“in addition to the traditional return on investment (ROI) metrics used to determine a company’s success, PwC believes it’s time to introduce another metric, one with a focus on customer experience…Measuring ‘return on experience’ (ROX), will help you understand your earnings on investments in the parts of your company directly related to how people interact with your brand.” page 2 of the PWC Global Consumer Insights Survey 2019

The headline from PwC’s 10^th annual global survey of consumer sentiment in 27 countries is that it’s time for a consumer-centric metric: return on experience.  It applies equally to fundraising as it does to business.

Yet few charities measure the impact the support experiences they provide  has on retention, loyalty and lifetime value.

In the age of high acquisition costs and low retention rates this is a huge missed opportunity.

It’s also why I joined DonorVoice to be part of the answer to help solve these problems. Some of you may know me from the Fundraising Detective blog and I’m delighted to share my first Agitator series with you. Anyway, back to the point I was making…

As a starting point we should be capturing feedback.

Nearly every company I interact with asks me for feedback afterwards. To be honest, sometimes it becomes slightly annoying.  But they do it for a reason. All the evidence shows that people who give feedback will be more loyal and committed customers.

Of course, you also need to act on this feedback, especially if negative and do everything within reason to rectify the situation.

Perhaps the easiest and most obvious way is on your website. Folks will tell you how they found the donation process (for example: did it not work on their tablet/browser – it is amazing how often this comes up) or let you know if they found the information they are looking for?

Throughout the supporter journeys  offered you need to look for opportunities to capture feedback and let supporters share what you’re doing well and areas for improvement.

Measuring supporter experience

“It’s not as if organisations don’t currently attempt to measure customer satisfaction or quantify their direct investment in customer-facing tools and resources. But the reality is that most spend far more time measuring their investments and outcomes in other parts of the business, or take too siloed an approach to customer experience.” PwC Survey, page 12

Of course gathering feedback is only the first step. We need to go much further than that.

Measuring supporter experience was how DonorVoice started. And over the last eight years we’ve helped charities across the globe understand the value of different parts of their supporter experience. Most importantly we’ve researched what experiences matter most and which ones can be dropped. It’s often not what we assume.

For example, an advocacy organization knew that their donors valued their insights and informational resources highly.  A commitment study found they were right – almost half of their donor’s commitment to the organization stemmed from these communications.

The other half, however, was about the other half of the two-way communication street.  Donors wanted this organization to hear them and their policy thoughts.  This almost half of the reason for their donor’s commitment and they were rated very poorly in this regard.

They hired a staff member whose sole job was to receive calls and emails from donors about their policy ideas.  It wouldn’t be a wise investment for most organizations, but for this one, it was an important driver of donor commitment.  As a result, revenue per donor per year increased from $83 to $137 – a 70% increase.  This was with no changes to their asks and no more or fewer asks.  Quite a return on experience.

On Wednesday, I’ll talk more about how focusing on a supporter-centric culture can pay dividends.  Then on Friday, we’ll talk about how connection and communities can create positive, profitable donor experiences.

Craig