Hi Michael, tell us about yourself and your background.
I am CEO of a data analytics company, Bottom-Line Analytics. We do advanced analytics and predictive modeling. Included in this is marketing effectiveness modeling. We include a CX metric in our marketing models.
What is the biggest misunderstanding about customer experience, in your opinion?
Dismissing its importance. It is the largest driver of businesses and a critical success factor.
What can companies do to improve customer loyalty and retention?
Companies are taking the human voice out of their relationship with customers. Many companies do not want to deal with customers face to face after the sale. People are tired of speaking to bots and recorded voices.
What do you think is most relevant and why: CSAT (customer satisfaction score), NPS (net promoter score), or CES (customer effort score)?
All of these are survey-based metrics, which have their limitations. We prefer deriving metrics from unsolicited voice-of-the-customer sources.
How can companies better use social media in the era of customer-centricity and personalization?
They need to have algorithms that link social media conversations about brands to the brands’ ale or performance and then drill down to understand what elements of conversations are driving business performance.
What is your opinion on AI-based chatbots to handle customer support?
I am opposed to this because it removes the human factor out of the equation.
Last but not least, what is your favorite CX metric?
We have an algorithm that converts social brand conversations into a metric we call the Social Engagement Index. This metric uses linguistic rules and shows a high correlation to brand sales (.70 to .85)