Customer Experience Consulting that gets results!

The Right Methods

Clients often come to us assuming they need one type of survey, but after talking with us, they realize they need an entirely different solution.

One of the advantages of Interaction Metrics is that we’re not wed to a method, metric, or software solution—because we already have the methods, metrics, and software in place. So, we don’t have a stake in selling you any one solution in particular!

Instead, we listen to you and align our approach to your goals. We work this way because this is the most effective way to measure and improve the customer experience.

Once we understand your current CX and where you’d like to go, we develop a Research Plan with a Statement of Work (SOW). To make things easy, our SOWs give you several options.

Interaction Metrics’ Methods

As mentioned above, we match methods to objectives. Some of the methods we use include:

• Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Short transaction surveys, relationship surveys, marketplace surveys, tracking studies, and more.
• Employee Surveys: DEI surveys, engagement surveys, periodic check-ins, and inverted surveys where we ask employees how they think customers answer the Customer Survey.
• Text Analysis: We use Text Analysis for unstructured data, including conversations and customers’ comments in reply to your survey’s open-ended questions.
• Customer Service Evaluations: These are statistically-valid scientific observations of your calls, emails, and chats. Customer Service Evaluations can include mystery shop and customer service training workshops when needed.
• One-on-One Interviews: We usually conduct Zoom interviews with the camera turned off and recording on. However, we also conduct interviews using interview-adjacent methods like free-form email feedback and other kinds of questionnaires.

The Survey Audit: Let’s Boost Your Current Survey

Since many CX programs start with a survey, one of our most requested initial services is The Survey Audit.

If you’re already learning that our Customer Experience Consulting is different because we don’t automatically assume you need an extensive program, you’re already getting one of our first principles!

Principle #1:
Small is not always small. Nudges and tweaks can have an outsize impact.

A typical Survey Audit examines your survey for multiple issues, including:

• Logic gaps
• Biased questions
• Distancing cues

The Survey Audit: Fees & Benefits

In under one week, and usually for approx. $1,100, we’ll give you a complete survey diagnosis. The exact fee depends on the length of your survey. And of course, before we begin, you’ll have a mini-SOW with the specifications dialed in.

What will we find? That’s the point; we don’t know!

• Perhaps we’ll see that with a few tweaks, we can make your survey questions more compelling, and your survey will be good to go!
• Or maybe we’ll find that you’re missing critical opportunities to uncover objective facts, so we need to roll up our sleeves and do more.

The one thing we know for sure is that having a third party (that’s us!) examine your survey from a scientific perspective is invaluable.

“The Interaction Metrics Team has been a delight to work with as we improve our patient survey and survey satisfaction metrics. They have been thoughtful, creative, and attuned to our goals and needs. Highly recommended!”
Dan Wilson, CEO, ClearSight Center

Interaction Metrics: What You Can Expect

In 2004, Martha Brooke founded Interaction Metrics because she saw a clear need for a science-driven approach to measuring and improving the customer experience. Since then, Interaction Metrics has launched hundreds of surveys, examined thousands of interactions, and gathered invaluable insights along the way.

Principle #2:
Customize. Be affordable. And above all, prioritize science & objectivity.

• A Program Tailored to You: We match methods to your company’s specific needs—so you never end up with a generic survey that you’ve seen 100 other companies use or irrelevant data.
• Cost advantage: We already have licenses for industry software like Qualtrics, Alchemer, Power BI, and AI platforms, so you don’t need to pay extra for these technologies. And because we license all of the major survey software platforms, you can weigh in on which providers you’d like us to use for you.
• Scientific objectivity: Our methods are objective and impartial. We gather high-quality data you can present to stakeholders, use in your marketing materials, and publish on your website and in other media.

CX Consulting: Sometimes, It Starts Systemically

If you have read this far, you may be realizing your business needs help from the CX experts. Still, you wonder if you have systemic issues that need to be addressed before getting into your survey or considering methodologies. If this is the case, you’re probably already using one or more of the tools in this list:

• Platforms like Qualtrics, Delighted, Alchemer, Survey Monkey, etc.
• Scores such as Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score, and ACSI.
• AI tools like ChatGPT for content, Sonix for transcriptions, and more.
• Dashboard tools like Tableau and Power BI.

If you have tools in place, that’s great! We want you to be on board with using the best tools—but even the best tools need skilled craftspeople to use them correctly. That’s one of the ways Interaction Metrics can help.

If you think you might have systemic issues, we consider:

• What is the most effective CX software stack for your company?
• What kinds of surveys will your customers actually want to take? And are surveys the best way to achieve your customer feedback goals?
• What kinds of correlation studies will be most actionable for you?
• What will be the most efficient way to arrive at a weighting factor? (Your metrics need a weighting factor because not all aspects of the customer experience are equally important to you—or your customers!)

Customer Experience Consulting in Action

Have you considered a new customer survey or disassembling and rebuilding your current survey approach?

A global manufacturing company needed to reconstruct its entire customer satisfaction survey program—going deeper, more actionably, and delving into specific strategic areas.

In 2014, we built a tracking study which is still ongoing. As we built out their program, we layered in daily transaction surveys with monthly progress reports that uncover timely, critical insights about seven key areas of their company.

“The Interaction Metrics team and Martha have their fingers on the pulse of today’s CX activity. They’ve guided our teams while extracting key information for Yaskawa America — so that we’re able to stay on the cutting edge of the Customer Experience.”
Dennis Fitzgerald, Vice President Customer Satisfaction, Yaskawa America

Would you like to get and give more value through their customer service?

For a recent project with a large tool supplier, we improved customer service call quality by 27 percent from their baseline — in just five months!

Using Interaction Metrics’ Quality of Customer Interaction™ model, we measured and improved each customer service call for efficiency, connection, information, and differentiation. Week over week, for 24 weeks, in addition to our scores, we made actionable recommendations.

“Interaction Metrics has given us detailed insights about the customer experience that we never could have achieved on our own. Their Service Evaluations and Surveys have been eye-opening and transformative,”
Andrew Larsen, Talent & Development Manager, Acme Construction Supply

CX Consulting: How AI Fits In

AI, whether Bing, ChatGPT, or any other large language model, can be good at answering certain types of questions. And, while it’s safe to say AI will eventually be intellectually curious and ask intelligent questions, today, it still requires smart humans to ask the kinds of questions that lead to meaningful change.

Our criteria for using AI for your comments and conversations is two-fold: first, it will be cost-effective, and second, it will be efficient.

Basically, our position on AI is that we love to use it when we can, but we recognize its limitations primarily because it requires considerable training. So, while AI is getting the red carpet treatment and is showing up in everything from design tools to chatbots, we’re a bit more cautious, using it only for the largest projects where we can be sure the cost advantage is there. Read more about Where and When AI for Customer Experience Fits.

Principle #3:
It’s almost always possible to create an authentic, elevated customer interaction. Even surveys are a type of interaction, and there’s no excuse for them to be tedious or mundane.

Top 10 Things to Look for From an Elite Customer Experience Consulting Firm

Every company is different, which means every customer experience consulting project will be unique. Nevertheless, there are still some commonalities in CX programs. So here’s our list of top 10 things to inquire about when you’re seeking an elite customer experience consulting firm:

1. Objectivity: How will your customer experience consultants ensure impartiality and good science?
2. Solid Sampling: What are their sampling methods? How will they achieve representative data? Learn more about sampling here.
3. Analysis: Will you get the complete set of Excel banners so that you can probe the data? What variables will they run correlations on?
4. Metrics: What do they see as the pros and cons of Net Promoter Score? How do they calculate Customer Effort and Competitive Edge scores? What other metrics do they use?
5. Dashboards and Portals: Ask for examples to ensure you can filter the data and target improvement areas at a glance.
6. Tracking Studies: Over time, what metrics will remain constant? What will change? How will your customer experience consultant track change over time?
7. Actionable Insights: How specific can your consultant be with their insights and recommendations? Goodness is in the details!
8. Interaction Evaluations: In most cases, surveys should not be your only method. Is your customer experience consultant prepared to do statistically valid observations of your lived interactions too?
9. Workshops: To bring the Finding Report to life, workshops can be tremendously helpful. Does your consultant offer workshops to help extend the findings to frontline and other staff?
10. Rigorous Protocols: Finally, outstanding scientific research never happens by accident. It’s the result of good models and protocols. What protocols does your consultant use?

Special Considerations for B2B Companies

While Interaction Metrics serves a range of organizations, from government agencies like the Orange County Fire Authority to educational and licensing groups like the California State Bar, we’re one of the few CX Agencies with significant B2B know-how.

As specialists in B2B customer experience consulting, we understand the factors that make B2B CX different from consumer CX. Here are five of the factors that make B2B unique:

• Increased Spending: B2B customers spend far more than consumers do. Are you buying a single pair of running shoes or many pallets of running sneakers each year?
• Multiple Decision-Makers: B2B customers involve entire teams – not just a lone individual.
• True Partnership: B2B customers are deeply involved in the distribution and use of a product or service, and their feedback helps to guide product development.
• Many Touchpoints: B2B customers don’t just leave the store with a shopping bag. In B2B CX, the customer’s journey can include tech support, supply chain management, consulting, and field service. B2B customers may interact with their providers on a weekly or daily basis.
• High Customer Expectations: Consumer giants like Amazon, Apple, and Nike offer sleek customer experiences. B2B customers expect the same, if not much, much more, because, after all, their order sizes are magnitudes greater!

So how do those differences influence the design of B2B surveys? There is so much to say on this topic, but here are four starting principles unique to B2B surveys:

1. Survey Judiciously: Don’t bombard your B2B customers with surveys. Develop a strategic plan for how you will periodically sample your customer base to acquire feedback holistically and at key interaction points.
2. Demonstrate Listening: Tailor your surveys to reflect your B2B customers’ actual concerns. That starts with listening. Explain to your B2B customers, “We truly want to hear everything you want to say about your competitor and the marketplace.” Then, listen!
3. Account for Multiple Perspectives: Your customer base includes presidents, the IT team, marketing managers, and procurement specialists—all of whom have different perspectives on your company’s performance. Sending the same survey to everyone will result in bogus data or lots of “N/A” answers. Instead, embrace a persona-driven logic-embedded approach to your surveys.
4. Follow Through: In your B2B surveys, ask customers if they are open to a follow-up call to discuss their thoughts. Then follow through!

Three Levels of Customer Experience Consulting

While we described our levels of customer experience consulting above, it’s worth repeating because each client and situation is unique. So, generally, our CX consulting comes in three tiers: mini-projects, projects, and ongoing customer experience programs.

Mini-Projects: Mini-Projects are just that: mini. Sometimes a mini-project is about optimizing your survey questions, giving you more engaging survey formats, or sampling customer text to uncover emergent themes. The Survey Audit is a good example of a Mini-Project. Book a time to discuss that here.

Projects: We design your survey, write the survey invites, customize the survey URLs to include CRM data, monitor your survey in the field, compile the analysis, and present the findings on-site or by Zoom.

Programs: Our programs collect an ongoing data stream with daily surveys, interaction evaluations, or both. Interaction Metrics programs give you a dashboard to track your KPIs and target areas for immediate improvement.

Interaction Metrics: Your Go-To CX Consulting Firm

In sum, Interaction Metrics is your go-to customer experience consulting firm for scientifically rigorous surveys and other methods too.

With nearly two decades of helping companies improve their customer experience, we can help you deliver a great customer experience that’s memorable for your customers—and profitable for you.

Whether you need a Mini-Project to improve your survey questions or a total overhaul of your CX program, we approach every project with intellectual curiosity.

You’ll find we’re nimble, open-minded, and laser-focused on finding the right customer experience solutions for you.

Ready to improve the customer experience? Let’s discuss how Interaction Metrics’ customer experience consulting can help your company get and give more value! Let’s talk!