#CXSecrets: Use Internal Benchmarking to Quickly Enhance CX

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Do you ever wonder if you're doing as well as your competitors? Of course you do! This is the familiar exercise of external benchmarking, or comparing key metrics of your business against others in your space.

Business leaders use this all the time as a way to set standards for performance evaluation on metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or overall satisfaction; and many look to external benchmarking results as key indicators for how to improve customer experience.

External benchmarking is insightful, of course, but have you ever considered utilizing the power of internal benchmarking?

In this edition of #CXSecrets, I'll explain how you can use insights from internally benchmarking against yourself within your own organization to quickly enhance your customer experience program.

Watch this edition of #CXSecrets above, or click here to download the video transcript.

Why internal benchmarking?

We all agree that external benchmarking is important, but we find that looking inward can be even more important to increasing your company's customer experience.

Start with the best

To start looking inward, you must identify the best locations, work groups or entities within your organization that are delivering a fantastic customer experience.

If you have a large organization, I can guarantee that you're going to have variability in customer experience between your very best locations (or work groups or entities) and your worst locations (or work groups or entities).

Exemplify best practices

Let's say you're a hotel. Take a look at your best five locations. 

Don’t just look at the customer experience survey feedback or social review feedback that you're receiving. Go to each location. Observe what they’re doing. Interview the people who are delivering those fantastic experiences.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Now that you've observed and listened, figure out a way to create processes and procedures inspired by the practices of your best locations that you can apply across your entire organization. It's really that simple.

Now get out there and do it!

Internal benchmarking is an incredibly effective, low-hanging-fruit way to enhance the customer experience across the enterprise, and you can be incredibly successful in improving your customer experience program if you take this approach.

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More #CXSecrets

Thanks for joining us for another edition of #CXSecrets, a video series capturing bonus material from my book Listen or Die! The 40 Lessons That Turn Customer Feedback into Gold. 

Visit our YouTube channel to see all of the videos in the series, or click the links below to see other videos in the series:

Sean McDade founded PeopleMetrics in 2001 and he is the architect of the company’s customer experience management (CEM) software platform. As CEO, he guides the company’s vision and strategy. Sean has over 20 years of experience helping companies measure and improve the customer experience. Earlier in his career, he spent five years at the Gallup Organization, where he was the practice leader of their consulting division. His company offers CEM software with advanced machine learning solutions and hands-on analytical support to help companies make sense of their CX data. Sean holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration with a specialization in marketing science from Temple University in Philadelphia. He has published eight articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and has taught over 25 marketing classes. Sean was named a 40 under 40 award recipient of the Philadelphia region. He is an active Angel Investor, including investments in Tender Greens, CloudMine and Sidecar.

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