September 2024 | VOL. 26

Did you know…

Roughly 60% of organizations are not effectively acting on customer insights gathered through data analysis.

Fast Company, 2024

Welcome to the September Verde Edition newsletter. This month, we focus on a key theme: ACTION! Or more aptly stated—inaction. As Fast Company noted in a 2024 article, roughly 60% of companies are not acting on customer insights to drive strategic and tactical decision-making. This was echoed in our August poll results where nearly half of our readers stated that their organizations do not consistently act on customer feedback.

The question is, "Why?" More times than not, the P&L guides how executives act. And rightly so. But should it be the primary (or only) input guiding their initiatives? Where does the voice-of-customer fit into the planning process?

There is often skepticism about the value and reliability of voice-of-customer insights. And with this apparent lack of value, perceived risk increases. This is exactly why the Verde Group created Revenue@Risk®. It is our patent-pending approach to enhance the value of customer insights by connecting the impact of specific customer experience interactions with the economic impact they have on the P&L.

It is this approach that consistently results in executives taking action. When customer insights are grounded in the business, perceived risk is decreased and action becomes plausible or even inevitable. And with action, revenues and profits increase.

Our challenge to readers and executives everywhere: Insist that your voice-of-customer insight teams and providers demonstrate the clear linkage between CX insights and the financial benefit of investing. If this connection cannot be clearly articulated, give us a call. We’d love to speak with you!

August Poll Results

In August, we asked, "Does your organization consistently act on customer feedback?"

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.

September 2024 Poll

“CX is held back by misaligned executives who understand the disciplines

through the lens of their responsibilities.”

Former Business Week CIO Isaac Sacolick

What do you think?

Note: This article was updated on September 8, 2024. The original publish date was January 11, 2022.

Life, Forrest Gump famously said, is like a box of chocolates. CX, on the other hand, definitely isn’t anything like his view on life; as a customer, you should always know what you’re going to get.

I was recently at a small chocolate boutique retailer purchasing truffles for a friend. Another customer next to me was also shopping for chocolates but asked to select her own from the display window. A regular, she knew exactly what she wanted. When the store clerk began unceremoniously heaping the chocolates in a pile into a box, she stopped him. “I’d like my chocolates in a display box like the ones you have for sale,” she requested. The store clerk replied, “Sorry, we don’t do that anymore. If you want your chocolates to lie flat in a display box, you’ll have to buy a special wood container for an extra $35.” I was surprised to hear this and so was she. Where was the economic value there? Who profits from dissatisfying a customer like that? Disappointed, the woman left the store and quite possibly will never return. At one point for this customer, the experience of buying chocolates was positive in that it was personalized, beautifully displayed and she only paid for what she wanted — no nasty pistachio-coconut truffles for her! So why the change? READ ON.

September 2024's Question:

Question: Dear Verde Group, my leadership team has asked me to demonstrate how investing in the customer experience will result in more revenue for our business. They appreciate the current data I’m providing from our NPS survey, but the results are counterintuitive. Our NPS score is going up, but our revenues have fallen over the past year. Please help!

Answer: We are here to help! The Verde Group’s E-A-B model, which is at the core of our insight methodology, proposes that understanding experiences, not attitudes, is the key to unlocking CX insights. Elementally, you cannot change someone’s attitude. You can only change the experiences that created the attitudes in the first place. The E-A-B model is designed and based on human motivation theory which suggests that as humans, we are “hard wired” with a fight or flight response mechanism, the instinctive physiological response to a threatening situation, which readies one either to resist forcibly or to run away when experiencing danger. Danger, in a CX context, could be described as friction. Therefore, experiences, especially CX friction, can be explicitly tied to a customer’s behavior. And as individuals, we are much more likely to predictably take action on negative experiences than positive ones. Dissatisfaction is the strongest predictor of an individual’s future behavior.

Understanding the barriers that limit customers from purchasing goods and services, or engaging with a brand, serves several key points in the pursuit of linking CX insights to the economic performance of the enterprise. Separate noise from signal by quantitatively prioritizing the magnitude of the friction—not just the frequency of the issue. This will help you link specific experiences to downstream behaviors and resulting economic performance. Financially grounded insights will create a baseline business case for investment decisions in people, process, and technology.

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