CSM Program Audit
Building a New Architecture
An audit, by definition, is an independent third party review of current ways of conducting business. A CSM audit deals with the evaluation of business’ approach to customer satisfaction, the nature of customer feedback sought, the way the information is distributed to internal clients, its impact on the users’ decision-making process, process improvement applications and the eventual outcome on customer experiences, satisfaction and loyalty in the marketplace. The business outcomes of a good CSM program can be measured in terms of customer retention, cross-sell and up-sell ratios, share of wallet, acquisition of new products, customer churn and market share growth and profitability, relative to the industry average. These business metrics may vary from business to business.
Since customer satisfaction research is more than 20 years old, many large companies have established these programs and enjoy strong internal support with long histories of relevant methods and metrics. These are often referred to as legacy programs. When these programs were established, the disconnect between satisfaction and loyalty was not clearly understood. The practice of the discipline moved far ahead of the original thinking in terms of the weak connection between satisfaction and bottom line growth. Some businesses have found themselves chasing tactical satisfaction scores while their bottom lines and market share have declined or stagnated.
Businesses find themselves in situations that require a fresh new perspective: too many surveys done of customers by different units of business with a lack of integrated structure and common standards of measurement; information and data supplied to the internal users with no specific direction for action plan development; inability to integrate customer loyalty metrics and solutions for loyalty improvement in existing transaction-based surveys; many confusing metrics of loyalty, commitment and advocacy (Net Promoter) advanced to top management; and no clear mandate from the top on scorecard metrics to drive profitability and growth as well as improve customer experiences by operational units.
Market Probe will bring its most senior talent on a five-day consulting assignment to review all existing surveys and reports, review the actionability of information with internal stakeholders, assess current gaps and propose a transition process to a new architecture focusing on strategic issues affecting loyalty and tactical issues that need to focus on customer satisfaction.
