Is 5 (or 8 or 7) the magic number – and not 1 after all?

I thought that one was the magic number, but there seem to be many other candidates for the title.

 

There are many models proposed that seek to describe the broad area of “customer experience”. The Gartner CRM maturity profile has five levels (Aware, Developing, Practicing, Optimizing, Leading – see ) but seems to have been largely superseded by their eight building blocks (see here for an introduction).

Bruce Temkin of Forrester Research also has a five stage maturity model for customer experience (Relationship tracking, interaction monitoring, continuous listening, project infusion, and periodic immersion). He has recently presented at the ‘09 Net Promoter Score conference in San Francisco. Jessica Tsai, writing at destinationCRM.com, gives a very insightful account of that presentation here. Bruce has added some final thoughts on his own Customer Experience Matters blog, describing how the one ultimate question aligns within his model as part of relationship tracking.

I have worked in the world of customer feedback management for the last several years, and have developed a seven level Feedback Maturity Model, that we use as part of understanding an industry/organization/individual’s readiness for certain messaging and information around the voice of the customer as expressed by unsolicited customer feedback – both positive and negative.

The underlying principle is that a critical part of increasing satisfaction, loyalty, advocacy and improving customer experience is listening to customers, analysing the feedback and acting on that feedback to drive learning and change back into the business. This is abbreviated to a simple phrase “reduce and eliminate dissatisfaction”. Hence the seven levels are referred to as RED 1 through RED 7, briefly described below.

RED 1	“Customer Oblivious”	No interest, ignores any and all forms of customer feedback
RED 2	“Customer Tolerant”	Handles complaints Feedback is a nuisance, not welcomed, may misuse CRM app to log and process them
RED 3	“Customer Aware”	Manages complaints. Interactions are handled in a professional manner, possibly by dedicated staff
RED 4	“Customer Oriented”	Manages all forms of feedback. Feedback and complaints can be initiated at any customer touch point and through any channel
RED 5	“Customer Focused”	Uses feedback to learn (tactical and ad-hoc changes). Analytical and transactional systems are interfaced/ integrated and data is shared
RED 6	“Customer Centric”	Systemic use of feedback in continuous learning environment. Knowledge gained from feedback analysis is embedded into evolving policies and tools
RED 7	“Customer Driven”	Automated feedback management, a “sense and respond” approach to maximize performance. Highly automated, zero-latency responsive enterprise.

So, what is the magic number? Fred Reichheld has long promoted one as the answer through Net Promoter Score. Analyst organizations seem to favour five (or eight) and me, I like seven.

I guess you have to make your own mind up! I’d love to know what you think. Where are you on the RED scale? Your organization? Your industry?

For the original inspiration go to http://www.jillscott.com/ and choose 14 from the track list on the left of the page.

Technorati Tags: customer experience,feedback,complaints,Gartner,Forrester,NPS