The Evolution of Measuring Customer Experience

Customer experience metrics have several uses. Most organisations now report having some level of customer experience measurement program in place. But the majority are still not able to show how the customer experience metrics they collect directly impact business performance or how they are using them to improve customer experience.

Measuring and improving customer experience is difficult in part because there isn’t a widely agreed upon definition of what constitutes a customer experience. This lack of definition also creates the potential issue of customer experience devolving into everything. But there has been some great progress on the definition and measurement front.

According to Thompson ”They can be used to communicate the rationale for previous investments; validate whether improvements have taken place; set goals and targets for future improvements; or intervene when remedial action is needed.”

1. Peace of mind has the strongest impact on customer satisfaction, loyalty and word of mouth.
2. Moments of truth are the next most important attributes to positively impact loyalty and word of mouth.
3. Outcome focus (the customers’ ability to achieve their goals) effects loyalty and word of mouth but only to a lesser extent than peace of mind.
4. After peace of mind, product experience has the strongest impact on customer satisfaction, but not as much impact as the other three dimensions on loyalty or word of mouth.

This research offers additional insight into how to measure customer experience. It suggests that the peace of mind dimension needs to be incorporated into how you create and calculate your customer experience metric. If you plan to create a measure of customer experience, consider how your organization is set up to deliver on these attributes and how you would measure each of these dimensions.