Customer/Brand Engagement - a warning

I was in Las Vegas at a conference back in October 2007.  The last session was a group of internet industry thought leaders discussing Customer Engagement and how to measure it.  The first 5 or 10 minutes was taken up by each of them, one after the other, telling the audience how they couldn’t define customer engagement… the rest of the session was then spent telling us how to measure it.  This worried me… if we’re not careful we may all be struggling to get to grips and manage a concept (commercially, for profit) that simply can’t be managed this way.  Customer experience is another of these concepts.  What exactly is the customer experience and how do we measure it?

The answer, quite simply is: don’t try to!

Don’t get me wrong, I think the customer experience is key to achieving success in business and the big winners in the 21st Century will be the ones who really can get the customers to engage with their brand.

My warning is simple and straight forward…and to a large degree, common sense…

Don’t be dragged down a vague and undefined path without first removing the vagueness and defining it.  If you can’t find a way to measure it, it probably can’t be measured effectively!  Seem obvious?  You’d think! 

Quite simply what this means is if you want your customers to engage with you, whether online, in a retail store or through a call centre…
First define the engagement you are looking for… what does engagement mean for you and your business specifically?  Is it visits to the website?  Is it interacting with the website for service, account management etc.?  Is it telling you what they think of you on a public forum page on your website (or through a social community such as Facebook)?  Whatever you define will most likely be fairly easy to measure. 

 ’Engagement’ and ‘Experience’ can mean many different things to as many different people.  Which, by definition, means that you could find as many different ways of measuring it.  I’ve never seen an experience measured in any context that is truly quantifiable in a relevant way… I’m sure some Customer Experience consultants will challenge me on this but so far, as they’ve presented their solutions to me, they’ve had to concede that it doesn’t measure the experience.

Whether it be engagement or experience you are measuring, first break it down to the component elements that make up your desired outcome.  Then, measure those. 

And if someone tells you he can help you measure your experience or improve it, get them to be very specific… oh, and ask them to define it first!