The 'New Normal' Needs A New Budget
With these evolving times, many advertising and Customer Experience programs are having their budgets reviewed and many reduced due to budget shortfalls. A strong CX program engages customers, boosts loyalty and creates brand 'evangelists' that promote your business. Word-of-mouth advertising is the most inexpensive and most productive way to sell your brand. This brings up several points to consider when reviewing cutting the budget of your CX program:
- You see value in your CX programs' insights, and create (and measure) action plans from these data points. You likely can agree that this information is highly important, but perhaps you need to find a way to still gather insight data, but in a more budget-friendly way.
- Your CX programs' insights were good, but they were not utilized to the fullest. Meaning, the program is not creating the value you need at this time and you find it easy to cut back in this area.
- You have pivoted your business to keep up. You aren't sure if the changes and updates are being executed as intended and what the public perception is. Your business is just trying to keep afloat and investing hard in a robust CX program just isn't in the cards at this time.
We have 5 options for you to consider if you are finding your business in these (or a similar) position.
1) Social Reputation Monitoring
Social Reputation monitoring is growing in importance and even more so as businesses are pivoting to a stronger online presence and online shopping is on the rise. Creating a basic social reputation monitoring program is a cost-effective start that is quick and easy to run and manage. We have basic levels that can be included FOR FREE with any other program as well. There is a direct link between increased social review engagement by the brand and the increased ROI.
2) Voice of the Customer (VoC)
For mere pennies a day, Voice of the Customer is a great way to engage with your customers, gain usable insights and create monitored action plans. VoC's can be as simple as a link emailed out to your database, a QR code on a card, table-talker, sticker on your window, or a message on a receipt. However you want to present the survey, we can do it.
3) LITE Mystery Shopping Programs
We offer a Mystery Shopping Program that we refer to as LITE (Little Insight Into Everything) that may work for some clients. A standard Mystery Shopping program involves a custom built survey, scheduling the best certified shopper to complete the survey, a fully edited response package and access to a robust data aggregation portal. In the case of LITE Mystery Shopping, the cost savings comes from the shorter surveys being self assigned and edited by the shopper and the data is presented in a raw-er format. We can definitely create executive reporting to present your insight data more effectively as an a-la-carte option as well.
4) Online Comment Cards
Inviting your customers to complete online comments cards engages your customers and let's them know that you value their feedback. These comment cards are not linked to a specific survey asking specific questions, but instead offer your customers to give general feedback on their experience. Like the old comment boxes, but cleaner and easier to use. The sentiments expressed can be aggregated into actionable data in a personalized portal. The cost for this program is less than a cup of coffee a day and is absolutely budget friendly.
5) Inspire From The Inside: Internal Auditing
Creating an internal audit is an efficient way to ensure that brand and compliance standards are being met which relates to the customer experience. We have another option for internal audits and that is to design a Customer Experience Internal Audit Program. Encourage your employees to complete an online form at a set interval where they share how they elevated a customer's experience, diffused a difficult situation, improved an area of the store or restaurant to benefit the customer, etc. Celebrate the employees successes and share the results inspiring other employees. A win for your customers and your employees!
6) POS NPS Questions
NPS, or Net Promoter Scoring, is a very high level way of measuring your customer's experience. Why not integrate an NPS question into your Point Of Sale (POS) device and ask your customers at the transaction level? this is a cost effective way to gain insights and build reports to create actionable and measurable plans.
7) Employee Satisfaction Surveys
Starting at the foundation of a robust CX program, are the front line employees that interact with customers. Satisfied employees give great customer experiences, that is a fact. How do you know if your employees are satisfied unless you ask them? Start with an employee satisfaction survey to create action plans for improving your employee and your customer relationships.
Whatever Your Budget, We Can Work With You
A business is never too big or too small to need a customer experience program. We work with businesses of all kinds and sizes to get the insights they need and transform the results into actionable data. If you have a question or a program need, feel free to contact us and we can discuss what your needs are, or what result you are hoping to get, and great a program that suits your business and your budget.
(seriously, whatever your budget (or lack thereof) we can work with you.)
