A friendly smile. A welcoming voice over the phone. Someone who makes an extra effort to make sure you are pleased. These things matter in customer experience, but since many of these “little things” are in the eye of the beholder, it is difficult to know just how much impact they have. Did you know there is one simple thing you can do that will improve your customer experience score?

A couple weekends ago, after many hours of online shopping and discussion, my wife and I were ready to buy a new family sofa.  We embarked on furniture store visits starting at IKEA, where we and our two boys sprawled out on a sectional sofa for some “real world” testing.

A recent research project for a client opened our eyes to the impact that high-quality customer service has on growth.  This client has used our transactional survey process for five years. 

We compared the service growth over a four-year period by individual customer account with the responses from each customer account to the Net Promoter® question (willingness to refer).