ROI of a customer or employee listening project

Our customers regularly ask us for advice on how to calculate the Return on Investment of acustomer oremployeelistening project. Although each use case handled by our teams has its own specificities, we will try to provide you with answers throughout this article, beyond the theoretical calculation of the ROI of such a project, a summary of which you will find at the bottom of the page.

Company performance depends on a high-quality customer and employee experience

The majority of business leaders, and more generally of organizations delivering a service (e.g. healthcare establishments, etc.), now take into account the quality of the experience delivered to a customer or patient, as well as the quality of life at work of their employees.

The statistics are clear:

. Companies that have implemented customer experience improvement programs have seen an average 60% increase in profitability.

. The proportion of consumers willing to spend more for a better customer experience is 86%.

. Employee productivity is 40% higher in companies adopting programs to improve the employee experience; employee engagement is also 35% higher in these same companies.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that while measuring customer and employee satisfaction has become simple and commonplace, understanding these indicators and taking action to improve remain complex tasks. Indeed, effectively collecting and analyzing thousands of feedbacks and then drawing real action levers from them are impossible without truly effective technology. Better World was created in 2017 based on this observation.

Use cases in different business sectors

Our Customer Success Managers provide day-to-day support to the quality managers of the organizations that deploy our solutions. Over the years, we have been provided with ROI assessment data.

In the healthcare sector, within a homogeneous group of facilities, e-Satis scores that were 6 points higher on average in facilities that used the Better World solution the most, compared with facilities that used it little or not at all, had a clear impact on the certification of these facilities. As a result, the latter were able to benefit from financial incentives for quality improvement (IFAQ). Find out more about the principles and operation of these incentives in this article from our partner MerciDocteur.

In the automotive sector, the centralized analysis of customer feedback from 9 different countries enabled the development and management of continuous improvement plans for a manufacturer's sales networks. Internal benchmarks, between dealerships, led to the dissemination of best practices throughout the network, and substantial progress in quality indicators directly correlated to new and used vehicle sales.

In the hotel sector, a world leader in its field analyzed over 2 million customer verbatims from its thousands of affiliated establishments. Focus was placed on key moments in the customer experience, such as breakfast, on a global scale. Action plans were devised, deployed and monitored over a long period, resulting in a lasting improvement in customer satisfaction as measured by sites such as Google and TripAdvisor.

ROI: a proactive, ongoing approach

As we have seen from all the projects we have carried out with our customers, return on investment is only achieved if listening to customers and employees is carried out on a sufficiently large scale (in terms of number and diversity of opinions), over a long period of time. While one-off analyses can provide clues as to the quality of your customers', patients' or employees' experience, verifying over time the relevance of the action plans deployed within the organization will have a lasting impact on your performance.

This proactive, ongoing approach, supported by our data collection and analysis solutions, is truly the key to reconnecting you with the needs of your customers and employees. The ROI of your project is bound to be positive 😊

Theoretical ROI calculation

Return On Investment (ROI) compares the gains generated by a project with the costs incurred to implement it. Here are the general steps for calculating the ROI of a customer or employee listening project.

Define objectives and potential gains :

Identify the objectives of your project, such as improving customer satisfaction, reducing churn, optimizing internal processes, improving QWL indicators, etc. Estimate the gains associated with these objectives, such as increased sales, cost savings, reduced absenteeism or operational improvements.

Evaluate initial and recurring costs:

Take into account the initial costs of implementing our solutions and the recurring use of our analysis platform, as provided by our sales department.

Implement action plans based on analysis of the data collected:

Use the data collected and analyzed by our platform to derive actionable levers. This includes an overview of customer volumes and sentiments, their evolution, top/bottom5 ontology categories; exploration, for each ontology category, with volumes, sentiments, evolutions, detailed strengths/weaknesses; internal benchmarking globally and for each ontology category; search engine on all verbatims.

Quantify the gains made :

Convert the improvements observed as a result of the action plans implemented into financial terms. For example, if the project has led to an increase in customer satisfaction, estimate how much this has contributed to increased sales or reduced churn.

Calculate ROI:

Use the ROI formula: ROI = [(Gains - Costs) / Costs]x 100.

Earnings are the financial benefits obtained from the project, and costs are the total costs of the project, including initial and recurring costs.

For example: ROI = [(Gains - Initial costs - Recurring costs) / (Initial costs + Recurring costs)] x 100.

Interpreting ROI:

A positive ROI indicates that the project has generated more benefits than costs, which is generally an indicator of success. The higher the ROI, the more profitable the project.

Better World offers a experience management platform platform, enabling organizations to satisfy and retain their customers, as well as engage their employees.