It’s my pleasure to have guest blogger, Jeff Dahms, Vice President of Research and Development for Customer Service Profiles share his thoughts on how institutions can turn customer feedback into a revenue driver. -Andrew Huber


Jeff Dahms

We all want to deliver a great customer experience, but it’s sometimes difficult to understand how those efforts generate revenue and save money. Below are six different ways customer feedback can drive institutional revenue:

Improving Digital Customer Experience

Based on customer experience research CSP has done in the past, the digital channel tends to trend lower in customer loyalty index than in-person interactions. This is true for most institutions. Imagine if this could be improved. A major part of customer experience research is through the digital channel, and an improved digital experience leads to more money.

Even this Forbes article states “Higher adoption of a digital interaction drives higher revenue or lower cost.”

Serving as a Compass

Institutions are a lot like people, they have natural talents and shortcomings. Take the example of restaurants – some have great food, but long wait times. Others have a great atmosphere, but are understaffed. For managers to be successful, they need to leverage customer experience research to gauge these strengths and weaknesses. Focusing on strengths, especially when they’re effortless, is a waste of resources and is a lost opportunity to make progress on a weaker and important customer touchpoint. Managers know their efforts must be used efficiently, so they need customer research to guide their choices.

New Customer Acquisition

Customers make decisions and build perceptions about Institutions very quickly, sometimes within a matter of seconds. Customer experience research helps dial in the way customers feel in those crucial “acquisition-or-not” moments. Similarly, a good customer experience consultant will work with your team to train specific behaviors that will lead to acquisition. Follow-through is just as important as the research itself.

Measuring Revenue Against Customer Loyalty Index Scores

One of the great things about customer experience metrics is that scores can be compared against revenue. When scores improve in a channel, like in-store customer experience, Institutions see a higher trend of sales, higher average purchase values and higher first-time customer acquisition. This is the quintessential definition of ROI for customer experience research: seeing revenue in a category reflect measured improvement.

Noticing Blind Spots Against Competition

Most customer experience research allows different types of comparisons: comparisons against oneself, against other nearby Institutions and against top competitors. Specifically, understanding this competitive landscape saves time and energy in developing business strategy. When a business sees how they compare to competition, they understand what they’re good and bad at and what they can improve on. Respectively, they learn what they should promote, what they should make peace with and where they have opportunity for growth.

Delighting, Rather Than Satisfying Customers

Warren Buffett made the idea of delighting customers infamous with his quote: “When you look in the mirror after you’ve gotten up, just write on the mirror, ‘Delight my customers.’

Not ‘satisfy…,’ delight.”

As he explains, excited customers are the best possible sales team through their genuine brand advocacy. In this way, customer experience research helps you quantify exactly how well your business is delighting, satisfying or disappointing customers. The difference between satisfying and delighting is incredibly important in the age of brands using customer experience as a major competitive piece, so understanding exactly how your institution performs is invaluable.