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Measuring and Managing Customer Experience (CX): What Works and What Doesn’t

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The Palgrave Handbook of Service Management

Abstract

This chapter outlines key conceptualizations of Customer Experience (CX) and commonly used ways customer experience is measured, pointing out the advantages and limitations of the methods and metrics. There is no doubt that customer experience is important to both customers and organizations. However, the ways customer experience is measured by a large number of organizations globally has severe limitations at best, and at worst, the results are misleading. Customer satisfaction measures and the Net Promotor Score (NPS) have been used extensively to measure CX. In this chapter we show that NPS can be very misleading with organizations believing their customers are happy when clearly they are not. Relying on quantitative scores alone can result in significant financial losses for firms. We outline the latest thinking on CX measures demonstrating better ways to measure the customer experience over time and in real time. The chapter also discusses the importance of touchpoints and emotions expressed by customers across their journeys at the various touchpoints and the need to understand touchpoints from the customer’s perspective. We demonstrate how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide organizations with deep insights into what customers really think and feel and identify where the problems are, as well as the root causes, to assist organizations address problems and provide great customer experiences.

Use new technology with purpose to make the experience feel more human—without creating frustrations for customers and while empowering employees.

—Clarke and Kinghorn (2018)

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Janet R. McColl-Kennedy

  2. Cambridge Service Alliance, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Mohamed Zaki

Authors
  1. Janet R. McColl-Kennedy
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  2. Mohamed Zaki
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Janet R. McColl-Kennedy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CTF, Service Research Center, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden

    Bo Edvardsson  & Bård Tronvoll  & 

  2. Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Elverum, Norway

    Bård Tronvoll

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McColl-Kennedy, J.R., Zaki, M. (2022). Measuring and Managing Customer Experience (CX): What Works and What Doesn’t. In: Edvardsson, B., Tronvoll, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Service Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91828-6_35

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