The future of customer experience (CX) is about growth. We recently asked our customers and wider contacts what they considered to be the most important factor in their CX programs and what they saw as the No. 1 challenge. 1 or what keeps them up at night — and some of the answers surprised us.

Many said that customer experience is critical to success and creates a key competitive advantage – we expected that response. Many have cut costs, leaving service and sales experience as key differentiators. These teams are focused on action and capability building and can show a direct link between improving CX results and business KPIs.

What we didn't expect was what they told us about their challenges no. 1. Maybe you can relate to these pain points in your CX program.

We expected to hear that they have too much data, not enough action, and not enough time to implement the necessary actions based on said data. These pain points have been evaluated in the five main challenges, but they told us that 1) the commitment of customers to provide meaningful feedback, aka response rates and 2) motivating team members to take ownership of their results have moved to the top of the list. Survey fatigue is real – customers are tired of constant requests and staff often dismiss feedback as irrelevant or out of their control.

So what are three key strategies that help address these challenges and help you achieve what we call ” feedback for growth?”

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1. Implement action-driven accountability

The first key strategy is to take action with accountability, so it's all about your team. Your CX approach should take all the guesswork out of the “why,” “what,” “who,” and “how” of what happened in each experience. Individual team members need to know what action is required and how their behavior makes customers feel. To improve response rates from customers and generate a minimum of 50 words per feedback, there are some important keys:

1. Make sure it's on brand and feels like a virtual chat.
2. Keep it short – no longer than three minutes.
3. Only ask questions about the purpose of that visit.
4. Make sure the tone of your survey questions feels authentic, empathetic and appreciative of their time and input.
5. Allow them to complete the survey or feedback response when and how they choose.

The results you get by following these simple steps will help you understand how they really felt, and you can measure the impact of each behavior on loyalty and advocacy. For one client (a specialty retailer with 400 locations), we identified seven key behaviors that created the ideal experience. The customer wanted the staff to recommend additional appropriate items. The top 20% of stores had a 34% higher turnover rate and achieved 143% year-over-year comparative sales growth compared to the bottom 20% group. Happy customers buy more — and they love the service experience!

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2. Engage your teams

As mentioned, feedback for growth will only happen when your teams are inspired to keep improving. Customer feedback collected via video, voice or text will help you link results to specific actions for your team members, as well as develop e-learning opportunities. It also reinforces why it matters. When staff see the importance to them and feel accountable for those results, they are more likely to act.

For example, an international customer in home appliances presented a question asking “Based on the expertise, friendliness, knowledge and advice of the team member who served you, how willing would you be to be served by them again?” We compared the results to sales conversion rates (ie, how many buyers became buyers) and found that the top performers for this question had a 36% higher conversion rate.

The key to growth is addressing what may be a barrier, be it skills, confidence or ability, and addressing the issues that prevent teams from fully engaging.

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3. Empowering inclusive growth

The third recommendation is to go beyond tracking results to focus on behaviors driving results. Use your CX program to acquire new customers, retain existing ones, increase average spend per customer, improve conversion rates, increase referrals, and increase positive reviews on social media to attract more new customers. When you can identify the key behaviors that directly impact customer loyalty or dissatisfaction, you can shift from tracking results to focusing only on the actions necessary to drive improvement. You can learn and use proven best practices, identify mid-level results, and see what's missing between what some call “vanilla” experiences and “Wow!” service, and you can address negative feedback more effectively.

As an example of how this approach drives growth, for one of our car service clients, we compared the results for the top 20% and bottom 20% against their annual sales and found out where their new customers came from (called “the path to purchase“), their NPS scores and Google ratings. The top 20% group achieved 24% higher annual sales, 78% of new customers came from referrals and mentioned seeing a positive rating. They had an NPS score of 96 vs. 64 for the bottom 20% and a Google rating of 4.8 out of 5.0.

The main thing is to focus on action reactions, hold each individual accountable for their own behaviors with your program outcomes linked to resources to address skills and focus on what you want most – know your best practices and focus on behaviors more than results (which are results). Remember that the key to encouraging more customers to respond is all about how you personalize it survey questions by customer type by making it conversational and giving them a real voice to tell you what matters most to them. Finally, growth is about understanding the impact of achieving all key benchmarks consistently.