When I share customer survey results I reckon I get one of three reactions:

• Some people look for reasons not to do anything.

• Some people look for insight that supports what they were going to do anyway.

• Some people make new decisions and draw up new priorities based on what they’ve learned about customers.

You can guess which of those I think are best and worst, but today I want to talk about the middle one.

Is it a bad thing to tie in your efforts to improve the customer experience with projects that are already under way? Of course not.

Organisations are often aware of where their problem areas are, and it’s quite common for improvements already to be planned that may help to address customers’ issues.

But there are two big caveats:

1. Are you really sure you listened to the customer insight? Or did you hear only what you wanted to hear? Is your project going to address customer needs, or feel weirdly off-target to them?
   
   One reason that big CX change programmes can misfire is that they don’t actually address the issues which really matter to customers.

2. Will customers know that the changes you make are intended to address the issues that came up in the survey?
   
   If your existing project really is likely to help with some of the issues raised, you still need to make sure that you do the work to make those links explicit in customers’ heads.
   
   Communication is the key to making sure customers notice the change, appreciate the difference it has made, and understand that you’ve listened to what they told you.

So, if you’re counting on an existing project to improve the customer experience stop to ask 2 questions:

Is this really what customers want?

Have we linked it to their feedback?