Finally have some time to take on your comment.

First, thank you so very much for such a thoughtful and well composed comment. I really appreciate it (and I am certainly blushing to the idea that you were waiting for something I was going to write).

I agree with you that your weighting of the index should be done in response to customers’ complains or feedback. I probably did not make it clear enough (I think I wrote “if you are having a problem online” or something like that) but I absolutely meant to include it. Thanks for the clarification.

As for the starting value of the weights – two points. First, and I don’t think you are talking about this, you have to have a neutral, benchmark, all-things being equal measurement independent of anything else. And you have to update it each time you measure any part of this experience. That is, if you want, what is going to in different dashboards and it could even become your CSAT-index replacement metric (lots of caveats behind taking that approach – but that is part of the article I am doing for D2.0). When you say to collect customers’ opinions for the importance of each component during the co-design phase, and update them over time, I also want to add that you have to keep them updated and separate over segments. If you are going to repeat an experience across segments (any type you use to define them) then you have to have separate weights for each segment. As I said before, I agree in asking customers for their feedback on what they consider important — but we need to know how to apply that feedback as well (as in, where it makes more sense).

As for the different elements of feedback – it would be great (as long as it makes your strategy). One thing to always consider with feedback is not to tire the customers asking for too much feedback. If we can find a way (again, in the strategy) to collect more than one point of feedback for each MOT or function – fantastic. One of the key aspects of customer-driven organizations is that they ask their customers for feedback and integrate that feedback into what they do. What better way to run a company than to integrate feedback across the entire world for all operations?

As a wise person once said the best laid plans never survive an encounter with reality. No matter how much you plan and co-design, and systems-think your experience, it is outdated the moment is released and you have to continuously monitor it and improve / change it. If you don’t understsand that, then do get into Experience Management of Design. Plain and Simple. The metrics, as you very well say,simply point you in the right direction — but it is up to you to know what to do with them and how to improve / change things for the better.

I agree with what you say, my caveats and amplifications above standing, and I think you are making total sense. I don’t think this is the definite, end of the world, unique solution to the problem – but I am happy to use it as a start and modify it as necessary.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

I have been waiting for this 7th part, as you know. And let me start by saying you made it worth the wait!. The EEX is a great approach and acknowledges the fact that the customer experience is multi-touchpoint driven and should be measured (as well as designed) and actioned as such. I will highly recommend the entire sequel to anyone interested in the field of Customer Experience Management (and design).

Now, with regard to the measurement, I do have a few questions/additions:

I’m all in favor of adding weights to different parts of the experience in the total measurement. I do think though it is best to weigh based on importance of one piece of the experience compared to the overall experience as per customer feedback. It cannot be the company deciding which (part of the) experience matters most: the Customer will decide. Therefor one should weigh highest that part of the experience that matters most to customers. When done correctly you will have a killer metric (oops for making decisions on where to invest/improve or where not (it really does not matter investing in parts of the experience that your customer doesn’t care about that much, considering you have limited resources).

The starting value of the weights could come from collecting these in the design-phase where you involve Customers to collect initial feedback on your design. Since Customer expectations, desires and needs shift over time, it is important to keep track of movement in the weights you apply. One should adjust the weights accordingly to stay in tune with customer expectations/needs.

To make it even better (and I believe/hope/think you agree but I am not sure because I only read it between the lines) it would be great if one could add different elements of Customer feedback (not just satisfaction with MOT) per MOT/feedback event in the experience, that have different weights among each other too. These feedback elements should be tied to internal metrics on the process or agent (effectiveness etc).

To conclude: as you stated often, crafting awesome experiences is not an easy thing to do, crafting experience measurement is maybe the most difficult part in it. I believe it is probably the most important part, because once you “release/launch” the experience it is bound to be imperfect (regardless of the diligence and effort in crafting it). You need an excellent set of metrics to pin-point you in the right direction of adjusting it, based on the feedback you get from your customers and your internal metrics.

Let me know what you think. Am I making sense? Did I miss anything? Looking forward to your response.

Wim