The Logic of Experience Measurement
Chapter Five: Principle 4—Value is in Time Spent
Dear Friends,
Many of you are familiar with the Stone Mantel Time Well Spent metric. We’ve spent years piloting and teaching it. In this installment I will introduce the three most important questions companies should ask their customers, along with the business logic that needs to change in order for companies to create more value.
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The Logic of Experience Measurement
I am genuinely befuddled by the longevity of C-Sat as a measure of experiences and the pride that companies take in their NPS scores. Even today, when the whole world is welcoming AI, companies believe that these two scores tell them how effective their experience is. Now, to be fair, I do think it’s better to have some form of a feedback mechanism for customers than nothing.
But oh man can companies do better.
One could argue that the days of feedback surveys are long past. Such an argument might go something like this: we now have social listening, conversational AI, behavioral data, and many, many other more effective ways of gathering information about our customers. Why do we need to annoy them with a post-experience survey? I would tend to concur. Except that the actual data that companies have about their customers is mostly noise and the way companies analyze that data is usually bunk. (See overuse of demographics discussed several chapters ago.)
I believe in new data gathering techniques. Bring them on! I just don’t believe in the paradigms companies use to determine whether or not an experience is value creating—for the customer or the company. So let’s start with the paradigms the impinge improperly on how companies measure experiences, most of which we’ve discussed before.
1. Demographics, psychographics, and attitudes are no longer the best way to think about your market. People buy based on their situations. NPS is notorious labeling people by their attitudes, psychographics, and demographics. (Who are your detractors?!)
2. Loyalty is a byproduct of a meaningful experience. If you are measuring the byproduct, are you measuring the experience? Not really.
3. The customer doesn’t hire the company because the customer is loyal or loves the brand. The customer hires the company to get a job done. Therefore, if you are going to measure the experience, the company should understand if the job is getting done.
4. Engagement doesn’t mean to the customer what the company thinks it means. What companies mean by engagement could be described as ‘reach’—as in, the company can reach them with their messaging. For the customer, engagement means ‘was I actually enjoying or absorbed into the experience?’ Or, ‘was I paying attention?’ So, measure that!
5. Experiences don’t maintain their value because of brand strategy. Experiences maintain value because people value the time spent in the experience. Therefore, we must determine whether or not the experience produces time value if we want to maintain economic value.
Thinking Correcting about Measuring Experiences
To think correctly about measuring an experience, we need proper experience logic to guide us. It follow that if the customer values what you produce, they will spend time with your offering. As they spend time with you your business will have opportunities to generate income.
The customer spends more time with companies that are effective at getting functional, emotional, social, aspirational, and systemic jobs done for them. ‘More time’ may occur through repeat business, greater usage of the products, and greater engagement with the brand. Last: a good experience is table stakes. A great experience is expected but undifferentiating. A meaningful experience is the best type of solution to create for customers and results in the most value for the customer and the company.
Now that’s sound experience logic. Let’s take the thinking further. The three most important factors in whether or not the customer considers the experience to be time well saved/spent/invested are:
1. Did the company get the job done for the customer?
2. Was the customer actually engaged with the experience?
3. Did the customer find value in the time spent in the experience?
Did the company get the job done for the customer?
Customers hire experiences to get functional, emotional, social, aspirational, and systemic jobs done for them. When the company begins measuring its ability to get on the customer’s JTBD, the company begins the shift toward meaningful experiences.
Think about that. By simply asking customers about whether or not the company got the job done for them, you are creating a shift in the attitudes of people who work for the company. They will start to care about emotional or social jobs to get done and they will start to implement policies that will lead to more meaning for customers.
Was the customer actually engaged with the experience?
When the word ‘engagement’ is used by companies to measure the individual’s engagement with the experience, the company learns how to create ‘real engagement’. I am not talking about counting likes, downloads, eyeballs, or anything else. Though these data points are helpful, the real measure of success is whether or not the customer actually enjoyed or paid attention to the experience.
Did the customer find value in the time spent in the experience?
When the customer says there was value in the time they spent, the company knows they have the right job, the right experience, and the right channel. That is, if the customer tells you that they want to spend more time, or the time saved was valuable, or they are committed to investing more time, then you know that they like the tools and environment that you’ve deployed to support the experience.
To be continued …