Customized Ratios

It’s one thing to work hard to develop experiential layers. It’s a whole other thing to track and measure the attribution of brand experiences to the bottom line.

Customized ratios compare how well organizational operations support experiential layers so that they can develop lasting relationships with customers and employees. The goal in leveraging these customized ratios is to build sustained revenue growth and acceleration.

Customized ratios help monitor those initiatives by taking a strict focus on customer experiences to build retention. Examples of what a customized ratio could be includes:

  • Customer Experience to Lifetime Value (CX:LTV)
  • Employee Experience to Lifetime Value (EX:LTV)
  • Customer Experience to Revenue Expansion (CX:RevExpansion)
  • Customer Experience to Revenue Acceleration (CX:RevAcceleration)

Monitoring these metrics is eye-opening around what experiential layers are doing to the bottom line and growth. Still, these metrics are only part of the equation. By monitoring customized ratios through the lens of a business transformation framework, such as StoryVesting, organizations can shift the paradigm about how they approach relationship building with customers and how to support the people, processes and platforms inside an organization to facilitate the end-to-end customer journey.

A Focus on Retention: CX:LTV, EX:LTV

Traditional marketing funnels showcase what happens up until the point of purchase but fail to acknowledge one of the most important growth elements — retention. To create sticky brand experiences, organizations must look more holistically at the customer’s experience and not just at one-time engagements.

Examining CX:LTV and EX:LTV, organizations crack open new avenues for growth and loyalty. Consumers increase the speed at which they move toward purchase when brands work backward from a sale rather than forwards from awareness. Starting with the end in mind allows companies to build a revenue operations moat around their product lines and brand, making the company more likely to succeed.

The same holds for employees. When a brand focuses on retention internally, they’re primed to build out longer-lasting and more vested team members to carry out its vision. Those team members are directly responsible for maintaining a healthy customer experience.

Aligning Experience Layers: CX:RevExpansion

Anyone attempting a customer experience to revenue expansion initiative knows the complexities of breaking down layers of internal and external experiences. Knowing when to accelerate each area of the bow tie funnel — from awareness to brand ambassadorship — requires alignment across both the employee and customer journey.

Frameworks, like the StoryVesting framework, allow teams to better examine each experiential layer through the lens of the bow tie funnel. In examining these layers, teams can better understand how people, processes and platforms support the overall goal of elevating each experience and what those experiences mean for revenue expansion across the bottom line.

Looking at CX:RevExpansion ratios might be a paradigm shift, but it’s important. By aligning employee and customer experiences, teams can continuously move customers through the bow tie funnel to brand advocates, thereby creating more sustainable revenue acceleration and expansion for the business.

Purchase

At the exact moment a customer makes a purchase, this event is pivotal as the buyer moves from acquisition fueled by dopamine-enhanced anticipation to positive/negative anticipation of retention. Literally, the moment the buy ends, the brain turns off the dopamine signals for that purchase. No longer is that buyer filled with anticipatory joy and reconciliation of StoryVesting comes to an end, but now the purchaser is shifting towards a new cycle of emotional and cognitive association. It’s here that you can fine tune your monetization strategy to meet those reconciliatory emotional and cognitive needs.

Questions to ask:

How does the purchase experience align with consumer expectations around your current pricing strategy?

Metrics to track at this stage:
  • Churn Rate
  • Social Metrics
  • Customer Effort Score
  • Checkout Experience Score

Adopter

The adoption phase is where the customer gets onboarded with your product or service, and implements it into their lives. It’s in this stage that the customer starts to realize the true value of what your product or offering can deliver.

Questions to ask:

How do you showcase the value of the product after a purchase has been made?

Metrics to track at this stage:
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
  • Churn Rate
  • Social Engagement Score
  • Net Promotor Score (NPS)

Loyalist

As your customer moves to becoming more loyal to your brand, they’re continuing to deepen their relationship with you by going beyond a simple repeat purchase. It’s in this phase where you can successfully upsell or cross-sell to your buyer.

Questions to ask:

What’s the catalyst for a buyer to make a second investment with your company?

Metrics to track at this stage:
  • Upgrade Rate
  • Repeat Purchase Rate (RPR)
  • Lifetime Value (LTV)

Advocate

Your customer transitions to becoming and advocate as they readily and eagerly talk about your brand to others. This phase is ideal for driving social media engagement and gathering testimonials.

Questions to ask:

What are you doing to drive your buyer to share their experience with purchasing from your brand?

Metrics to track at this stage:
  • Referral Rate
  • Social Mentions
  • Social Share Rate
  • Active Engagement Rate (AER)

Brand Ambassador

The brand ambassador phase is where your customer promotes your brand as heavily as your employees (if not heavier). They’re truly vested in your story.

Questions to ask:

How are you thanking your brand ambassadors?

Metrics to track at this stage:
  • Social Share Rate
  • Social Engagement Score
  • Repeat Purchase Rate
  • Revenue Velocity

The Loyalty Loop Lifecycle: CX:RevAcceleration

Revenue acceleration is one of the ultimate goals of improved customer experience leveraging a CX:RevAcceleration customized ratio helps organizations pinpoint how well they’re reaching this end goal.

Pairing this customized ratio with the StoryVesting framework and bow tie funnel allows brands to tap into buyer cohorts’ emotional and logical triggers and arrive at the underlying why for behavioral trends. Providing incremental positive experiences to the end consumer allows buyers to self-navigate through the buying process more quickly and stay longer in the conversion stage rather than the research and consideration stages.

This concept applies to employees as well. The better employee experiences are, the better retention is across the loyalty lifecycle loop. Rather than spinning out into the depths of competitor land, employees feel more vested in organizations with a strong why and laser focus on sublime experiences.

Getting to Brand Euphoria

No Man’s Land

When brand experiences live in No Man’s Land, they offer limited brand equity, disconnected employee and customer experiences, and a company-first approach rather than a customer-centric approach. Customized ratios can help brands break away from No Man’s Land by spotting more opportunities for growth and expansion.

Excellent

Most organizations live in the Excellent range, where there is some overlap and alignment between the market wants and demands and the brand’s offerings. In this space, there is higher brand equity, more connected experiences, and brands operate more intentionally through a customer-first lens.

Brand Euphoria

While Brand Euphoria is the ultimate goal, few businesses reach this destination and stay here long-term. It’s here where there are deep cognitive associations formed, immersive brand experiences exist, and customer-centric approaches are taken. Once an organization reaches brand euphoria, there is tremendous internal and external brand loyalty.

Customer Experience (CX) Terms

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