August 2024 | VOL. 25

"Customers don’t expect you to be perfect.

They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong."

Donald Porter, VP of British Airways

When customers perceive that companies are not listening to their issues, it leads to significant erosion in brand trust. If customers feel their feedback is ignored or not acted upon, they may begin to question the value of providing input in the first place. At the Verde Group, we see this all the time. According to the Verde Pulse Database, roughly 50–70% of customers we surveyed indicated they do not let companies know when a problem occured, largely because they perceive that the company will not take action to make it right. This creates a sense of frustration and helplessness, as customers may feel that their concerns are not being taken seriously. And the repeated experience of feeling unheard can push customers away, leading them to seek alternatives where they believe their voices will be valued and their concerns addressed.

The perception that a company is not listening also amplifies negative word-of-mouth. Disgruntled customers are more likely to share their negative experiences with others, whether through social media, online reviews, or personal conversations. This is why the Verde Group focuses on strategically and economically prioritizing CX friction as it is proven to have a high correlation to negative market action. A company should increase the opportunities for customers to express their concerns about experience friction points and be prepared to act. And by doing so, can ensure the voice of the customer guides their efforts to fix things when they go wrong.

July Poll Results

In July, we asked readers, "Do you believe your organization is over-surveying its customers?"

CX practitioners overwhelmingly indicated that yes, they believe their organizations are over-surveying customers. Why might this be the case? Is it truly that they are asking customers about their experiences too frequently? Or is it that their respective organizations are not equipped to act and thus, little may have changed in the experience since they last asked the customers about it? We believe this may be the case; the root cause of practitioners feeling that they “over-surveyed” is due to the lack of action taken by their organizations. This is reflected in other market studies. According to a 2024 report by Forrester, 70% of companies collect customer experience data, but fail to act.

This is exactly why the Verde Group is committed to linking CX insight to financial outcomes. By bridging the gap between specific and highly actionable insights and business outcomes, companies have the confidence to act knowing their investments will yield a return.  

We are here to help. To learn more about how we can help take your CX insight program to the next level, CLICK HERE.

READY TO TALK? Book an intro session with Dennis Armbruster, Verde Group Executive VP, to discover how you can enhance the impact of your CX program. We want to help you find methods to anchor your customer insights firmly within your business framework, driving stronger ROI and increasing executive buy-in. We want to learn more about your current challenges.

August 2024 Poll

Does your organization consistently act on customer feedback?

Organizations are constantly seeking ways to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs. This is particularly the case in manufacturing where many companies are finally rebounding from supply chain issues as a result of the global pandemic. In the search for solutions, leadership has relied upon insights generated from operational data, field input and the voice of customer. And while these sources are without doubt valuable, they may not reveal with clarity the real and monetizable opportunities for the enterprise.

For over 20 years, the Verde Group has worked with manufacturers and other industry leaders to uncover the highly predictive drivers of customer behavior—CX friction. Understanding CX friction within the operational and relationship dynamics of a business is not new. However, what is new and innovative is separating the noise from signal. And there is a lot of noise out there. In most, if not all cases, frequent issues described by sales and service leadership, front line staff, and even customers themselves, are not the issues representing market risk and growth opportunities. This is proven in the example below. This leading manufacturer of medical technology realized that the issues they were trying to address simply did not represent the true economic and strategic opportunities to improve the manufacturer’s business performance.

2022 Verde Group Manufacturing Client

It is a fact that if executed properly, CX insights can and should inform strategic investments and tactical initiatives. The challenge is that many CX insight efforts seek to understand customers’ attitudes toward their product, service, and brand. The “how much you love us” surveys and analytical methods, while interesting, simply won’t get it done. Attitudes are merely a cognitive expression of a customer’s experiences.

So why not focus on understanding which specific experiences shape a customer’s attitudes and more importantly, drive their behaviors? Here are three reasons why focusing on experiences (not attitudes) will help your CX insight program improve operational efficiency and overall business performance:

August 2024's Question:

Question: I’ve been to the Verde Group’s website and noticed that you focus a lot on friction and/or negative experiences. Can you explain to me why that is a core part of your value proposition?

Answer: Understanding where customers encounter friction in the experience is generally a top priority for most companies. CX professionals ask which stages of the customer journey—whether it’s awareness, purchase, onboarding, or support—present the most significant challenges for customers. The issue, and this is not a trivial matter, is separating noise from signal. In most cases, organizations know which problems are happening most frequently. But the frequency of a problem does not equate to the damage those problems cause for the business. This is what makes the Verde Group unique. We focus on friction because it is highly correlated to negative market action. But we don’t stop there. We use analytics to determine which specific problems impact customer behaviors and create Revenue@Risk®.