The Metrics of Customer Experience, Part 6: Process Measurements for Customer Experience

The sixth part in a 7-part series on customer experience measurement, based on ideas and insights from Greg Kihlström’s recent book, Meaningful Measurement of the Customer Experience.

The following is based on ideas from my recent book, Meaningful Measurement of the Customer Experience, now available everywhere. 

In the last article in this series we explored the first category of internal customer experience metrics: product metrics. Now, we have the second of the two internal subcategories of customer experience metrics, which are the process metrics, as shown in the figure below (Figure 2.7.1).

 Figure 2.7.1, Quantitative measurement as defined in the CX measurement framework

Definition

Process metrics can be defined as the workflows and systems that enable a customer experience to occur. This includes how long it takes to respond to a customer request, or the number of steps or “hands” that need to touch a request in order for it to be fulfilled. A lot of this is based around efficiency and waste.

Examples

Here are a few examples of process metrics as they relate to customer experience:

• How long it takes to respond to a customer request

• The number of steps it takes or “hands” that need to touch a request across teams, departments, or partners

• The frequency and process by which products or processes related to customer experience are analyzed and improved

• The speed by which improvements to customer experience tools, platforms, and processes are designed, tested, and launched

How to Measure

Here are a few examples of how to measure process metrics for customer experience:

• Time to solution for improvements to customer experience processes and platforms

• Efficiency and productivity, including cost savings and/or revenue gains

• Indirect methods such as increased purchases and customer satisfaction

Opportunities

Process measurement provides the biggest opportunity to have long-term sustainable gains and improvements in customer experience and satisfaction. Just as methods such as lean manufacturing or agile software development became game changers in those (and many other) areas of business, investments in customer experience process measurement and improvement ensure that what might be a good CX today doesn’t stagnate and become less effective over time.

Challenges

Measurement of process is probably the least direct of the four subcategories when it comes to tying improvements to customer experience gains. Thus, it can be one of the hardest to justify continued investment in, unless an organization is driven by a strong agile, lean, Six Sigma, or similar mindset.

The last category of customer experience in the framework helps organizations continually analyze and improve CX across people, processes, and technology. While the ultimate measure of any of these methods is customer satisfaction and return on experience (which we will explore in the next article in this series), being able to break CX measurement down into these parts gives insights that might simply get lost otherwise.

In the next article, we’re going to discuss how to tie all of these customer experience metrics together to measure and calculate return on experience.

This article is based on ideas from my recent book, Meaningful Measurement of the Customer Experience, now available everywhere.