The biggest brands in the world are all now setting their sights on the smallest marketplace in the world, the marketplace of one. With the development of Customer Experience Management, large companies are turning to CXM systems with the aim of treating each and every customer as a unique market, and by understanding each customer, their marketing can then be tailored to appeal to and ‘wow’ each and every individual.

By analysing a customer’s order history, you can begin to anticipate their order future. When combined with insights gleaned from the analysis of ‘big data’ it allows large companies to give their customers a tailored service, where often they seem almost able to predict other products or services the customer would also like, which at its very best almost knows their future needs, and as importantly seldom delivers to them information which is irrelevant or of little interest.

Big data analysis allows companies to see for example that of all its customers that ordered product A and product F, 30% went on to order Product Z, and therefore Product Z might be pro-actively suggested to the remaining 70% that ordered A and F since a significant trend was detected. This of course is a very simplistic example, and in reality the data might yield much more subtle trend information that can be used.

Coupled with analysis of customer data is seeking VoC (Voice of the Customer) as often as possible, and from as many touchpoints as they are able i.e. their website, call centres, stores etc. The implementation of a customer feedback scheme is now viewed by many big corporations as imperative and an integral part of CXM, and its importance is also increasingly being seen by SMEs seeking to really get to know their customers.

An effective feedback scheme allows companies to understand the ‘mood’ of their customers, and see where the CX has fallen short in the eyes of the customer themselves. Since they are usually closed loop feedback schemes, they are also used to be pro-active and perform customer rescues as required.

With the exception of new business or product launches, the days of fixed message mass marketing campaigns from large companies seem set to diminish. Technology is now beginning to allow them to be replaced by marketing tailored to the individual but at volume, leading to a massively increased ROI since the information being received by each customer is more relevant, and more likely to result in a take-up.

If you work in the hospitality industry, perhaps running a B&B, hotel or restaurant, then one of your biggest issues for the last two or three years has probably been the damage that can be caused to your business by negative online reviews.

Whilst you may work hard to ensure a quality service, the likelihood is that from time-to-time you still get negative reviews, as what is considered excellent by one customer, will be viewed as unacceptable by another. The truth is that guests or customers often aren’t best placed to critique an establishment, since they are not an inspector who is spending their days inspecting similarly priced venues in the same locality, therefore their ‘yardstick’ may have been set at an unrealistic level.

So if you are in hospitality, perhaps running a guesthouse, hotel, pub or restaurant, what can you do to protect your business reputation against the often unjustified negative online reviews? Well in reality it is often tough to get existing negative reviews removed. Some sites do offer a system whereby you get points for each positive review, and so collect enough and you can exchange them for having a negative comment removed, but this is often not an available option and so the best solution long-term has to be to avoid getting them in the first place.

It’s impossible to get everything right, for every customer, all of the time…but you should always aim to. However when things do go wrong, to avoid negative reviews firstly provide an easy to use feedback scheme, making it more likely unhappy customers will feedback to you rather than vent their displeasure on a review site as people these days are busy and would seldom have time to do both. Then when you do get negative feedback it’s essential you fight the impulse to be defensive, you must challenge yourself to make the customer happy, remembering often they will then become a bigger advocate for your business than one that was happy in the first place.

Secondly, since you are putting in place a feedback scheme and acting upon the feedback i.e. implementing closed loop feedback, why not go all the way to adopting a customer experience focus within your business, and really set out to ‘wow’ your customers with your service levels. If you do you will find the word of mouth benefits will easily outweigh the extra time, money and effort invested, and also you yourself will feel far more positive about and indeed rightly proud of your business.

Customer Experience Management (the acronym for which is CXM or confusingly also CEM) is relatively young, and really has only recently been fully embraced by organisations.

So what is CXM?

CXM seeks to refocus an organisation towards customer service, and provide each customer with a tailored experience. It manages an organisation’s relationships with their customers, and monitors what the customer or client expects to experience in terms of service and/or a product, and sets this against what they actually experience, which are often two very different things in reality, CXM then seeks to rectify any difference between the two.

So what in tangible terms is CXM?

At the centre of all CXM systems is the critical component which is closed loop feedback. This involves gathering data from all existing customer touchpoints, but often also involves being more pro-active with Voice of the Customer (VoC) solutions such as Incentivised Feedback Surveys.

With a closed loop feedback scheme in place, taking feedback from surveys and indeed all customer touchpoints, negative feedback then triggers intervention where necessary, sometimes referred to as ‘customer rescue’, which is then followed by obtaining further feedback and intervention where necessary throughout the customer lifecycle.

CXM should ideally be seen as a pro-active approach to customer service and sales, marrying the two, initiating anticipatory contact with customer when appropriate to do so, and then reacting to feedback often on an individual basis.

Why do organisations need CXM?

According to various studies, it costs over five times as much to gain a new customer as retain an existing one, and this is why CXM has become the main focus for many organisations. The ultimate goal for CXM being avoidance of customer churn and maximising the customer life cycle, maintaining greater loyalty to a product or service. CXM also seeks to make advocates of their existing customers, gaining new business by increasing word of mouth after providing customers with an exceptional  experience.

With many large companies currently grappling with the implementation of Customer Experience Management (CXM/CEM) systems, one tool currently being deployed is the Incentivised Feedback Survey.

In the UK, retailers particularly have adopted this tool on mass, with such companies as New Look, Primark, Mountain Warehouse and supermarket giants Morrisons and Tesco all having recently implemented such schemes. Fast-food is another sector in which this tool has also gained popularity, with brands KFC and Pizza Hut leading the way.

Incentivised Feedback Survey schemes themselves are designed in most cases to tempt customers into taking the time to complete a feedback survey with respect services and/or products, with the reward often being in the form of entry to a prize draw or a discount against future goods or services.

Typically Incentivised Feedback Surveys are based online, and utilise a unique URL (sometimes arrived at via a QR code scanned into a mobile device) directing the user to a site separate to that of the company’s main website, or redirecting to 3rd party survey services. In either case this extra site usually functions solely as a bespoke online survey tool that has been tailored to suit the author company.

It is important to recognise that the design of these surveys are currently not always to suit their customers too, often lengthy, there are some poor examples of this tool now in existence which can give rise to a high abort rate. Further to this when analysed, one struggles to find evidence that the data from Incentivised Feedback Survey schemes will be from a full cross-section of a company’s customer base, indeed there is clearly a danger that data will more often come from lower socio-economic groups who will be more motivated to sacrifice their time for entry to a prize draw, or for a relatively small future discount against goods and services.

Despite their drawbacks, Incentivised Feedback Survey schemes certainly do provide extremely valuable data to many organisations as part of a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program, but managers tasked with introducing CXM do sometimes make erroneous assumptions that it provides a total closed loop feedback solution which it clearly does not. Indeed the Incentivised Feedback Survey should ideally be used in conjunction with other feedback tools, and the feedback from all customer touchpoints rather than as the only the one instrument within a CXM system.

A touched on a good CXM system does requires as an integral part a closed loop feedback system for which an Incentivised Feedback Survey scheme doesn’t ideally tick the box, though some vendors have sought to adapt their systems to try to with ‘customer rescue’ as an option within the Incentivised Feedback Survey process. In devising feedback schemes as part of CXM systems it is vital to remember that the primary goal is to avoid customer churn, therefore catching real-time opinion by way of closed loop feedback from the customers who are disgruntled (and therefore less likely to fill out long surveys) and who are motivated to imminently change suppliers, is worthy of a greater focus than the general feedback data obtained from Incentivised Feedback Surveys.