Our journey to becoming a customer centric agency

Nick Phipps
Nick Phipps Digital Strategist | Strategy Team

Last year I appeared on the podcast Small Spark Theory to discuss how we at Rawnet are on a mission to practice what we preach when it comes to Customer Experience. (Listen here).

This is an update on our journey so far and what we plan to do in the future.


Ditching NPS

We began by ditching Net Promoter Score (NPS) which we had been using to measure client satisfaction. With the increased focus on customer experience across all industries, there has been a lot of scepticism about how effective NPS really is.

Matt Watkinson founder of Methodical recently published a report about the shortcomings of NPS. The report is a detailed breakdown of why it doesn’t work and if you’re involved in CX or customer satisfaction you should definitely read it.

Download the report here. 

In summary, NPS claims to measure the likelihood of your customers recommending your product/service. NPS also claims to be “a leading indicator for growth”. But it isn’t. At all. As Matt uncovers in his report, rising scores can be an indication that you’re losing market share, due to  Detractors and Passives moving to competitors or cancelling.

The NPS score is broken down into 3 types of people, Promoters, Passives and Detractors.

However, just because someone says they’d recommend you (promoters) it doesn’t mean they will actually do it. Equally, if someone isn’t overwhelmed by your experience, it doesn't mean that they’re out on the street corner screaming about how much they hate you… Again Matt Watkinson’s report goes into this in more detail.
 

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To us, our NPS score was an arbitrary number that we knew we were supposed to push up to 10. There was little context behind the scores we received, therefore it was difficult to build strategies to improve.


A new process

Sam Love, Account Director at Rawnet has designed our new feedback platform. We’re currently running 2 versions, the first is a 6 monthly review of our client’s overall experience with Rawnet for the previous 6 months. The second is a project review, that explores all areas of a project upon completion.

When combined we can get a full view of KPI driven, project experiences and a general overview of how we’re servicing our clients throughout the year.

From this, we calculate a customer satisfaction score that is far more contextual than NPS. We can use the feedback and scores to create detailed action plans and identify patterns between clients to build strategies for improvement across the agency.

We’ve built an ad-hoc, cross-functional team that is responsible for improving processes and communications to better serve our clients. The team includes people from all areas of the business, not only client facing roles.

All project stakeholders are involved throughout the entire process, from pitching to delivery. This way everyone understands the goals of a project from the outset. From Account Management to Development, everyone is aware.

We have also reduced the number of catch up meetings in favour of 5-minute daily stand-ups to ensure the focus of any project is reiterated and any issues are brought up and dealt with quickly.

We’ve also introduced account CX scores into our HR process. People’s performance is not only measured by our peers and line managers, but also by our clients. After all, it’s their score that really impacts how effective we are at our jobs. (Obviously, this is taken with a pinch of salt where applicable. We’re not letting our clients give us pay rises just yet).


Challenges we’ve faced

The biggest challenge is communicating how “back end” staff impact CX indirectly. It’s not an easy thing to get your head around when you’re stuck in the day to day of your own role. It requires a mindset change. When budgets, timelines and process are looming over you it can be difficult to carve out a thought for the client and their goals, let alone put their needs ahead of the agency.


Coming next

We have been working on a way to succinctly and uniquely communicate our methodology with our clients and employees. Once we have completed this, we hope that everyone that works with us understands where we are in the process and what’s required.  

I will be conducting one on one interviews with our clients to better understand their world. I believe this will be more effective coming from someone who has no involvement in the day-to-day goings on within an account. I aim to understand how Rawnet fits into our client’s lives and how we can strenghten our partnership.