This is the only way to secure the resources and support you’ll need for a multiyear customer experience journey.

The time and effort spent in designing a customer experience program can go to waste if you can’t reliably show the value it will bring to the business. A successful customer-listening program drives CX improvement initiatives that have a measurable impact both on topline customer experience metrics (NPS, CSAT) and key business KPIs (revenue growth, customer retention, share-of-wallet).

You need to quantify and evangelize the business impact of each of the CX initiatives your organization undertakes. Don’t focus solely on how those efforts have driven increases in your CX metrics. Instead, demonstrate their impact on companywide KPIs and financial results.

For example, have you increased the sales of a product line by improving key product features based on customer feedback? Has your new digital experience helped fill the sales pipeline? Are you increasing your first call resolution rate by customer support rep training powered by customer input?

Here are some examples from CX leaders highlighting the business results achieved by acting on customer feedback:

• PayPal used customer feedback to identify and reduce 20 customer pain points across their business. Result: an eight-point increase in customer service NPS and a $2 billion increase in transactional volume.
• Farmers Insurance implemented a customer listening program that led to a half- billion-dollar increase in revenue.
• Sunrise Communications flagged the types of customer comments that predicted negative behaviors and empowered their employees to engage at-risk customers and fix their issues in real time. The company’s NPS improved and its customer churn dropped significantly.

Once you’ve followed these five steps, your customer listening infrastructure should be centralized, coordinated across the entire company, and equipped to drive action at all levels of the organization.