How Do You Measure Success of Your Customer Experience Initiatives?

For any type of project or initiative that you undertake, it's important to be able to track progress and measure success. In order to do that, you must first outline what success looks like and what metrics you'll use to measure that. Outlining what success looks like starts with: specifying the problems to solve, establishing the objectives, and defining the desired outcomes.

CX initiatives require you to identify and outline those items for (at least) three different constituents, since the initiatives will impact the business, the employee, and the customer. What matters most to each of these?

Some examples of outcomes for each include:

Business

Increased revenue: from new customers, existing customers making additional purchases, and existing customers deepening their relationships by expanding to other product lines

Provider and employer of choice

Reduced costs: often in the form of process efficiencies and improvements

Culture change: a shift to a people first culture

Increased referrals: as a result of an improved experience

Customers

Achieved a job to be done

Solved a pain point

Reduced effort or simple interaction/transaction

Memorable experience

Employees

Career growth and development

Got a promotion

Increased job satisfaction

Expectations met

Great experience

Add yours to the list; I'm sure your company, employees, and customers will have plenty of other desired outcomes.

How will you know the outcomes? You will have asked and listened to understand. For employees and customers, you will have used surveys or other listening posts, developed personas, and mapped their journeys. For the business, you will have had discussions with executives to understand where the business' priorities lie. As you already know, executives will want to see how CX initiatives and investments will impact business performance (yes, ROI); if they can't make that connection, it will affect their commitment, including resources to continue to fund and to staff CX improvements initiatives.

Related: What's in Your Customer Experience Strategy Budget?

Now, think about how you'll measure progress toward - and success of - each those outcomes. What does that look like? Here are some examples:

Business

Cost savings

Revenue/recurring revenue

Retention (employees and customers)

Profitability

Customer lifetime value

Share of wallet

First call resolution

Customer

Net promoter score

Customer satisfaction

Customer effort score

Ease of doing business

Expectations met

Accuracy of transaction

First call resolution

Speed of resolution

Quality of resolution

Employee

Employee engagement

Employee satisfaction

Employee happiness

Retention/turnover (overall, by manager)

Internal promotions

Learning and development metrics

eNPS

Other success metrics

% ownership of customer issues

% employees know who our customers are

% employees who know key drivers of customer experience

% improvements implemented as a result of customer feedback

% improvements implemented as a result of employee feedback

One bit of advice on your metrics: don't wait til the end (outcome achieved, or you think the outcome has been achieved) to see how you're preforming. Check the temperature along the way; track the metrics along the journey. Are you on track to achieving the goals? Are you getting close? If not, what needs to change to ensure that you do? What adjustments do you need to make?

And one more thought: don't get metrics crazy. Pick a couple; keep it simple. Just because you can measure it doesn't mean you should. Track the metrics that give you a solid picture of whether or not you will - or have - achieved the desired outcome. You don't need a three-page spreadsheet filled with a variety of (often irrelevant) metrics to tell you that.

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit. - Conrad Hilton