stop “chasing the score” · since dealerships are the tangible manifestation of the...

AND FOCUS ON DRIVING ACTION

STOP “CHASING THE SCORE”

Introduction

Belief Commitment

Response

Hiring & TrainingRewards

Discretion

Sources Integration

Design Governance

DesignApplicationKnowledgeDocument

Some customer experience (CX) leaders are

beginning to question the obsession with NPS™,

Overall Satisfaction, and other similar measures

of overall CX performance. Why? Experience has

shown that these measures can entice organizations

to spend their time “chasing the score,” which can

actually undermine CX success.

Maybe we have it backwards, and CX goals should

be based on positive and negative behaviors instead

of on scores. The MaritzCX® CXEvolution™ benchmark

program identifies the strategies CX leaders are

using to measure, monitor and reward CX efforts, as

well as the relative success of their CX programs.

Analysis of this global benchmark study has led to

development of a robust CX maturity framework.

The CXEvolution Organizational CX Maturity Model

measures 14 specific CX competencies that separate

CX leading companies from CX laggards. This

e-book presents results alongside an argument that

action/behavior metrics are the best measures to

help companies drive real action and lasting change.

Customer

Culture

People

Information

Structure

Processes

STOP “CHASING THE SCORE” AND FOCUS ON DRIVING ACTION 2

Score-Chasing Creates Bad Outcomes


Scores, the very mechanism intended to rally employees

around improving customer experience, often lead to employees

taking their eyes off the ball. Some company cultures become so

obsessed with chasing the score that they seem to forget that a great

customer experience is the desired outcome. Score-chasing cultures

frequently lack the alignment and honest customer focus needed to

drive real CX improvement.

For many organizations, linking scores such as NPS or Overall

Satisfaction to variable compensation has backfired. In The

Ultimate Question 2.0, Fred Reichheld warns against linking NPS

to compensation for three key reasons. “First, linking NPS to

compensation focuses the organization on the score as an objective

in and of itself rather than as a tool to ensure that people learn the

right lessons and take the right actions to improve CX,” Reichheld

said. “Second, it puts inordinate pressure on the team developing the

measurement process to get the metrics exactly right. And third, the

direct link to bonuses – whether in the C-suite, sales or call centers –

will almost certainly encourage gaming and manipulation.”

SCORE-CHASING CREATES BAD OUTCOMES

Source: CXEvolution MaritzCX global study, 2015

NEITHER AGREE NOR DISAGREE

DISAGREE

STRONGLY DISAGREE

AGREE

STRONGLY AGREE

6% 7%29%34%24%

“We’ve seen drastic changes in our scores from the old method, when there was a good deal of [score] ‘coaching’ going on.”

– CX EXECUTIVE, LARGE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANY


People in my organization are more concerned with getting

a good CX score than creating a great customer experience.

THE FOCUS ON SCORES CAN LEAD TO MISALIGNMENT WITH CX IMPROVEMENT

Findings from our CXEvolution benchmark program prove Reichheld’s

points. An unhealthy focus on scores in lieu of improving the customer

experience is much more prevalent among companies that use target

metrics as part of employee variable compensation.

The drive for getting a score at all costs is no more prevalent than

among companies that have C-suite variable compensation tied to

scores. Among CX professionals at companies where C-suite managers

are compensated on scores, 53% say the organization is more

interested in a score than in improving CX. This level is even higher than

the average for all companies with variable compensation incentives

tied to scores 46%, and more than twice as high as the level seen

among companies with no variable compensation tied to scores 25%.

Most people have bought a car and been asked to give the top score

when they take the customer survey. It’s a common practice in auto

dealerships, and we see it in other industries as well, such as hotels, retail

stores, and restaurants. Asking customers for a higher score may improve

the score, but it does nothing to improve the customer’s experience.

Even when you give frontline employees the software and tools that make

feedback and scores available to them in real time, expecting them to

improve results without changing the way they do things doesn’t make

sense. Frontline employees need properly aligned incentives, specific

guidance on how to take action and training that improves their ability to

take the right kind of action.

People in my organization are more concerned with getting a good CX score than creating a great customer experience.

FOR THOSE USING SCORES IN VARIABLE COMPENSATION, MISALIGNMENT IS MORE PRONOUNCED


STRONGLY DISAGREE

DISAGREE NEITHER AGREE NOR DISAGREE

AGREE STRONGLY AGREE

5%

6%

12%

25%

21%

20%

25%

21%

43%

34%

35%

17%

12%

18%

8%

VARIABLE COMP INCENTIVES

C-SUITE VARIABLE COMP

NO VARIABLE COMP

SCORE-CHASING CREATES BAD OUTCOMES


Prescription for the Future: Action at the Core of Your Program


PRESCRIPTION FOR THE FUTURE: ACTION AT THE CORE OF YOUR PROGRAM

STOP “CHASING THE SCORE” AND FOCUS ON DRIVING ACTION

Shifting the focus away from scores does not mean

you shouldn’t have measurable goals for CX performance and

improvement activities. But it does mean that instead of only

tracking outcome scores, you should track and manage the

actions you want to encourage and those you want to eliminate.

The ideal approach is to align performance measurement and

desired action to achieve long-term success for both the customer

experience and the company’s bottom line. If frontline CX goals

were based on “trackable” actions, CX would be more effectively

improved for customers, scores raised and business impact

achieved. Creating that alignment between customers and the

organization is at the core of CX improvement.

Scores that focus more on what customers feel and experience

for themselves rather than a “likeliness to recommend” or even

“overall satisfaction” appear more likely to drive actions aligned

with CX improvement goals – an important factor in selecting the

right metric.

“At the employee level, we’re better off incentivizing the behaviors that we know will lead to better outcomes. This type of incentive helps us ensure that our teams are delivering upon our promise.”

– CX EXECUTIVE, LARGE MEDICAL DEVICE COMPANY

7

One MaritzCX OEM with hundreds of dealerships struggled

to align the customer experience with sales to create

sustainable, profitable growth. They took action and changed

the business focus. They invested in CX improvement and

developed a formal CX framework.

SOLUTION:

The execution of this involved five primary steps:

1. Alignment on customer engagement surveys and feedback

mechanisms

2. Incorporating true drive analysis to discover what is really

driving dealership sales and service satisfaction

3. Connecting the dots to clearly align the business outcomes

and service delivery expectations

4. Introducing action planning to help make and monitor

improvements in their dealership processes

5. Training on using tools and creating effective action plans

Since dealerships are the tangible manifestation of the

manufacturer’s brand, for this OEM, it was critical to have

dealerships aligned and executing on this plan. So a new

incentive program was delivered, along with the above CX

strategies, to help drive stronger dealer engagement.

RESULTS:

Was it successful? The results include the following:

⊲ 10% increase in year-over-year customer sales satisfaction

⊲ 15% (10.8 percentage point) increase in year-over-year

customer service satisfaction

⊲ 4 point increase in benchmarking scores

⊲ 5% increase in “recommended dealer” scores

CASE STUDY: PROBLEM PUTTING CX FIRST

Stop Chasing the Score and Start Upping Your Game


For many years, organizations have “chased” better customer satisfaction scores. Many companies have implemented

CX measurement and management programs, but surprisingly

customer satisfaction indexes have remained stagnant over the

last twenty years. Although we can sometimes attribute this lack

of positive change to inappropriately managed CX programs (as

described above), there are also instances where a very robust

CX program has NOT led to the serious CX improvement the

company desired.

So why is it that even well-meaning, seemingly committed

organizations are not achieving the CX improvement and related

business impact that they are seeking?

In order to understand this better, we performed a global study of

CX practices. This over-5,000-respondent study revealed that the

differences between CX leaders and CX laggards go far beyond

the presence of customer experience improvement programs. The

study found that companies that excel in customer experience

have actually made huge investments in 14 customer-impacting

competencies, ranging from operational process documentation

to employee hiring and training programs.

STOP CHASING THE SCORE AND START UPPING YOUR GAME


REAL CX IMPROVEMENT REMAINS ELUSIVE

73.273.873.7

1995 2005 2015

OVERALL U.S. CUSTOMER SATISFACTION HAS ONLY INCREASED 0.1% IN THE LAST 20 YEARS

ONLY 1/3 OF COMPANIES RATE THEIR CX EFFORTS AS GOOD OR VERY GOOD AT “MAKING CHANGES” TO THE BUSINESS

10% OF COMPANIES SURVEYED ARE TRULY CUSTOMER-CENTRIC

OF CX PROFESSIONALS CONSIDER THEIR COMPANY’S CX PROGRAM NOT VERY SUCCESSFUL72%

How were your customer-related processes primarily designed?

CX IMPACT ON BUSINESS RESULTS

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

PRIMARY, CONSIDERED

IMPACT ON CUSTOMER

MAXIMIZE OPERATIONAL

EFFICIENCY

“BEST GUESS” APPROACH

BALANCED OPERATIONS

EFFICIENCY AND

CUSTOMER NEEDS

STARTED WITH IMPACT ON THE

CUSTOMER AND WORKED BACKWARDS

% “VERY SUCCESSFUL” IN IMPACTING BUSINESS RESULTS

% OF FIRMS

19%70%

47%

37%

36%

46%

33%

23%

16%

10%

Leadership’s decisions and consistency positively impact business results.


In other words, the study revealed the intuitive but ignored the

truth—real improvement only comes from real improvement—from

focusing on the actions, behaviors, and competencies that matter

to customers.

Many organizations continue to claim that they are pursuing

customer experience improvement, but their efforts revolve

around the low-hanging fruit of CX measurement and

management systems. While these programs are intensely

important, they cannot in and of themselves turn a company into a

CX superstar.

The actions and behaviors that separate CX laggards from

CX leaders range from people hiring and training practices to

organizational structure. Each is important, and each has an

impact on the organization’s ability to create real change in its

customer satisfaction.

STOP CHASING THE SCORE AND START UPPING YOUR GAME


“The gap between perceived CX commitment and reality is often vast, but less than obvious to management.”

– MICHAEL ALLENSON, MARITZCX PRINCIPAL CX TRANSFORMATION CONSULTANT

TWEET THIS

10

http://ctt.ec/911U4

Success Starts From the Top


SUCCESS STARTS FROM THE TOP


Our CXEvolution framework focuses on 14 specific CX

competencies that make up six organizational dimensions that

are critical for an organization to have success on their journey

to customer centricity. These six dimensions include Customer

Response, Information, Processes, Hiring and Training People,

Organizational Structure and Culture.

As the model indicates, the foundation of every organization is

in its culture. As many have pointed out—beginning with Peter

Drucker—even the best strategies will fail if the underlying

organizational culture does not support them. Our CXEvolution

benchmark digs into the importance of organizational

commitment, common beliefs and the role/impact of leadership.

The results are clear: Having leadership that doesn’t just talk

the talk, but demonstrably walks the walk is critical to having CX

programs that are robust and drive business outcomes.

Only one in seven participants in our global CXEvolution

benchmark feel that their leadership’s actions are completely

consistent with their words. And these companies have

significantly better business success than other organizations.

Interestingly, as we speak with CX professionals, they

consistently say that having leadership that walks the walk is

more important to CX success than the performance metric

they use, the way they respond to customers, or the analytics

and tools that they put in place. What is most interesting is that

among these factors, leadership’s actions is the one thing that

CX pros do not have in their direct control.

Ultimately, CX success takes organizational commitment and

alignment, as well as the smart execution of a robust CX

measurement and management program.

Belief Commitment

Response

Hiring & TrainingRewards

Discretion

Sources Integration

Design Governance

DesignApplicationKnowledgeDocument

Customer

Culture

People

Information

Structure

Processes

12

CX maturity is determined based on an evaluation of an organization’s people, information systems, processes, structure, customer focus, and culture.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

– PETER DRUCKER

TWEET THIS

http://ctt.ec/aH5Gd

13

Senior management’s actions are completely consistent with

their words about our customers.

LEADERSHIP’S ACTIONS MAKE A DIFFERENCE

NEITHER AGREE NOR DISAGREE

DISAGREE

STRONGLY DISAGREE

AGREE

STRONGLY AGREE

% “VERY SUCCESSFUL” IN IMPACTING BUSINESS RESULTS

14% 67%

48%

28%

17%

16%

41%

28%

12%

5%

Leadership’s decisions and consistency positively impact business results.



LEARN HOW CX MATURITY DRIVES FINANCIAL SUCCESS.

A Framework for Taking Action


The MaritzCX CXEvolution™ framework is the foundation

for a diagnostic CX assessment tool that enables companies to

understand their CX maturity and organizational readiness to deliver on

the customer experience.

What makes the CXEvolution™ diagnostic assessment most valuable

is that it enables a company to clearly understand what steps it can

take to improve the organization’s ability to deliver a great customer

experience and drive improved business outcomes.

The maturity assessment is based on 14 CX competencies and a

company’s maturity is determined based upon employee assessment

of these competencies.

The CXEvolution maturity assessment tool provides you with three

key takeaways:

1. You will know your strengths and weaknesses regarding your

customers, employees, processes, information, structure and culture.

2. You will see how you compare to others in your industry and

outside of your industry.

3. Most importantly, you will learn what you can do to improve your CX

initiatives to drive positive behavior and actions.

A FRAMEWORK FOR TAKING ACTION


CXEVOLUTION MATURITY CURVE

BU

SIN

ES

S O

UT

CO

ME

CXEVOLUTION MATURITY

APATHETIC

INVESTIGATE

MEASURE

RESPOND

STANDARDIZE

SOLVE

ALIGN

ENCULTURATE

ASSESS YOUR ORGANIZATION NOW.

http://www.maritzcx.com/assessment/

Moving Up the Maturity Curve Yields Big Results


Moving up the maturity continuum is not just an exercise

in CX improvement. Our benchmark research has shown that moving

up is all about improving business impact as well. Companies at

the highest levels of maturity are three times more likely to have

significantly improved financial results and customer retention in the

past year as compared to those in the lower half of the maturity curve.

The fact that so many companies are assessed to be in the bottom half

of the CX maturity continuum is not reflective of the investment and

effort that many of these companies put into their CX measurement and

management programs. However, their placement is determined based

on the least common denominator in their performance on the

14 competencies. Like a well-oiled machine that has one component

that has been neglected, a company’s performance on CX is often

hindered similarly by one or two competencies that trail the rest.

MOVING UP THE MATURITY CURVE YIELDS BIG RESULTS


MOVING UP THE MATURITY CURVE YIELDS BIG RESULTS

Companies that are at the highest levels of maturity are 3 times more likely to have improved financial results and retention as compared to those in the lower half of the maturity curve.


20%17%

14%

22%25%

39%

18% 20%

40%44%

54%

64%

44%48%

58%

21%

APATHETIC INVESTIGATE

87% OF COMPANIES ARE HERE

MEASURE RESPOND STANDARDIZE SOLVE ALIGN ENCULTURATE

3XFINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

CUSTOMER RETENTION

Scores are an important barometer, but not an endpoint in

driving CX improvement. The scores that are most effective are those

that best align with customer experiences. Identify the customer

needs that align with business outcomes, and set CX improvement

goals accordingly.

Improving customer experience requires people to understand how to

take customer-focused action. Rewarding people for actions that you

know have an impact on business outcomes creates more alignment

with the outcomes you seek. Hold them accountable for the right

behaviors that will drive your business.

Extend the organizational alignment by engaging company leadership

and stakeholders across the organization to evolve processes, practices

and policies to align with customer opportunities, challenges and needs.


© 2016 MARITZCX HOLDINGS LLC. CXEVOLUTION IS A TRADEMARK OF MARITZCX. NET PROMOTER. NET PROMOTER SYSTEM, NET PROMOTER SCORE,

NPS AND ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF BAIN & COMPANY, INC., FRED REICHHELD AND SATMETRIX SYSTEMS, INC. 18

STOP CHASING THE SCORE.

START ENABLING AND MOTIVATING YOUR ORGANIZATION.

What is your organization’s CX maturity? Assess it now.

For more information about CXEvolution and the maturity model, visit: www.maritzcx.com/cxevolution

or contact one of our CXEvolution experts at: [email protected].

Learn more about how CX Maturity leads to financial gains: www.maritzcx.com/financialgain

WHAT IS YOUR ORGANIZATION’S CX MATURITY? ASSESS IT NOW.


http://www.maritzcx.com/cxevolution

mailto:askcxe%40maritzcx.com?subject=

http://www.maritzcx.com/financialgain


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