Guest Sam Richardson pinned the tail on the frustrated CX-measurement donkey with this statement during our first webinar session ‘Why traditional customer analytics belong in Room 101’.

But what is blocking organisations from stepping away from the old and adopting a future-thinking mindset when it comes to customer analytics?

We all know that change can be met internally with resistance and anxiety. But following the same CX measurement processes without questioning their efficacy is a huge risk. With 4 in 10 CX executives currently unable to explain why their metrics rise or fall, brands are guessing their next CX strategy moves blind, wasting time and burning vital funds.

Uncrowd CEO and Co-Founder Richard Hammond outlined four traditional CX analytics challenges during our webinar.

Challenge 1: Traditional CX metrics only look inward

How do you know what is great about your CX unless you're able to measure it in relation to somebody else’s?

Unfortunately, you can’t dive into your competitors CX analytics to compare. You’re isolated by customer survey ‘magic’ numbers with no meaning and no way to benchmark.

How do you know if the next move you make will have the greatest CX impact, without comparative measurement?

Challenge 2: The problem with human memory

The second challenge is us – human beings. We are all wired differently and react differently to experiences. Our narrative changes according to the context that we’re in - whether that’s interacting with a brand, best friend, stranger on a bus or a dog. And our memory of past events has been scientifically proven to be unreliable.

Yet retailers rely on customer recall to come up with that magic number, and use that number make critical strategic CX decisions. It’s great to collect data to generate CX metrics, but when that data is biased, it can’t be 100% trusted.

Challenge 3: Survey-gate

There are some brilliant, almost artisanal survey creators who write beautiful, tightly bound surveys that get to the heart of an issue. But surveys only work when they’re very tightly bound. Like a needle to a balloon, any gaps and survey performance deflates.

Surveys that ask questions in the wrong way open the door for respondents to go off track, responding with what they think they want you to know. You end up with data that’s not accurate or not what you were after, making the survey unsuccessful.

Challenge 4: NPS in tough times

Although we seem to be going through a less dramatic reduction in economic activity than expected, some markets are experiencing contractions in activity. What is your NPS doing during this time, when you’re physically putting less cash through the tills? If it’s staying the same, you know it’s not really telling you anything.

It’s easy in a rising market to attribute revenue gains to increases in this magic number. But without causality, you can’t see where the real driver of market share growth is coming from.

Retail brands need to embrace change when it comes to leveraging the next generation in customer analytics. Retailers put themselves in the firing line when they make inaccurate CX decisions using traditional customer analytics alone. But there is a solution that reveals CX truth - Uncrowd.

Uncrowd is on a mission to improve every customer experience on the planet through a unique combination of CX observation, quantitative measurement and comparative results. Our data is objective, empirical, and always shows your next best action.