Why should you care more about Return on Experience (ROX) than ROI?

Prakash Ramakrishnan
Deskera Engineering
5 min readMay 18, 2020

For today’s customers, the expectations are more now than ever before, with multiple brands delivering on the quality of the product, so it becomes difficult to distinguish why a customer should stick to a brand if it does not meet their expectations.

In response to this, the brands want to engage with the customers in an authentic way to craft brand loyalty and keep their business booming.

The industry, especially now, has to focus on the metric of Customer Experience (CX) to deliver more value to the customer.

What do people mean when they say Customer Experience?

If I took the words customer experience and reduced it to its granularity, I would find these four elements.

Relevance

Give the consumer what they want when they want it.

There might be a strategy in place to cater to the customer’s needs, but in a market as dynamic as this, a titanic approach with no maneuverability to alter course or change when you see the ice will lead to the sinking of the plan.

Reliability

Give the consumer a consistent experience

When the organization has a culture of delivering excellent value to the customer, then they should choose the right enterprise solution to match their needs and hence provide a consistently fantastic experience.

The fusing of culture and efficient systems will fulfill the customer needs with limited deviation from the message conveyed every time.

Responsiveness

It means paying attention, not with the intent to respond but with the intent to understand and understand with a view to acting, and these, while subtle, are critical differences.

Doing only reputation management when a customer complains does not make a materially better customer experience.

Convenience

Be where the customers need you and when they need you. It is as simple as that.

How did ROX come into relevance?

With the rising importance of CX, the companies are exploring personalized marketing, omnichannel strategies to understand and engage better with their customers. According to Gartner, “More than 66% of companies now contest primarily based on customer experience — up from only 36% a decade ago.”

Based on the same report, we know that many brands are investing heavily in providing a great customer experience (CX). With those resources allocated, companies need to find a way to gauge their return.

The conventional methods of calculating the return on investment are no longer acceptable as the only metric to be fruitful for a company’s success.

In light of this, ROX is materializing as a method for companies to quantify how improving CX drives consumer behavior and generate tangible results.

ROX starts with aligning customer’s purchase journeys, pinpointing touch-points, and determinants that influence the customers the most and enhancing those experiences for a concrete business outcome.

ROX is a new customer experience ROI.

Building ROX Virtuous Cycle (Source PWC Insights Consumer Survey 2019)

Why do companies need a ROX measurement framework?

“What gets measured gets managed,” said Peter Drucker, the father of management in his book The Practice of Management.

Even if the book is old, the words still hold water now, which is why consultants suggest that firms must create a framework for ROX measurement.

A ROX framework focuses on customer touch-points that would need slightly more deliberation before they can provide an excellent Customer Experience.

It can identify the parts your company does well, and then make sure your business process, IT process, and performance metrics are aligned with those core capabilities.

A ROX framework will compel the organization to evaluate critical behaviors that differentiate the business from the competition and display its strengths.

How can organizations improve their ROX?

While the PwC’s report is focused on consumer insights, it’s significant to understand that the CX the brand supplies is dependent on a host of factors, including technology, employee experience, and much more.

Below are a few suggestions on how to improve the customer experience

1. Blend employee experience and CX

The firms the can craft the most enjoyable experience for customers can concede that it is the employees that, for the most part, deliver it. Therefore the employee experience throughout this process remains crucial in maximizing ROX.

The employees are in the front line of the interactions with customers, and if the employee who works the company is proud of the job they are doing, proud of the brand and well looked after then they can become the best brand ambassadors making sure the customers would have a great experience.

While management is fixated on the consumer’s experiences, they usually forget to notice how CX initiatives influence the employee experience. The important thing is, there is no need to start from scratch.

By making the connection obvious between improved customer experience and employee experience, the company will be closer to achieving optimal customer results.

Employers are your biggest ambassadors for your product (Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash)

2. Build communities with a purpose

It is all about finding opportunities for purposeful engagement with both external and internal audiences, especially using social and mobile platforms, which has been rising significantly in the past decade.

Basically, the plan is to make sure the brands which regularly engage with the external stakeholders have an ear on the ground from a market perspective to identify the wants of the customers quickly.

Thanks to social media bringing down the barriers of communication between the company and people, it is easier to share the brand’s message to the people and create communities globally.

Companies like Harley Davidson and Huda Beauty have crafted such a loyal follower base as they provide unique experiences to their communities and genuinely engage and co-create stories and experiences.

3. Respect data and provide (incredible) value

Over the past few years, security and data privacy have become incredibly valuable for all types of stakeholders, businesses, regulators, and private individuals.

As more and more people are aware of how personal data is being utilized, brands need to be more cognizant of how they plan to manage the data that consumers trust them with, and ensure they provide value when they use that to engage with them in a more focused method.

One of the critical use cases for brands analyzing how the data can help deliver value is marketing personalization.

Finding the right balance is vital here as over-personalization might alienate the customers and damage the company in terms of reputation and costs.

However, customers would expect a certain amount of convenience and rewards for their loyalty, so under-personalization would also work against delivering a valuable CX.

Lastly, partnering with the right enterprise solution(CRM) will help you in achieving your CX goals. Visit the website for more details.

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