I only know of one nonprofit that uses something like the Forrester Customer Experience Index to measure things so I don’t have any benchmark data. I would love to learn there are more nonprofits using this measure and I would give anything to analyze the data. Here is what we know from the for profit world.
This question drove Watermark Consulting to evaluate the macro impact of customer experience excellence. They’ve accomplished this over the years by studying the total returns for two model stock portfolios comprised of the Top 10 (“Leaders”) and Bottom 10 (“Laggards”) publicly traded companies in Forrester Research’s annual Customer Experience Index ranking. The results are stunning.
For the 6-year period from 2007 to 2012, the Customer Experience Leaders in their study outperformed the broader market, generating a total return that was three times higher on average than the S&P 500 Index. Furthermore, while the Customer Experience Leaders handily beat the S&P 500, the Laggards trailed it by a wide margin.
Keep in mind, this analysis reflects more than half a decade of performance results. It spans an entire economic cycle, from the pre-recession market peak in 2007 to the post-recession recovery that continues today. The Customer Experience Leaders in this study are clearly enjoying the many benefits that happy, loyal customers deliver: better retention, greater wallet share, lower acquisition costs and more cost-efficient service.
And the Laggards? They are being crushed under the weight of high customer turnover, escalating acquisition costs and an uncompetitive cost structure that is inflated by each customer complaint and avoidable inquiry.
Do you want to be a leader or a laggard?
Hmmmm......oh ohhh well here we go....our org is a very small nonprofit as you know, micro even. yep everything i read always says not to mention you are a small or micro nonprofit. Well, as a micro nonprofit we have done extensive work. Work i know i can account for personally because i have done every single one of the services involved with every single one of the people we have assisted. I love that part. No matter how big we ever become that will never change.
ReplyDeleteMeasurements and measuring.....oh boy what a sensitive subject for many. Here is our take. We are a federally registered 501c3 Nonprofit Public Charity with a focus on the underprivileged to put it simply. We are legally accountable to the IRS and i am glad to be. Everything is in writing to them for future wages and projects. They can look at us at any time and see we have been doing exactly what we said we would do. Period.
Then we have this.....the reason we formed as a company, as a nonprofit was due to a calling from Jesus Christ and His Father. It is their measurements which in our organization i know we are ultimately responsible for. When i am gone from this world, i am intimately acquainted with the fact that i will be personally held accountable for all that our org has done. That is at my forefront every single day.
In order for constituents to measure our org, they need to take a little time to get to know us. That is how it is for any really small organization i believe. It could be that way for all orgs. However, when i speak i am mainly speaking about faith based orgs helping those in need. However, it can apply to large orgs in general too.
I think we can get lost in all the "business" of a nonprofit. If the nonprofit was setup to be a "business" then fine, if it was setup to be a faith based org directed by Jesus and His Father than we have another dynamic happening.
Example: Yes, our organization is a 501c3 nonprofit and incorporated. Yes we are a business because we had to be to be a 501c3 in our case. We file paperwork and yearly reports etc etc and post our funds raised and expenses on our website.
BUT, there it is...the BUT.....everything we do in assisting others is NOT run like a business. We do our best to simply do what Jesus would do. What ever it took.
Jesus does what His Father tells Him to do...Simply put, as a faith based nonprofit, we do what Jesus tells us to do.
We are measured by them.
Truthfully, it instills some of that healthy parental fear in us.