© 2016 InMoment, Inc.

Today, there are thousands of brands, products, and prices customers have

immediately available at their fingertips. As a result, customer experience

is the new “competitive battlefield” where organizations can differentiate

themselves from the competition. The days of brands dictating the terms

are in the past. The balance of power has shifted, and many companies are

viewing this change with a sense of trepidation.

Instead of fearing the new paradigm, organizations can—and should—

embrace the change. It’s simple to say customers are more demanding.

Technology connects us and gives individual customers a louder, more

resonant voice than ever before. Some turn to this global megaphone

to vent their frustrations and even anger. However, the large majority of

customers simply want a different kind of relationship with the brands they

depend on. They want to be part of a conversation about how to improve

their experience. And if you listen well, their wisdom can enhance virtually

every area of your business.

T H E C H A N G I N G S T A T E O F C U S T O M E R R E L A T I O N S H I P S

How You Listen MattersA Practical Guide to an Effective Listening Program

By Brennan Wilkie, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience Strategy

W H I T E P A P E R

As organizations have begun to understand

these changes, one of the first instincts is

to ask questions. Lots of them. Interactive

Voice Response (IVR), online surveys, and

mobile apps allow brands to fire nearly

unlimited, non-stop queries at customers.

This onslaught is taking a toll. A Google

search of the term “survey fatigue” nets

more than 22 million mentions. According

to Pew Research, survey response rates

have declined steadily—and significantly—

over the past 10 years.1

While customers are becoming more

resistant to responding to traditional,

longform surveys, they are sharing more

details about their experiences with brands

than ever before—but in fundamentally

different ways. Online reviews are a good

example of this shift. The first online

A Shift in the Conversationreviews appeared in 1999. By 2000,

there were more than one million posts

recounting customer experiences. Today, 44

percent of consumers regularly write online

reviews, with Tripadvisor alone hosting

more than 225 million detailed stories.2

If brands want to understand and improve

the experiences they deliver to customers,

they’ve got to take a new approach to

eliciting all types of customer feedback.

From the questions you ask, to when and

how you ask them—how you listen matters.

It affects the quantity and quality of the

data. It impacts the value of the insights.

How you approach your customers when

asking for their perspective has a strong

effect on that relationship.

1 Collecting Survey Data. http://www.pewresearch.org/

methodology/u-s-survey-research/collecting-survey-

data/#the-problem-of-declining-response-rates

2 YouGov.com

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 3

Missing the MarkNot too long ago, our CEO had a personal

experience that perfectly illustrates the

challenge brands face in balancing the

desire for data with the need to focus

on the customer. He purchased a new

vehicle and a few weeks later, received

a 500-question survey in the mail. (No

exaggeration. It really was 500 questions.)

The survey asked everything from how

many doors the car had to how friendly

the salesperson was. Being in the business

of customer feedback, he felt it was his

professional duty to answer each and

every question.

This survey missed the mark for a variety

of reasons. Five hundred answers is a

lot to ask. Plus, considering the Vehicle

Identification Number (VIN) was printed on

the front of the survey form, the answers

to many of the questions were things the

manufacturer already knew.

Upon completing the survey, he realized

that although he’d responded to

every category and subcategory, the

manufacturer didn’t understand the most

essential “why” behind his purchase—and

really, with most purchases. While we all

justify an investment of this magnitude

with our heads (e.g. plenty of room for

the family, performs well in the weather,

reasonable gas mileage, etc.), most

purchase decisions are made based on

emotion. This interrogation never even got

close to that side of the equation.

To be fair, that may not have been the

brand’s purpose. This approach is fine for

market research conducted in small doses

with willing (usually paid) audiences. But

as a go-to tool to better understand the

essential “whys” behind your customers’

experiences on an ongoing basis, it’s a

terrible tool. While cargo space and a great

sound system might have been factors in

our CEO’s decision, the most important

factor in why he bought the car was

because of the way it makes him feel when

he drives it. In this and many surveys, there

was no room for the customer to share this

essential part of the story.

While this a very personal example, it does

illustrate the larger shift that’s underway.

Customer experience isn’t about setting

up listening posts to hear what you want

to hear; it’s about creating an environment

where your customers can share what’s

most important to them—in the ways and

places they prefer.

To help illustrate the importance of this

concept, let’s take a look at a quick analogy

we all understand: personal relationships.

We’ve all experienced the often-awkward

dance of beginning a new relationship.

At times it’s incredibly easy. You start

talking to someone, and you feel an instant

connection. Other times, maintaining a

conversation is like pulling teeth.

Imagine, however, that you are interested

and want to take the next step. The

cardinal rule for creating a more substantial

relationship is being more interested in

what the other person has to say than what

you want to say. You don’t monopolize

the conversation. You would find out

everything you could about the person

you’re interested in and think of ways to ask

insightful, interesting questions.

Listening Up [lis-uh-n ing uhp] verb phrase Intentional, active, and strategic way to listen with true purpose in mind—not just hearing what a person is saying but understanding the meaning.

A People-Centric Approach: Listening Up

L E S S I N T E R R O G A T I O N , M O R E L I S T E N I N G

Collecting customer feedback in a way that protects the integrity of the

data while honoring the feedback process as a critical part of the brand-

consumer relationship is a fine line to walk. Err too far on the side of data,

and you can alienate the customer. Err too far on the side of the customer,

and you may get data that’s not very helpful. This tension clearly illustrates

the importance of being thoughtful in how, where, and when you listen. It

can make a huge difference in the richness and quality of your data. Better

data means better insights.

This “plan of attack” for building a

relationship is the same foundation you’d

use to interact with your customers, or

what we like to call “Listening Up.”

1. Know your customer

2. Understand their journeys

3. Ask your customers thoughtful

questions

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 5

Building an effective listening program is crucial when attempting to improve the customer experience. However, it is just one part of a much larger undertaking that involves technology, best practices, and organizational change. For more information about what it takes to achieve the full range of benefits from your customer experience initiative, refer to CX: The Art of the Possible.

Taking a customer-centric approach

to listening requires a combination of

experience, subject matter expertise,

and the right technologies. Over the last

14 years, InMoment has worked closely

with brands across dozens of industries,

geographies, and at various levels of

customer experience maturity. In this paper,

we outline a series of best practices we’ve

developed in conjunction with some of our

expert partners on how to craft an effective

customer-centric listening program. These

best practices include the following:

• Understanding what the

business needs

• Understanding how the

business works

• Asking the right questions

• Asking the right way

• Asking in the right places

• Asking at the right times

A Note on Customer Journeys

Your customers are interacting with your

brand in more and different ways—from

research and exploration online, to word-of-

mouth, visiting a physical location, making

a first purchase, onboarding, calling into a

contact center, and many more. All journeys

are not created equal. Some have a much

greater impact on customer satisfaction

and loyalty than others. Perceptions of how

you’re delivering on customer experience at

the various “touchpoints” along the way, as

well as external influencers like competitors

and word-of-mouth from trusted sources,

create the full customer experience.

Some organizations have created complex

visualizations of entire journey ecosystems,

while others have a rudimentary

understanding of the routes and detours

customers take when interacting with their

brand. There are still many companies that

haven’t participated in a formal journey

mapping exercise at all.

The difficulty brands experience

with journey mapping is completely

understandable because it’s a cross-

functional exercise that can surface flaws

in processes, people, or systems that can

lead to feelings of inadequacy and/or

discouragement. However, understanding

what the customer is going through as they

interact with your brand—as well as how

important that interaction is to them—is

critical to establishing a successful listening

program and worth the growing pains it

often causes.

When beginning your journey mapping

quest, you should consider mapping

two customer journeys: 1) your current

customer journey and 2) your ideal

customer journey.

First, fight the temptation to make your

current journeys look good. Strive to make

them as realistic as possible. The more

realistic you are, the more quickly you will

be able to fix what the customer perceives

as broken.

A listening program created in a vacuum

cannot succeed. Before thinking about

the questions you’ll ask—through which

channel you’ll ask them or when—you

need to clearly identify your business

objectives and how they connect to your

CX initiatives, and which metrics drive the

outcomes you want. Many brands miss

this essential step, making it difficult, if not

impossible, to connect customer listening

and experience to quantifiable and

positive outcomes.

Step 1: Conduct a discovery exercise

through executive interviews. Openly seek

to understand what the functional groups

are working on and how they are supposed

to contribute to the larger corporate

objectives. This will inform a balanced view

of the customer experience opportunity,

and help you to determine whether

leadership is aligned on the vision, goals,

and needs of the program.

Step 2: Review previous consumer

research. Every organization has it, and it

can be an invaluable tool for understanding

how your brand is currently positioned

The second exercise is mapping the ideal

customer journey. What would a perfect

customer experience look like for your

company? How does it compare to the

current customer experience? Mapping the

ideal experience will help you identify gaps

in the current experience and help you

determine a strategy that will guide your

company closer to fulfilling your

brand promise.

You should also be aware that there is a

spectrum of complexity when mapping

these journeys. From a simple two-step

illustration all the way to intricate drawings

and mappings thousands of pages long.

There are many factors that need to be

considered when choosing the level that is

right for your company including industry,

complexity, scale, and volume. The most

important step, however, is mapping.

Understand What the Business Needswith your customers and what’s working.

Again, different functional groups use and

interpret consumer research differently.

Look across those groups to identify the

customer experience “so what?” moment.

Step 3: Listen to your employees. There

was a time when brands had personal

relationships with most, if not all, of their

customers. With growing populations, a

global economy, and layers of technology

between brands and their customers, this

type of connection is rare today. The good

news is that most companies still rely on

person-to-person interactions at some

level. One key to harnessing the insights

from those interactions is relatively simple:

ask your employees. Most companies

survey employees about their own jobs. But

they stop there. Asking for their thoughts

on what’s working well for your customers,

what’s not (and why) will give you an

incredibly valuable perspective and give

a very different type of ownership in the

customer experience.

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 7

The second step of creating a customer-

centric listening program is understanding

how your program fits within the larger

scope of your business. It’s hard to create

an effective program if you don’t know

the obstacles and opportunities your inner

workings offer and, more importantly,

how they impact the way your customers

interact with your brand.

In addition to interviewing executives,

engage with the people who work

with your customers on a daily basis:

franchisees, managers, and frontline

employees. Also include the people in

marketing and ecommerce who oversee the

digital portions of the customer journey.

Don’t assume you already know what your

customer experience looks and feels like.

Actually take the time to walk a mile in your

customers’ shoes and challenge yourself to

Step 4: Review historical performance.

This may seem obvious, but you would

be amazed how rarely brands look in the

mirror and ask themselves uncomfortable

questions. If you have a listening program

in place, has it been effective? Where have

you had positive results (surfaced the

kinds of insights you need to drive positive

business outcomes) and where could you

improve? What’s worked and what hasn’t?

Knowing where you’ve been will help you

understand where you need to go.

Step 5: Evaluate your brand promise in

the context of customer experience. Your

brand’s value proposition may have been

defined before the formal discipline of

customer experience was formed. In other

cases, a brand promise is created from more

of a marketing perspective without much

thought about how or whether it’s executed

at the customer level. Because customer

experience is the vehicle through which you

deliver on your brand promise, now is the

time to bring them into alignment. Today,

your customer experience must be the

manifestation of your brand promise.

Understand How the Business Workssee, hear, and feel the experience the way

they do. And while you do that, make sure

you take the following steps:

• Retrace the customer’s steps through

the entire journey, including in-person,

online, on the phone, pre-purchase,

during purchase, and after the fact

• Use the product/service you’re selling

• Take a call in the contact center

• Talk to frontline employees and ask

for their feedback on the customer

experience (this is called Voice of

Employee). What would they change?

What do customers really love? Do they

have a new idea?

• Give feedback yourself

Walk in your customers’ shoes

Congratulations! You now know what

you’re trying to achieve as a brand with

your listening program. You understand

how executives define “success,” how

your business works, the pathways your

customers travel, and how it feels to make

the journey. You’re now ready to begin the

actual design of your listening program.

There’s a lot of talk about shortening

surveys as a way to boost response rates,

but simply abbreviating the number of

questions won’t help you get the most

insightful feedback. The same way you

wouldn’t go into an open conversation

with a long list of rigid questions, you

should also avoid that in your listening

program. True conversations ebb and flow,

The key to a successful program is

to always advocate for the customer.

Challenge the status quo. Don’t accept

that the way things are are the way they

must always be. Question everything. Don’t

just ask, “What is happening?” Identify

those legs of the journey that really have

an impact, imagine what should happen

at those points. Sometimes it’s a matter

of eliminating barriers; other times it’s

achieving over-the-top delight.

This process will help you determine

what about the experience is designed

versus what is improvised. It will help

you determine what is a competitive

differentiator versus what is table stakes.

Setting these baseline factors will give you

a strong foundation upon which you can

build an effective listening program.

Ask the Right Questionsnaturally moving from one topic to the

next. Building in flexibility to your surveys

is vital to hearing what matters most to

customers. The ideal scenario is knowing

your customer and where they are on

their journey, thoughtfully designing both

questions and listening posts, and having

the right technology tools to execute. Even

if you’re missing parts of the ideal equation,

you can make huge strides toward better

listening by simply being more purposeful.

Be careful not to abuse the trust your customers have extended to you via their personal information. On one hand, it is wise to use the data to to ask more insightful questions. On the other hand, customers can feel like you know them a little too well. Be judicious when using data to formulate where and what you ask.

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 9

Know Your Customers

Every good listening program starts with

asking the right questions. And often, what

you don’t ask is just as important as what

you do ask. It’s critical that you know as

much about your customer as possible

before asking them for feedback.

The days of anonymous feedback are

waning. Companies can and should know

a lot about their customers. For example,

take grocery store loyalty cards, which

provide value in the way of discounts

to customers and allow stores to gather

both one-time and ongoing data at the

individual level. Using these data points, the

store can begin to predict other attributes

with a very high degree of accuracy such

as a customer’s gender, general health,

how many people are in the household,

etc. This information can be utilized in a

variety of ways, from customizing feedback

interactions to personalizing marketing

messages and offers.

In an ideal, customer-centric world, brands

would never ask a question to which they

should already know the answer. Going

back to our story about the new car, the

manufacturer already knew which car our

CEO had purchased, which model it was,

and which features it included. Had the

listening program been executed in a more

customer-friendly fashion, our CEO wouldn’t

have had to waste time answering questions

about the number of doors and cylinders.

It’s not just a matter of being nice. Keeping

surveys streamlined and focused on what’s

most important to customers increases

completion rates and delivers healthier

data sets.

Follow Survey Design Best Practices

Survey design is both an art and a science.

The type, order, and frequency of questions

significantly impacts the quality of data

you get in return. The number of topics

alone you can cover with your customers is

staggering; however, there are three pieces

of vital information that can act as a good

starting point.

1. How is your competition doing?

Knowing the metrics of your

competition in relation to your own

brand’s performance is critical, but

it is one of the most widely missed

measures of a corporate listening

program. Knowing where you are

strong and where you are weak will

provide necessary data when you

lay out your strategy to achieve a

successful customer experience.

2. How are you doing?

These questions are usually

quantitative, asking: likelihood to

recommend, customer satisfaction,

customer effort, and more. These

measures give you a baseline for

performance and almost all

companies include them in their

listening programs.

3. What’s important to your customers?

This is one of the more common

questions that companies overlook

when designing their surveys. Brands

need to know what a customer deems

important to improve the customer

experience, otherwise your actions may

be based on false assumptions.

Ensure that the value exchange is fair. Ensure that your customers believe that they are receiving more than they are giving up in sharing with you. Ask tough questions of yourself and your peers, putting yourselves in your customers’ place. Use common sense and err on the side of caution.

Once you know the topics you need to address, the next step is designing a

process that carefully guides the customer through a brief, friendly feedback

experience based on their individual interaction.

1. Order: Following a structured order ensures you get the most critical

information while leaving secondary, less important data as an option.

introductionoverall

experience

Survey code or detailsDate time stamp

Core Section

Opt-In Section

Overall satisfactionLikely to recommend

GoRecommendTM Customer WOWCustomer Rescue

Sweepstakes informationO�er redemption code

New productBrand attributesDemographics

Active ListeningTM

OpenTellTM

Examples:team • product • atmosphere

socialadvocacy

recognition & rescue

customercomment

key drivers

surveycompletion

point

customeropt-in

questions

surveyconclusion

2. Components: A good feedback experience generally consists of two

sections: a core and an opt-in. The core section is where you place questions

that apply to the most critical customer experience elements—the ones

tied to business drivers that need to be measured consistently across the

organization. The opt-in section is designed to be complementary to the

core. Here you would explore feedback that is supportive to your CX goals

and/or that will be analyzed in aggregate, thereby requiring a less frequent

or smaller sample. A modular design prioritizes your content and gives some

control to the respondent, which increases engagement.

Using branching logic is a good way to acquire insight on a number of questions

without overburdening any single customer. Branching logic serves up questions

based on the answer to the previous question. A good example of this is in the

grocery environment mentioned above. Branching logic can be deployed to

trigger off a particular rating. This can be done with both structured data (scores

and ratings) and unstructured data (open-ended comments). For example, if a

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 11

customer rated their experience a 1 out of 10, the next question might be: “We’re

sorry your experience did not live up to your expectations. Would you like a

manager to contact you to help resolve your concern?”

A completely different use case might be inside an open-ended comment

box with unstructured data. Let’s say a customer mentions your new product,

ChocoMagic Cereal, favorably. Your marketing department has recently

invested a lot of resources into launching the new cereal, and they want to

know how customers are hearing about it.

Branching logic combined with text analytics can associate the name of the

cereal mentioned with positive sentiment, and trigger a follow-up question

asking where the customer heard about it (e.g. TV, online, radio, grocery

store ads, etc). Your R&D team is also involved and wants to know about

the taste, so a question can be triggered to delve into that area as well. This

methodology allows you to dig into any topic and is based on how customers

are responding, keeping the experience relevant and focused. The other

added benefit to this approach is that you can track each particular branch

individually as well as explore other potential areas of change. This creates a

living survey that changes with time as customer experiences shift.

3. Content: The content of a survey is based on answer scale type (e.g., NPS or

five-point agreement scale), scale direction, specific wording, and phrasing.

Take the time to define the question set that is proven to be predictive of

the outcomes you want. You need to know what those are so that you can

defend the integrity of your survey as a strategic business tool.

Asking the right questions is the first

step. Asking the right way comes next.

Traditional surveys, like the one from the

car dealership, were long and laborious.

Customers today want customized

interactions, not long, templated

interrogations. Keep in mind that feedback

is another experience along the customer

journey. If you were to ask your customers

to give you feedback on the feedback

experience, what would they say? As with

all journeys with your brand, this process

can—and should—enrich, not detract from

the overall relationship between you and

your customers.

Starting in 2014, InMoment began

conducting an annual study on CX

Trends for the coming year. We ask both

customers and the brands that serve

them what’s most important when it

comes to customer experience. Customers

consistently rank “shorter surveys” and “less

asking, more listening” as priorities when

asked to share their experience.

Shorter surveys can help with response

rates. However, simply abbreviating the

number of questions isn’t the answer.

One approach is logically categorizing

your questions into smaller groups and

providing boundaries for the number of

questions you ask. Business guidelines such

as never having a survey with more than

five questions are a good rules. You can

still get insights on 100 questions if you

feel they are important. You may be able to

accomplish this same feat using only

20 five-question surveys instead,

minimizing the negative impact on

the customer experience.

Ask the Right WayIn addition to the length of the survey, be

aware of how many times you ask each

customer for their feedback. Even when

questions are personalized and short, too

many can still lead to frustration. Survey

fatigue comes in many different forms. You

are not the only brand looking to gather

their feedback. The ideal rate is up for

debate, but at the very least, measure your

response rates, keep an eye on waning

participation, and ensure your systems

can execute your desired volume. A good

rule of thumb is to send as few surveys as

possible to achieve statistical significance.

Back to the CX Trends study, not only

do customers want fewer questions,

they’ve asked brands to ask less and listen

more. Quantitative data derived from

structured survey questions are critical in

benchmarking, tracking key drivers, and

ensuring departments are executing on

Key Performance Indicators. Structured

questions will always have a place in

customer feedback.

Special Care: The golden rule of feedback is don’t make a bad experience worse. Often when customers indicate they’ve had a poor experience, automatic triggers fire off a barrage of additional questions all in the name of getting to the bottom of the problem. When a customer has a bad experience, brands need to take special care to create an empathetic environment where customers feel heard and taken care of.

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 13

A survey designed with only quantitative

questions is like the Tin Man in The Wizard

of Oz—there’s simply no heart. Quantitative

data can tell you what’s happening, but

it can never reveal the why. The other

unavoidable shortcoming in structured

questions is that they only ask and answer

questions you’ve prioritized. You may want

to know detailed information about wait

time or pricing, but what your customer

wants to tell you is that the installation

process was so painful, they’re leaving your

brand and strongly advising their associates

to choose another vendor.

Mediums like voice, video, social, as well as

traditional comment boxes with interactive

prompting capabilities, give customers a

way to share their experiences in more of a

natural, narrative fashion. They often reveal

information you didn’t think to ask about.

They can surface the “unknown unknowns”

of your business—the plethora of issues

with products, services, and policies that

impact the experience.

Every customer experiences your brand in

different ways. As discussed earlier, there

are defined journeys, like onboarding,

which offers your brand an opportunity to

understand the customer at that specific

time. Distinct moments within a journey are

called touchpoints. Evaluate each journey

and touchpoint to understand how you

should associate a feedback request. This

ensures your interactions remain relevant.

As we’ve already discussed, the number

of ways customers talk to and about

your brand has rapidly expanded. Where

surveys were once king, there are now a

myriad of places to listen. These channels

include: contact centers that incorporate

live chat; website help sections; traditional

call centers; social media platforms like

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram,

and Snapchat; blogs and forums; online

communities; and review sites. The list goes

on and it can easily become overwhelming.

The key is choosing the channels that

appeal to your customers, and give them

several choices. When it comes down to it,

the best feedback channel is the channel

the customer prefers. In many cases, your

brand may already capture your customer’s

communications preferences. If not, your

customer is indicating their preference by

Ask in the Right PlacesWhen designing a listening program, many

brands try to tackle too much. They try to

understand the entire experience at once,

instead of evaluating the individual parts,

or journeys. What generally happens is that

they get bogged down and end up stalling.

Approaching CX in a more targeted way,

prioritizing the high-value journeys first

leads to better experiences for customers

and often a more direct financial impact

for you.

Listening Channelswhich channel they predominantly use to

communicate with your brand. For example,

if your customer is using your app, ask for

feedback within the app. If your customer is

using your website, ask for feedback within

the site. In this case, common sense is the

best approach.

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 15

For each request for feedback, you have

a variety of different options regarding

what type of listening post to deploy. For

example, if a customer calls the contact

center to ask about a billing issue, at the

close of the call, the agent can extend a

personal invitation to give feedback about

that interaction, and then transfer the

customer to an automated system.

Because of today’s omnichannel world,

choosing the correct touchpoints to listen

in on—or not—can be challenging. You want

to get the information you need without

The final piece of asking timely and

appropriate questions is ensuring that what

you ask is relevant to both the channel and

the touchpoint. It makes no sense to ask

questions about the web experience via the

contact center. This seems like common

sense, but you’d be surprised at how many

brands struggle in this area. In the quest

for more feedback, they often overlook

the common sense rules of engagement. If

you’re on the web, ask questions about the

web experience. If the customer interacts

with you in a brick-and-mortar location,

confine your questions to that experience.

It’s as simple as that.

Listening Postsover-surveying your customers. You must

be eager and patient at the same time.

Our best recommendation is to respect

that the experience should unfold at the

customer’s pace, and then let that happen.

Gather feedback in a way that prioritizes

the most critical parts of the experience,

and find other ways to gather insights

about the less essential areas. Combine

different types of research methods. Offer

meaningful incentives that reinforce your

brand promise, and let customers know you

value their partnership.

Relevant Questions

Another building block of an effective

listening program is determining when

you want to have a conversation with your

customers. There are many times you

can—and should—ask for feedback from

both customers and employees. Here are

the two most common methods to request

feedback from a customer: event

and relationship.

1. Relationship: At defined intervals. About

the overall relationship (annual surveys).

2. Event: At the end of a defined event.

Focused on a specific event (after a

purchase; completion of

onboarding, etc.).

Relationship Feedback

Relationship-based feedback measures your

customers’ overall sentiment with your brand

in its entirety. It is composed to find out how

your customer feels about every interaction

with your brand. Generally, the same question

is asked over multiple timeframes to measure

your effectiveness at increasing customer

experience and driving loyalty. It’s also a

great measure for internally benchmarking

across time.

A major pitfall to avoid is to mix the two

types of questions in a single survey. If you

are measuring overall relationship, then only

ask relationship questions. For example, if

you ask, “How likely are you to recommend

Company A?” don’t add transactional

questions in the survey such as, “Based on

your recent visit to Store B, how satisfied are

you with your experience?”

Ask at the Right TimeRelationship surveys should only measure

holistic relationships at a given point in time.

This will certainly be impacted by events, but

combining the two may add bias toward the

most recent event.

Event/Transaction Feedback

Event-based questions determine customer

sentiment shortly after the customer has

had a touchpoint interaction, such as a call

to customer care, a visit to their local store,

or after purchasing a product (think back to

the customer journey mapping above). They

are often referred to as “listening posts” or

“triggered questions” and are specific to a

particular event.

Event-based surveys should also focus on

a single event and not attempt to measure

another event in the same survey. It is

always safest to measure one item at a time,

eliminating the possibility of introducing bias.

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 17

One caution on event-based surveys:

they usually end up looking like an

intradepartmental report card, which is

okay. Event-based feedback is very effective

at providing data for intradepartmental

improvement strategies. That said, if used

strictly for that purpose, it may hinder holistic

improvement. The feedback channel and

reporting should be designed to ensure

that the insights can also be used across

departments. For example, a survey that

measures the purchase of a cell phone in

a retail environment may ask questions

about the representative that helped them,

the cleanliness of the store, if their phone

choice was in stock, etc. In most cases it can

quickly become a guide to store operations

efficacy and treated exclusively as such. It is

true that the root causes can help the Store

Operations department improve and should

be used for that purpose, but keep in mind

as you are crafting the survey that more can

be learned about other areas through the

transaction of purchasing a phone.

Event-based questions are extremely

effective at targeting root causes across

departmental silos as long as the program

designer understands this and accounts

for it so root-cause data is collected and

disseminated throughout the organization.

Theoretically, if you took the combinations

of all the transactions your brand has with

a customer, you could then statistically

calculate that customer’s relationship score.

This would be ideal because you could

completely understand the impacts to your

relationships and adjust your transactions

accordingly to achieve a perfect customer

experience. The problem with that theory,

in reality, is that it is impossible to measure

every interaction with your brand. Most

companies assume that impossibility and

settle too far to the other extreme. They

measure major events, but never understand

customer sentiment on the larger customer

journey. They overcompensate and end up

measuring too little.

Take an example of a cable TV company. The

company asks their customers their opinions

on customer care, onboarding, repair, and

retail transactions. These are an excellent

start to understand customer experience,

but the majority of the experience is the

actual product they deliver. Does their cable

work consistently? Are there outages? How

satisfied are they with the programming? The

questions go on. If the cable TV company

and the retailer do not become enlightened

on the major customer experience that does

not require a transaction, they will miss a

huge opportunity for more powerful and

lasting improvement.

Health Check Feedback

Many brands stop at those two methods.

In doing so, you can miss a lot more of

the customer’s story. There’s a third, less-

used but crucial time to listen to customer

sentiment: when you are not looking. Or

what we call, Health Check Feedback. These

types of surveys serve as check-in between

transactions to ensure the experience with

said transacted stuff (i.e. the product/service

you bought) is going well. For example,

30 days after you get your new cable box

installed, the cable company checks back

into see how you are enjoying—or not

enjoying—your service. This type of feedback

request honors the fact that a large part of

the overall customer experience is made

during the in-between moments.

In addition to three listening times detailed

above, there are other times you can—

and should—tune into both customer and

employee feedback to get all of the feedback

perspectives on your customer experience.

The following table explains the role of

each one:

Who What

All target customers

Active customers

Active and dormant customers

Active customers and non/partial purchasers

Active customers

Target customers, active customers, dormant customers

-

Benchmarking

Designated, high-impact journeys

General customer sentiment at key moments of truth

Post-sale/-service to understand discrete experience

Between transactions to understand user experience

Focus groups, ethnographic,user acceptance, etc.

-

Brand

Episode/Journey

Relationship

Interaction/Transaction

Health

In-Depth, Ad Hoc

Voice of Employee (VoE)

Brand

Episode/Journey

Relationship

Interaction/Transaction

Health

In-Depth, Ad Hoc

Voice of Employee (VoE)

Customers

Who What

-

Active employees

Active, seasonal, anddormant employees

-

-

Active employees

Active employees

-

Designated, high-impact journeys

General customer sentiment at key moments of truth

-

-

Standing or ad hoc employee groups serve advisory role on employee experience

Employee perspective on customer experience delivery

Employees

sales@inmoment.com • 1-800-530-4251 • © 2016 InMoment, Inc. 19

I T ’ S A C O N V E R S A T I O N . D O N ’ T M O N O P O L I Z E I T .

At the end of the day, we’re back where

we started: how you listen matters.

Customers want to have a conversation. A

conversation with your customers should

be no different than any other healthy

conversation—driven by empathy and a

desire to deepen the relationship.

While these can be difficult concepts to

master, don’t use that as an excuse to

avoid listening up. Be curious, so you can

understand your customers better than

your competition. Do the hard work to

understand different customer touchpoints.

Genuinely enjoy the open conversations

with your customer, and be thoughtful with

the questions you ask.

Honor the feedback experience as the

important touchpoint in the customer

experience that it is. As much as possible,

be engaged. Keep things moving and

interesting. Don’t talk about yourself. This

is the foundation for an effective customer

listening program.

If you make it simple for the customer to

say what he or she wants to say—not just

what you want to hear—you’ll find yourself

building long-lasting relationships that

result in better loyalty and better

business outcomes.

About InMoment InMoment is a cloud-based customer experience (CX) optimization platform that gives companies the ability

to listen to and engage with their customers to improve business results through better experiences. Through

its Experience Hub™, InMoment provides Voice of Customer (VoC), Social Reviews & Advocacy, and Employee

Engagement technology, as well as strategic guidance and tactical instruction, support, and services, to 350

brands across 25 industries in 128 countries. The company is the leading VoC vendor for the food services, retail,

and contact center industries, with deep domain expertise in B2B, healthcare, hospitality, and numerous others.