meeting the customers’ expectations to varying degrees.

Performing at, or just above the top of their tolerance zone is the sweet spot that will automatically translate into loyalty.

Performing below the zone means you are not even meeting the customers minimum requirements and urgent attention is required. In these cases, you will often see customers leaving or complaining.

Does that mean that “delighting customers” or “exceeding expectations” means you have to perform above the ideal? Surprisingly – no! If your score sits above the Zone of Tolerance, then consider these 2 factors:

1. Are you needlessly ‘over-servicing’ the customer, and potentially losing profit?
2. Or – do you want to continue and lever that strength in your marketing or pricing?

Comparing yourself to the competition?

Collecting performance scores for the competition adds vital information so you can quickly see how you compare (in the eyes of your customers). The results can and often do surprise!

Overall, the message is clear – You are running blind if you rely on single CSat or NPS scores, because the actual score is not as important as its position in relation to what the customer feels is acceptable.

Rolling up the results provides an Index score that reflects your organisations’ overall progress towards that magic goal of “meeting your customers’ expectations”.

To NPS or not to NPS?

Still need to ask that “willingness to recommend” question? That’s OK; it has its place as an indicator of customer sentiment, and can help you maintain a presence on any leaderboards you may be engaged in. However, even its creator agrees that it is not diagnostic and has limited value on its own.

Customers are only too willing to help you improve!

Asking for open feedback can unearth some really great improvement suggestions if you ask the question in the right way. Try asking customers what it would take to meet their ideal expectations, instead of just asking for “comments”. The customer will only be too glad to share their opinions!

In summary – by measuring the right things (customer expectations) and measuring performance in a different way, our clients have discovered insights that challenge their current assumptions and focuses their investments and actions for better impact.

To discuss how this method can help your company, contact us to book a discovery call.