The importance of measuring CX before, during and after growth plans
Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash
In the normal course of running your business, chances are you develop and execute plans all the time, just like every other business. When you execute plans, it usually affects your customers, either directly, or indirectly. As a result, the execution of plans adds risk to your customer relationships and can place strain on those same relationships. Some plans, like sales growth plans, new product introductions, and acquisitions, to name a few, inject even great risk to your customer relationships.
Like any process or system change, you should be measuring how your plan is performing, and how it is impacting customers. If your business is about to execute major plans, you should strongly consider implementing a customer feedback program to measure key customer experience metrics like Net Promoter ScoreSM (NPS®) before, during and after the roll-out of your new plan.
By doing so, you will establish the baseline of your customer experience (CX). As you begin to execute your plan, you continue to measure your CX metrics like NPS, Customer Satisfaction, Product Quality, Customer Effort Score and others, looking for deviations from your baseline. For example, if you see your NPS declining after executing your plans for a period of time, that might be an indicator that the changes your plan is introducing are not being well received by customers. This is akin to an early warning system, helping you adjust how fast, or slow, you drive your plans.
This same concept holds true for your employees. There is a direct correlation between how your employees feel about working for your business, and how your customers feel about working with your business. Plans you execute that are focused internally, like reorgs, team mergers, rapid hiring or RIFs (reduction in force), will likely affect your customer relationships due to the risk they inject into the business. Measuring employee satisfaction or eNPS, before, during and after the deploying of plans, will help you navigate changes with minimal impact on your customers.
Executing plans in business is what all businesses do. But not all businesses take the time to measure the impact of those changes on their customers. If the execution of new plans unintentionally drives customers away, wouldn't it be best to catch this quickly, and adjust your plans? Next time a major plan is proposed, make sure to discuss how you will measure the impact on your customers, first.