Listen to Customers & Build a Customer Listening Path

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A customer listening path unites leaders and the organization in understanding experiences that impact customer growth or loss. When you focus on listening to your customer by using your “one-company” listening path method (CX competency 3), you are able to utilize feedback and tell the story of how your customers experience your business.

Customer Listening Requires Agreement on Your Customer Journey Stages

As you build out your listening path, your customer journey provides the frame for storytelling.

That’s why getting agreement on simple journey stages is so important. Those stages allow you to collapse multiple sources of information into your one-company story. This story shows customer interactions across the journey map. By gathering feedback, and chunking it stage by stage, you can understand the customer perceptions and perceived value as the customer experiences it. This view enables a focused prioritzation of actions to earn the right to customer-driver growth.

The role of the Chief Customer Officer is to engage leaders and the organization to want to be a part of “one company” story telling. and focused prioritization of actions to earn the right to customer-driven growth.

When you present this cohesive view, you can unite the organization to align decision making on actions that will have the most impact.

Three Conditions for Collecting and Organizing Feedback

You know the debate about efficacy of the survey collection tool, the sample size or the customers surveyed. These three conditions will help remove many of the issues that plague progress when most of the stories come from survey scores.

1. Multiple sources of feedback

Collect feedback from multiple sources to tell the comprehensive story of customers’ lives.

  • feedback volunteered from customers as they interact with you
  • survey feedback
  • social feedback
  • experiential listening
  • other research

When multiple sources of feedback point to the same issue or opportunity,  the company debate halts. There is power in convergence.

2. One-company categorization

Build one-company categorization of issues, so that the issues roll-up to volumes that command attention.

3. Stage of the experience

Present information from multiple sources by stage of the experience. This is a game-changer, as issues and opportunities will always be in reference to customers.

Reduce Survey Score Emphasis & Gain a Balanced Understanding of Customer Experiences

Does any of this sounds familiar: As results come in separately from surveys, data reports, and social media, they are handed over to an operating area or silo to “go work on it.” Every silo or geography or channel determines to use the information. Then each interprets the results and plans actions.

The one-company approach helps to reduce the pressure on the survey as the only metric that the company focuses on and discuses.  Building a customer listening path enables survey results to be part of a balanced understanding of experiences delivered to your customer.

Conclusion

Listening to customers and caring about their experiences enables you to build a customer listening path that will be transformational to your customer experience.

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