Creating a Successful CX Program: A Learning Series

In this article:

Suggested next article: Core Training & Certification

Fast tracking your first CX survey: Kicking off a proof-of-concept

Starting your first Customer Experience (CX) program can be a bit overwhelming. To help overcome any hesitation, this article explains how to get a new Delighted CX program effectively underway.

Our first bit of advice is simple—don’t try and take CX on all at once! Increase your program's sophistication incrementally. And a smart way to start is by fast tracking a "proof-of-concept" survey to pave the way forward.

A 5-minute survey

Get feedback quickly to share internally, rally excitement across the team, and set the foundation for your program to grow. Don’t delay - get your first batch of feedback in minutes!

Avoid overcomplicating your first few surveys. After monitoring and supporting thousands of feedback initiatives, we’ve found most successful CX programs always start with a quick and simple proof-of-concept survey within a week or so of sign-up. 

How do you run a proof-of-concept survey? It’s simple!

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Pick a small segment of your customer population to survey (ex. 5% of active customers).
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Add 3-5 Properties to your CSV. You can add more if you have them, but add at least 3 data points!
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Upload via our One-Time Survey page.
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Send away!
Proof-of-concept surveys help to ensure everything is running smoothly (ex. look & feel of the survey, data points for filtering, etc.) before you start to scale to larger, more automated processes. Even more importantly, the results you receive will help energize your team - immediately providing value and insight from day one. Ready for your first quick win with Delighted? Send your proof-of-concept survey now!

Quick wins for better response rates

Surveying is a process. And, like any good process, spending time to take a step back, evaluate, and refine is so critical.

Knock, knock. Is anyone home? Sending surveys will only carry an impact if your customers are responding. Competitive response rates are important, because they set the bar for the quality of your data. Higher response rates mean higher sample sizes, which ensures your data is more representative of your full customer base, and more statistically significant. Here are a few steps we recommend increasing your response rate: 

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Dial in your subject line: If you’re sending via our Email platform, be sure to spend a bit of extra time perfecting your subject line. The more folks that open the survey email, the more opportunities you have to generate a response. Find best practices regarding subject lines in our Help Center.

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Clarify the time investment: Think back to all the surveys you’ve taken, and how many of those spiraled into 30-minute long survey sagas. Chances are your customers have had similar negative experiences. Use your survey question customization, across any platform ( Email, Web, SMS etc.) to double-down on the short and sweet survey you’re sending their way. Customers will be thrilled to finally see a more concise survey!
3
Personalize the survey: Using any of the Special Properties offered by Delighted, you can dynamically update survey copy to mention key details about the customer and/or transaction - such as including the customer name in the subject line, referencing the product purchase, and much more.

Curious about more ideas on how to boost response rates? How about 16 of them? Check out our blog on 16 Tips for Improving Your Response Rate!

Sharing your first survey results

Far too often, surveys are run, feedback is collected, and the results sit indefinitely in a CSV or Google Sheet - never to be seen again. Don’t let this happen to your program! One of the most important elements of leading a successful CX program is to share feedback effectively and frequently. Look at a few examples of how other Delighted customers have rallied their teams around customer feedback:

  • “You need to send the feedback as quickly as possible to the relevant people and then hold them and the organization accountable.” - HP Indigo
  • “All the feedback – good or bad – is shared across the company. Because Munchery measures each meal, and knows who prepared them, even the chefs know how each other are performing.” - Munchery
  • “One of the big strengths of Delighted is that it adds a narrative to a situation, which can spur action even more effectively than data. You’re imagining this person who had that experience, and you empathize more with them.” - Commonbond

Check out some popular features for sharing feedback including Trends, Alerts, and the Snapshot Report—or head to the Reporting and Analytics section to see them all!

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Automating and Actioning: Dialing in closed loop and automations

In this section, we’ll guide you through automating components of your program to help take off some weight:

One quick automation

Email notifications carry big results. 70% of customers said they would be more likely to do business with an organization again if their outreach was handled appropriately the first time around. How can you make this happen? Set up automations with Delighted’s Alerts system to get clear, detailed, and real-time notifications to deliver timely and accurate outreach to customers. Set up an Alert today!

Automatically share feedback with the right team members

While sharing feedback is at the core of any effective CX program, an equally important consideration is defining who receives what feedback. Take a second to think about the various teams / team members in your company. If you sent out a survey to all of your customers, do you think your entire team would want to review each and every piece of feedback? Of course not! By using Trends and Alerts, you can make sure that feedback is selectively passed around your organization - only sharing feedback with certain team members when specific conditions are met.

To customize and build this Trend + Alert combo:

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Create a new Trend: Search for a keyword on the dashboard, select a property filter, or use some combination of the two. Once selected, click on the link to “Create a trend with these results.”

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Modify the Trend: Add more keywords and properties, and then adjust the title.

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Create the Alert based off this new Trend: Navigate to the Alerts section of your dashboard (Integrations->Alerts), add a new Alert, select your newly created Trend, and then type in the email address of the team member to receive those notifications. Here is an example for NPS: 

Ready to automate response notifications for your program? Go ahead and hop into your account and set up your Trend + Alert workflow!

Learn how Delighted customers are sharing feedback

A critical component of any CX program is to simply start sharing feedback. When feedback is shared often and automatically, the Voice of the Customer becomes more fundamental to a business - which makes your CX program increasingly more valuable and indispensable.

Find one way to share feedback automatically. While strategies for closing the loop with customers will invariably expand over time, including more systems, weekly huddles, and other initiatives, it’s OK to start small! We recommend picking at least one automated way to share feedback as soon as you can - whether that’s an Email Alert, Slack integration, or any one of our other integrations. Need some help figuring out where to start? Check out how some other Delighted customers have automated their closed loop processes:

  • “Slack ensures that every piece of NPS feedback collected is distributed to the correct teams to take action and close the loop with customers. In fact, CommonBond uses this feature to quickly identify detractors, route them to customer care, and follow up with them when necessary.” - Commonbond
  • “We have Delighted hooked up to Slack [...] [We] will have people tagging other people and saying, “Hey, they’re using this product. You’re the product manager for that. So, can you look at what this customer is concerned about?” We’ll go to the account owner, the customer success manager and say, “Hey, what’s going on with this person?”” - Payscale
  • “My favorite Delighted feature is its flexibility and the different amounts of integrations that it has. We’ve integrated it with all sorts of tools – we’ve integrated it with Looker and Salesforce to allow us to get a 360-view of all different aspects for all different stakeholders in the company.” - Happy Returns

Set up the Slack Integration today like Commonbond and Payscale or the Salesforce Integration like Happy Returns! You can also start learning other methods of closing the loop and begin sharing feedback ASAP.

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Look Like a Rockstar: Positioning the CX results to carry the biggest internal impact

In this section, we go over:

Finding themes in comments

No more needing to manually tag responses! Avoid constantly exporting your data, just to run it through an external tool to understand what customers are talking about most often. Use Delighted’s Pivot Table to find key themes in your feedback.

In your Reports section, navigate to your Pivot Table. Using the drop-down menu on the lower left-hand side of the page, select the option for Keywords. With this view, trending keywords are automatically surfaced and sortable by score, response count, and other key data points. Ready to see what your customers are saying? Review your feedback in the Pivot Table now!

Premium reports

Pivot Table reports are considered Premium reports, limited to specific plan levels. For more information, see our Pricing page. To find themes in comments on our other plans, we recommend filtering your Dashboard “With Comments” on the left-side and start paying attention to any notable keywords, saving them as Trends as you go!

Not sure which key words to start with? Check out our Smart Trends feature here that automatically surfaces common keywords based on frequency thresholds, making it easier to locate themes without reading through feedback.

Premium feature

Smart Trends is a Premium feature, limited to specific plan levels. For more information, see our Pricing page.

Three powerful ways to share feedback

Mobilize the team - feedback is here! As you start getting further along with your customer feedback program, it’s critical for customer feedback to start being seen as a strategic priority at your company (if it’s not already!). In this module, we’ll walk through a few simple steps you can take to deliver a big impact and lead focused discussions around customer feedback.

CX programs need a leader. That’s where you come in. Your team is depending on you to help them navigate all this fantastic feedback you’re receiving. That’s a tall order, but here’s the good news: It’s actually pretty easy with Delighted! Carve out 30 minutes a week, share the reports we’ve outlined below, and start seeing your team turn into CX fanatics.

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Head to your Over Time report to see how customer feedback is trending. Keep an eye out for any spikes or dips, as these changes indicate there’s been a shift in customer sentiment. Take a screenshot of the graph and use it as a jumping off point for team discussions. This is the “What?” of your CX program - the metric over time.

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Metrics alone don’t tell the story. Be sure to pull in a list of the top 10-15 keywords mentioned by customers, and then filter by the score - pulling a list of top 5 negative keywords, and top 5 positive keywords. This is the “Why?” of your CX program - surfacing key drivers and underlying themes in customer sentiment.

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Are you passing properties? Select any properties from your Pivot Table here to see a comparative view of what customer segments are driving your score up, and which might be pulling the score down. This is the “Who?” of your CX program - isolating the key customer segments that are shaking up your feedback results.

Ready to jump in? Send out your first Team Report tomorrow!

Enabling the team

The equation is simple: Reporting + Sharing = Enablement. By mindfully reporting and constantly sharing customer insights, you’ll enable each and every team member to be an owner of their own CX journey.

Give the CX keys to your team. Sharing feedback is critical for team members to understand how they’re impacting customer experience, enabling them to make customer-centric decisions time and time again. In this email, we’ll dig into three key ways that Delighted customers have shared feedback and empowered their team to take action.

  • Tell a story with your CX data and relay the impact - such as by sharing Over Time reports. After the team at Patch rolled out a price decrease to their paid promotion segment, their NPS data shared the real-time impact of the adjustments:  “...Users validated Patch’s decisions almost immediately via NPS feedback and feature usage. “Within a couple of days, we saw the NPS graph go up and to the right.” - Patch
  • Communicate your weekly or monthly NPS breakdown automatically by turning on Email Digests within the Accounts drop-down. “We have a weekly report that goes out worldwide and on a regional level. Service engineers and every country manager get scored according to their NPS, and they wear it on their sleeve.” - HP Indigo
  • Understand the key customer segments to add more flavor to your reports like Affirm does. “Our reporting typically includes current NPS score, mentions of impacts that may have caused scores to fluctuate, top trending issues reported by detractors, and action items that have stemmed from new learnings.” With these insights, “We are able to share a monthly report with key stakeholders within Affirm, including Product, Client Success, Sales, Legal and Compliance” - Affirm

Ready to leverage the Over Time Report like Patch, turn on Delighted Email Digests like HP Indigo, or even assess Pivot Table insights like Affirm? Start putting reports together today!

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Create a Culture of Feedback: Deepen CX understanding and catalyze internal adoption

In this section, we go over:

Growing your Delighted program using the CX Maturity Model

Customer feedback is all about the journey. Developing a world-class customer experience (CX) program doesn’t happen in just a few days, weeks, or even months. At Delighted, we advocate starting small, but keeping in mind that you can (and should!) be building for the long haul – towards a more sophisticated program that reaches each and every corner of your organization.

How do you measure the progress of your CX program? Using the CX Maturity Model makes it super simple to map your program against clear competencies and outcomes. At a glance, you’ll be able to understand where your CX program is excelling, and what areas might need a bit more TLC. Get oriented with the CX Maturity Model resource here and assess your progress across the 5 essential elements of a successful CX program (Strategizing, Surveying, Actioning, Reporting, and Sharing).

Expanding your survey touchpoints

Customers don’t always have singular experiences with your brand. Rather, the culmination of smaller experiences – navigating a website, adding items to a shopping cart, engaging with your support team – is what drives a customer towards the ultimate outcome: purchasing and renewing. A best-in-class CX program listens to customers at each critical milestone that influences a purchase event.

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The best way to start uncovering the blindspots in your CX program is to run a customer journey mapping exercise. A journey map will provide clarity into each and every milestone your customer has with your brand. Once the journey map is in place, make sure you include a survey touchpoint to measure the experience at each key milestone. Check out our Guide to Customer Journey Mapping blog here!

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To get started with adding touchpoints, simply click on the drop-down Project menu on the upper left-hand side of your dashboard and select the option “+ Create a new Project”. Spinning up a new Project takes seconds, but will have a lasting impact on how you measure each step in the customer journey.

Can’t create a new project?

If “+Create a new project” is grayed out, then adding a new touchpoint will require an upgrade. For more information, see our Pricing page.

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As with any survey initiative, momentum is key. Once you have a new touchpoint defined (ex. post-support, abandoned cart, etc.), our recommendation is to try sending your survey to a few hundred folks first. Use the One-Time Survey method by uploading a CSV/Excel file that contains your customer contact info. As feedback starts rolling into the dashboard, share it internally and take time to celebrate with your team – you’ve just started measuring a brand new customer touchpoint!

Share the keys to CX with your team

Dismantle the customer feedback silo. Create a pathway for other team members and departments to run their own CX programs on Delighted. Generating more cross-departmental focus on CX isn’t just a good idea, it’s fundamental to any truly successful CX program.

Give the CX keys to your team. Product teams measuring sentiment around new features. Marketing teams getting a pulse on loyalty programs. Support teams measuring post-interaction customer satisfaction. There are countless ways to get your broader team focused on their own dimension of customer experience.

  • Explore your company’s survey touchpoint. Here’s what a recent company shared regarding how widespread their CX program has become: “We leverage multiple survey types for each department.” Explore our projects for ideas on expanding Delighted to brand new touchpoints by visiting our Onboarding article here.
  • Upgrade your account to create a new Project. Creating a new Delighted Project takes only a few seconds, and instantly extends brand new CX programs that other teams can customize and manage separately from your current feedback initiative.
  • Invite your teammates to the new project and have new teams run a proof-of-concept (POC) survey. A customer recently shared this note with our Concierge team: “The time to get to value as a company is super fast.” Help your team realize that value quickly by running a quick and simple POC survey. Be sure to share this article on how to run a POC survey with them!

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Looking Forward: Long-term strategy and account ownership

In this section, we will cover:

A reflection of the Delighted Learning Series

Time to celebrate (and share)! If you’ve read through these lessons, then you’ve just completed Delighted’s full onboarding course, and we couldn’t be more happy for you.

Throughout your time at Delighted, you’ll receive many “Milestone” emails, which are small notes we’ll share to celebrate important moments in your CX program’s journey. These are great moments to pause, share the progress with your team, and reflect on just how far you’ve come. With that in mind, we strongly recommend taking a look at some of the lessons we’ve covered so far. You can also take our Delighted Core Certification Course to tie all of your learnings together and test your skills!

Introducing you to QBRs

This is it, you’re an expert now! It’s time to leave the Delighted learning nest and start running things solo. But don’t worry, it’ll be easier than you think - you have all the tools necessary to keep moving forward on your own.

Establish a cadence for review. Each quarter, we encourage you to take the time to review your program, iterate on it, and discover areas to expand. You’ll want to think about the value your feedback program is adding, the conversations that it’s catalyzing, and any unexposed opportunities that you might want to pursue. The best way to field this is to conduct a Quarterly Business Review, or “QBR” for short. This will be a quick analysis to evaluate your program to-date, establish goals, improve engagement, and expand the overall program.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to do it completely alone! Our On-Demand QBR guide will walk you through the key components of a successful CX QBR. This guide is a compilation of the talking points that have helped industry leaders such as Glassdoor, ClassPass, Tuft&Needle, and HotelTonight pull more value from their programs. In this guide, we'll:

  • Review program goals and measure success on those goals
  • Quickly implement any high value features that you might have overlooked
  • Expand your CX/EX program for even more impact

In this guide, we cover concepts like adding additional touchpoints, using more advanced integrations (ex. Salesforce), and other key initiatives that we've found are immensely beneficial for speeding the growth of CX programs. Note: Some of these features may not be included on your plan, so feel free to reach out to our Concierge Team and we can chat through options for unlocking that functionality!

Continue ramping success with your CX program

A few lessons back, we introduced the CX Maturity assessment, which will be a key tool to reference as you continue to grow your overall CX/EX program. This assessment houses criteria you can use to evaluate where your team lies within our maturity framework.

So, where do you fall on the maturity model? We’ve broken down CX maturity into 5 core elements (Strategizing, Surveying, Actioning, Reporting, and Sharing) to make it easier to see where your CX program still has room to grow. When you take the self-assessment, you’ll also get prescriptive suggestions on how you can advance your program. 

We highly recommend setting yourself a reminder in one year to take the assessment again and see how you’ve grown. Be sure to go at your own pace - all good things come with time!

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