Institutionalizing the tracking of customer satisfaction helps cut to the heart of what truly makes customers happy and keeps them coming back for more.

1. Cognizant CRM Insights
Taking a True Measure of Customer Experience
By Tom Woodson
As every marketer should know by now, it is The Role of the Customer Experience
critical that customers have a positive Team
experience when interacting with their
companies. A few years after the advent of Web Traditionally, marketing managers collect
2.0, consumers are more powerful than ever, and customer satisfaction data and then find ways to
any company that ignores their preferences puts make the numbers look good. Instead, they should
its existence at risk. Many organizations, conduct root cause analysis and take corrective
therefore, are implementing Customer action. But this rarely happens due to a lack of
Experience Management (CEM) tools and time and training. Having a dedicated Customer
techniques to better understand their Experience team can help overcome this. This
customers. team is charged with pulling customer satisfaction
data from all parts of the organization and
Unfortunately, most companies that measure reporting on trends to executive management and
customer satisfaction do so departmentally to the rest of the company. What this reveals is an
rather than at the enterprise enterprise view, identifying common issues across
Institutionalizing level. With this approach, no one channels -- however customers interact with your
in the organization is responsible organization.
the tracking of customer
for customer experience. To take
satisfaction helps cut to a true measure of customer The Customer Experience team sets standards
the heart of what truly experience requires dedicating a for reporting so meaningful comparisons can be
made among channels and modes of interaction.
makes customers happy team specifically to that
purpose. The role of the If you can resolve the root cause issues, your
and keeps them coming customer satisfaction scores will rise. That is a
Customer Experience team is to
back for more. evaluate customer experience core premise, and one that we have seen borne
holistically, across channels and out in our work with clients. Another important
departments, taking ownership of customer function of the Customer Experience team is to
perception and satisfaction. watch metrics for any sign of an actionable trend
(whether positive or negative) so they can
Institutionalizing the tracking of customer respond.
satisfaction helps cut to the heart of what truly
makes customers happy and keeps them coming For example, a Cognizant customer introduced a
back for more. third-party call center to handle certain types of
CRM Insights

2. customer transaction calls. However, the third- The team also monitors social networking sites
party personnel did not have adequate training on such as Facebook, Twitter and online
how to handle these calls. Transactional surveys communities and blogs so the company is aware
conducted immediately after calls of this type of what customers are saying outside the
indicated that customers were not pleased with company, as well as within the official channels,
the service they had received. Instead of rating and can take action if necessary.
their own satisfaction as high (at
With a Fortune 500-size level 4 or 5 out of 5), customers A recent example from the grocery industry
company, the Customer consistently rated their made headlines when the CEO of one company
satisfaction in the 1’s and 2’s. made disparaging remarks about a health food
Experience team might chain in blogs and on social networking sites.
comprise a full-time staff of In addition, the company The company being attacked took action as soon
two to 10 people, depending offered customers the opportu- as the commenter’s hidden agenda and rival
on how many channels nity to participate in surveys on status was revealed. It can be difficult to
its Web site. These surveys also determine whether or not the people
they’re monitoring and how indicated customer displeasure commenting have a hidden agenda.
many vertical industries with the third-party call center,
the company serves. establishing a negative cus- Of course, even if they do, your response must
tomer experience trend. Social be measured and authentic or you risk
media sites were a third source of feedback. Put increasing the damage. This is another reason to
together, the customer experience data culled establish a team (or an individual on that team)
from the different sources strongly indicated to track all forms of social media for trends and
unhappiness stemming from the root cause of customer comments. Every company is just one
poor performance by the call center provider. bad YouTube video away from a firestorm.
Domino’s Pizza discovered this recently as video
The company took corrective action by doing came to light of employees handling pizza in a
remedial training with the call center provider non-hygienic manner. Your brand can be ruined
and building an escalation path that enabled overnight by malicious activity or plain-old bad
improvement of first-call resolution. The PR. This type of event can tank your customers’
customer satisfaction trendline has since satisfaction levels just as rapidly as a product
changed from decreasing to increasing. Had the recall or other major issue.
company had a Customer Experience team
poised to act on the first
Who’s Onboard?
A chief task of the indication of a drop in
customer attitudes, it would With a Fortune 500-size company, the Customer
Customer Experience team
have likely been able to turn Experience team might comprise a full-time staff
is to establish common the situation around more of two to 10 people, depending on how many
processes and customer quickly. channels they’re monitoring and how many
satisfaction metrics across vertical industries the company serves.
By monitoring customer
the enterprise, including interactions and trends in Depending on the number of interactions and
standard categorization customer sat scores, the channels, the team might include a few part-time
of customer interactions. Customer Experience team staff members, as well. The most important
could take corrective action thing is to have a leader with a vision. The other
faster to stem the tide of dissatisfaction. Most roles include a governance control person who
companies -- even the largest ones -- do not share brings in a governance board (executive leaders
customer satisfaction data across the from different areas) and part-time
organization. So, for example, personnel from the representatives from senior leadership across
in-house call center might well be aware of the corporation. Likely, checking the social
mounting customer dissatisfaction long before its networking sites will require at least one full-
Web team. The Customer Experience team has time person (perhaps a recent college graduate
visibility into leading indicators across all with intimate knowledge of the ways of the Web).
interaction channels, so it can see trends that
need attention sooner, as opposed to minor blips. A chief task of the Customer Experience team is
to establish common processes and customer
CRM Insights 2

3. satisfaction metrics across the enterprise, In today’s fast-moving world, the tide of
including standard categorization of customer customer opinion changes rapidly. Staying
interactions. abreast of customer satisfaction with enough
time to take corrective action
For example, relationship surveys (in which requires an enterprise view. Having a central team
selected customers are asked about their Leaving the task of measuring control the surveying
feelings toward the company) are one way to customer satisfaction to process both boosts
measure customer satisfaction. In this case, you individual channels and
have common survey questions across all your
response rates and protects
verticals increases your risk of
different input channels. Transactional surveys not being able to respond in against “survey fatigue”
(in which customers are polled immediately time. Having a Customer on the part of customers.
following a transaction) are another important Experience team helps you
avenue. It is a best practice to have the team keep a close watch on customer satisfaction
review both types of survey instruments, trends across channels and product lines and
ensuring they follow enterprise standards, are decreases your risk of one day finding your
statistically relevant and are not excessively customers have gone elsewhere.
long. Having a central team control the
surveying process both boosts response rates
and protects against “survey fatigue” on the
part of customers.
About the Author
Tom Woodson is a Senior CRM Strategist within the Customer Solutions Practice at Cognizant. With
over 20 years of CRM experience, Tom brings insight and experience to designing CRM systems (sales,
service and marketing) with measurable business benefits in mind. He has successfully delivered
multiple CRM projects through the full SDLC lifecycle and has expertise in CRM Application Functional
Architecture, business process design and re-design, organizational change management and training.
Tom has recently focused on customer experience management. He can be reached at
Tom.Woodson@cognizant.com.
About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting and business
process outsourcing services. Cognizant's single-minded passion is to dedicate our global technology and
innovation know-how, our industry expertise and worldwide resources to working together with clients to
make their businesses stronger. With over 50 global delivery centers and 64,000 employees as of June
30, 2009, we combine a unique onsite/offsite delivery model infused by a distinct culture of customer sat-
isfaction. A member of the NASDAQ-100 Index and S&P 500 Index, Cognizant is a Forbes Global 2000 com-
pany and a member of the Fortune 1000 and is ranked among the top information technology companies
in BusinessWeek's, Hot Growth and Top 50 Performers listings.
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