Set SMART goals to drive bigger customer experience gains

Customer experience (CX) professionals likely set many of their priorities in September or October, depending on when their company’s fiscal year ends. By January, however, things start to get real – which makes it the ideal moment to ensure they’re striving for SMART goals.

The idea of establishing objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound – which is what the “smart” in SMART goals stands for – has been a staple of project management best practices for decades. Within the CX community, however, setting SMART goals is more important than ever before.

Consider that market research firm Forrester has predicted the CX brands deliver could improve for the first time in three years, expectations from senior leaders will be high. CX teams are also likely being told by vendors and others that technologies like generative artificial intelligence (AI) could vastly transform the outcomes they’re pursuing.

That comes with risk as well as potential reward, though: while Forrester said half of large global firms will launch customer-facing generative AI experiences in 2024, analysts also predicted one third will launch experiences that are biased, inaccessible or harmful.

SMART goals could be a way to mitigate the challenges that come from new technologies or other changes to a CX program, but they need to be adapted to the nuances of the customer journey. Let’s walk through them in order:

Specific

Few brands are starting out with goal-setting in a vacuum. They often have plenty of data, such as their customer satisfaction (CSAT) numbers or Net Promoter Scores (NPS).

“Lots of companies will say, ‘Let’s improve (those numbers) by 10 per cent, or whatever the number may be,” said Geoffrey Boal, vice-president of client services at Match Retail, a consumer engagement agency based in Mississauga, Ont. “I find that a lot of people put those numbers up because they have to. The real question – regardless of what the metric you’re using to set a goal – is everybody involved in that process?”

Aligning internally on specific CX changes or improvements early on is critical if you want them to be sustainable over time, Boal said.

Guy Letts, CEO of U.K.-based feedback survey software provider CustomerSure, agreed.

“There is a much better way than setting an overall goal for improving a satisfaction (CSAT) score,” he said, noting that such metrics are really only proxies for satisfaction. They can tell you how severe a problem is, but not necessarily what it is.  CX improvement goals should be focused not on satisfaction metrics, but on the overall goals of the business.

Instead of looking from specifics from historical metrics, Letts advised brands to ask a few additional questions in their next satisfaction survey about the things that customers expect them to be good at, such as quality, service, responsiveness or communication etc. Make sure there’s an open-ended text field for them to elaborate so that you know ‘what’ aspects of your business to fix, he added.

“If you want more customers and more revenue, do the things that make new customers want to choose you, and which will make your existing customers want to stay and spend more,” Letts said. “This is when the magic happens – if you do those things, you’ll find that your satisfaction scores will rise too.”

Measurable

Once you determine what those specific priorities are, of course, you need some way to monitor your progress.

In partnering with big retailers, traditional metrics like CSAT and NPS are often just the tip of the iceberg, said Matthew Cyr, CEO of smart fitting room platform Crave Retail. He says his role, and that of his team, is to dive deeper.

“It’s not just about hitting a higher number. It’s about understanding what makes customers truly happy when they shop. Our technology, like smart fitting rooms, helps in gathering real insights – what customers like, what they don’t, and how they interact with products,” he said. “This data is gold for retailers. It helps us set goals that aren’t just about doing slightly better than last year but about creating shopping experiences that customers love, remember, and come back for.”

Of course, CX leaders can also use the conversations they have with other business functions to adopt metrics that make sense. The could include store traffic, online orders, repeat orders or simply revenue.

Achievable

Imagine a company’s CEO sends out a memo that this marks the year the brand will become truly “customer-obsessed” like Amazon or Disney. Across the organization, a number of employees begin rolling their eyes.

Those on the front lines often have hands-on experience about what’s working and what’s not from a CX perspective, Boal said. That’s why goal-setting should not be a top-down exercise but a process that is informed by employees at all levels.

“I remember working in an organization before we did a pilot project involving 10 stores, and the first thing we did is bring all the staff in without their store managers,” he recalled. This drew out the kind of feedback that wasn’t getting to the “ivory tower” of the brand’s C-suite team.

“Talk to everybody. Talk to the payroll clerk – no one thinks about how vital they are but if they don’t do their jobs right, people don’t get paid,” Boal added. “(Goal setting) is about truly understanding the part everyone plays, from the payroll clerk to the part-time staffer at the role to the person leading the organization.”

Relevant

Orchestrating the right conversations internally could make it easy to forget the customer’s voice is an important element of goal-setting too. For Cyr, the best results come from looking at customer data and insights against what employees experience on a regular basis.

“We look at how customers are using our smart fitting rooms, for instance, and match this with feedback from staff and customers,” he said. This comprehensive view “helps in setting goals that are ambitious, sure, but also grounded in the reality of daily retail operations. It’s not just about having high-tech solutions; it’s about using them to make real, positive changes in how people shop.”

Letts pointed out that causes of dissatisfaction can be individual as well as collective. That is, in some cases the most relevant problems will be systemic – fix the problem with the way the business works and you improve satisfaction for everyone, so your NPS score will go up a notch. But some problems will be individual – there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with your business processes in this case, but something has gone wrong for an individual customer. Perhaps they have an issue and despite their repeated attempts to contact you, nobody has resolved it for them.

“Unless you improve each person’s satisfaction by addressing their individual issue, your overall satisfaction score will stubbornly refuse to rise any further,” he said. “Worse, if you don’t fix it within a reasonable time of receiving their feedback, their next score will be lower still, not higher.”

Time-bound

Few CEOs will be content for CX improvements to begin making an impact by the end of the year. Wild card factors like the COVID-19 pandemic and technologies like generative AI also make 12-month horizons somewhat meaningless. On the other hand, Cyr said he counsels customers that real changes in customer experience don’t happen overnight.

“We work closely with our retail partners to map out what’s achievable in the short term and what needs more time and nurturing,” he said. “Quick wins might come from refining how we use RFID to pick up inventory for a frictionless experience, but weaving AI into the customer journey is a longer, more thoughtful process.”

The best idea is to set timelines that allow for real growth and improvement, keeping senior leaders in the loop at every step, Cyr added. “It’s about making sure we’re moving forward, but also making sure every step we take is solid and brings us closer to creating shopping experiences that really resonate with customers.”

Being time-bound doesn’t mean rushing in foolishly, or without a doing your due diligence as you set a goal, said Boal.

“One of the concerns I have is when a client wants to do too many things in a short amount of time,” he said.  “Sometimes I’ll see clients and retailers that say, ‘We want to increase our basket size by an extra 25 cents this month.’ Well, you know, there’s a lot of work that needs to go into that”

Instead, Boal suggested brands break goals down even further, from annual to quarterly and then monthly targets or milestones.

“I believe you can really only establish one main goal each month and work towards that. But that monthly goal can also impact your long-term goals. It’s an old-school idea, but it’s still relevant: if you’re going to measure it, you’ve got to be ready to manage it.”