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CX Mirage: When NPS Scores Don’t Tell the Whole Story

April 5, 2023
Avatar photo Jani Jokela

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used metric to gauge customer loyalty and satisfaction. A high NPS score is typically seen as a positive indication that a company is providing excellent customer service. However, there is a problem that I would like to call “A CX Mirage” that occurs when NPS scores are high, but the volume of failure demand is also high.

Failure demand refers to the contacts and inquiries customers need to make to a company due to the service they have received has failed to meet their need or solve their issue. These contacts are usually caused by different kinds of problems, inefficiencies or even blind spots in the operational level. This can include issues like incorrect billing, delays in delivery, or difficulty accessing services. While customers may be satisfied with the resolution of these issues, the fact that they had to contact the company in the first place indicates that there are inefficiencies in the system.

When customers receive good service after having to make a contact, they may give a high promoter score, masking the underlying issues from the whole organisation. And this is where the CX Mirage occurs: where a company’s high NPS score gives the impression of excellent customer experience, but there are underlying inefficiencies in the operational level causing frustration or dissatisfaction to the customer.

To truly improve customer experience, companies need to go beyond NPS scores and dig deeper into the underlying issues causing failure demand – or unnecessary contacts as we here at Aiwo call them. By identifying and addressing these inefficiencies, companies can provide a truly seamless and efficient customer experience, rather than simply masking the underlying issues with good service recovery.

In short, while NPS scores or other survey-based metrics are useful tools for measuring customer satisfaction, they don’t always tell the whole story. Companies should be aware of the potential CX Mirage and take a more holistic approach to improving customer experience.

And that’s where Aiwo can help.

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Aiwo analyses customer contacts from multiple channels and turns them into data and insights that help to plan and prioritise development actions and to facilitate conversation between different business units. If you’re interested in learning more, book a free time from my calendar so I can showcase our analytics in action.

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