🧠 Improving productivity in Q4—Doing more with less

Productivity is not moving faster, it’s getting more done per unit of time—do a little, get a lot.

This is the principle of leverage.

There are some areas where you or your team have natural leverage. There are some areas where you don’t.

If something is difficult or repetitive, ask yourself, “who has the most leverage in this task? How can I hand this task off to them?”

In Q4 as time flies and budgets tighten, this mindset around productivity is critical to hitting your experience program's targets.

Here are some examples:

👉 Focus your sales team on activating NPS Promoters instead of increasing their cold call numbers or discounting deals ➝ Unlock your best-untapped source of upselling and referral revenue to hit year-end targets.

👉 Automate some of your closing-the-loop tasks. If a 3 hours per week task becomes a 10-minute task ➝ That's 33 hours of time saved this quarter.

👉 Outsource/hire for that task that takes your team 30 hours per week between them ➝ Let them get back those 330 hours this quarter to focus on the #1 metric that matters (hiring great people is the best leverage you can get—don’t squander them).

Your competitive advantage (in your people, teams, and business) comes from identifying and using leverage.

This is the mindset we’re taking into this quarter.

📊 One big question—data of the week

Each week, we're asking one question to our newsletter subscribers.

Last week's question was: “Rank these options in order of which will have the most impact on improving an NPS score.”

The results show (copy & paste these to your team):

1. 70% of people said 'closing the loop on every Detractor' was most important to improving NPS.
2. 80% of people said 'sharing insights in real-time to frontline teams' was the second most important factor in improving NPS.
3. 30% of people chose 'improve NPS response rates' as the third most important factor in improving NPS, and another 30% chose 'survey more frequently, e.g. quarterly rather than yearly'.

For reference, the options considered least popular were competitor benchmarking and changing NPS software provider (they haven’t used us, clearly 😉).

👋 This week’s One Big Question: "Do you currently have a process for activating Promoters?" (Yes/No)

Click here to answer and we’ll share the results next week. 

✍️ A checklist for Q4

If you haven’t already scheduled these things for the quarter, here’s what not to forget.

1. Team reviews—We’re all a little nervous at the moment due to looming recessions. Don’t forget to sit down with your team members to tell them why they’re valued and offer any constructive feedback for them to work on this quarter.
2. Prioritize what’s important—Write down the top three things that would have an impact this quarter. Then write down three tasks you’re going to do to help the first one, two tasks for the second, and one task for the third. Works every time.
3. Reiterate your value—When recessions are on the way, experience budgets are in danger of getting cut. Look out for your blindspots this quarter, does anyone not fully understand the value of your current projects? (Read: tie NPS to revenue)
4. Plan your EOY party—Give your team something to look forward to, a special reward for ending the year. Top tip: Make it inclusive of those who don’t drink alcohol. Giving up the booze is a big trend this year.
5. Plan for Q1—In November, we’re going to tackle Q1 planning in this newsletter. Until then, my recommendation is to think about the most leading indicators for success and set goals for improving those.

Out of interest, what’s top of mind for you in Q4?

💡 What we’re thinking about

• How to Drive Earned Growth With B2B Account Experience [Webinar Summary]: “We always recommend that you reach out and collect feedback from 100% of your account base. If you received feedback from all of them, that’d be 100% coverage.”
• How Account Experience Drives Market Share Growth: “AX is where B2B feedback management and account-lifecycle management collide. It’s both a VOC software and a transformative guide to more retention, upsell, and referrals.”
• Do Your B2B Customers Promote Your Business: “It might sound obvious that better economics flow from delighting customers. Yet this logic has only recently permeated the day-to-day operations of many B2B companies that have a legacy of focusing largely on product or technical innovation."

🎧 What we’re listening to in the office this week

• The Free Nationals Feat. Anderson Paak - NPR Tiny Desk Concert: “Their music has been described as having a "future retro, funky and soulful sound".”

Halloween is fast approaching and we want to share your most spooky customer experience horror stories.

Had a terrible experience as a customer? Or discovered a company doing the exact wrong thing with their CX program? Please share it here.

The best one will get a special prize from us!

CustomerGauge provides B2B experience management software to companies in complex industries CPG, Manufacturing, Logistics, and Technology. Interested in working with us? Just reply to this email.