Step 5 to CEM Greatness: Noise to Signal

It’s time to round off our 5 Steps to CEM Greatness series with the fifth and final step; Noise to Signal. But before I begin I thought it would be best to have a quick look back at the four previous steps (or at least give you links to them all):

1. March to the Beat
2. Everyone Counts
3. Right Here, Right Now
4. Take it to the Board

So what about step 5? Noise to Signal is perhaps the most important of all the steps (saving the best till last and all that!), and it is the one step that is required before all the others. It is the difference between merely measuring performance and analysing and understanding it to drive improvement. As Fizzback like to say you can’t fatten the pig just by weighing it! Without analysing the feedback that you gather the other steps are largely meaningless and in essence any point in measuring performance is negated.


Detailed, deep and root cause analysis is essential to unlocking the key drivers of customer satisfaction, and hence improving the customer experience as a whole. Analysts need to utilise a number of key elements to gain true understanding into the voice of the customer:

• Gather a verbatim comment, enabling the customer to give feedback about what is most important to them.
• Maximise volumes to ensure you gather a census not just a sample.
• Gain as much information possible about each customer that you already have e.g. demographics of a loyalty card member, when contract renewals are due or what handset a mobile customer has.

All the data gathered can be very accurately described as lots and lots of “noise” and requires a great deal of skill to turn that into a direct “signal” by which to drive the business by. But the noise is necessary to accurately and efficiently align the business behind the voice of the customer to deliver a truly exceptional customer experience.

So there we have it, Fizzback’s 5 Steps to CEM Greatness! I hope you found the steps insightful and useful, and will help you transform your business to drive by voice of customer!

Tom Lynam

For more info on Fizzback please visit www.fizzback.com.