Questions like this tend to raise great debate. Philosophers could argue that if no one is around to see, hear, touch or smell the tree, does the tree even exist? Scientists, to whom sound is a physical phenomenon, would argue that because the falling tree causes airwaves to be disturbed, it still makes a sound despite there being nobody to hear it.
Either way you look at it, it’s about perception. And even though your customers might not physically see or hear you, they can still perceive your existence and feel the effect of your actions.
Your customers’ perception of you is influenced by every interaction they have with your organisation and the channels you use to communicate. Customer experience is all about seeing these interactions from the customer’s perspective – understanding how your customers perceive you. Whether that’s shopping on your website, calling a customer service line, or receiving a letter – they are all interactions which can make your customer happy or unhappy.
Unperceived existence
Conversely, you may never physically see or hear your customers either, but you will know they exist when you feel the effect of their emotions.
It is generally acknowledged that unhappy customers will tell between 10-20 people about a bad experience, whereas happy customers will tell only 9. To the customers who are emotionally unmoved by their interactions with you, take that ‘unperceived existence’ as no news is better than bad news.
And, if you let the proverbial tree fall, your customers will feel its effect. You’re very likely to hear about it if your shopping cart isn’t easy and intuitive to use, your customer service agent is rude, or they are confused by and can’t understand the letter you sent them.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
The NPS is the most well-recognised and simplest customer experience metric. It is measured by the response to asking the following single question:
How likely are you to recommend [X organisation] to a friend or colleague?
Respondents are grouped in the following categories (based on a scale of 0-10, where 0 is ‘not at all likely’ and 10 is ‘extremely likely’):
Promoters (score 9-10)
Passives (score 7-8)
Detractors (score 0-6)
The NPS is arrived at by subtracting the percentage of detractors from promoters.
Lost in measurement
Given the current preoccupation with metrics and measurement (and I’m not just talking business, but life in general too), it’s easy to talk about customers in terms of data – aggregated, impersonal information about people who you’ll probably never see or hear.
This is dangerous, so you need to continually remind yourselves that the data actually represents emotion-driven human beings who see, hear and feel, just like you and me.
And with that, I will leave you with this thought…
“If men ceased to exist sound would continue to travel and heavy bodies to fall to the earth in exactly the same way, though… there would be no-one to know it.”
(Bhaskar, R. 2008 [1975], A Realist Theory of Science, London).
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