Leadership Development and 360 Feedback at Billerud: A Journey Toward Sustainable Leadership
Customer experience has, in recent years, shifted from being an operational improvement area to becoming a strategic issue at executive level. More organisations are recognising that customer experience affects everything from loyalty and brand perception to growth and profitability. At the same time, many companies still lack a structured way of understanding how their customers actually experience the business.
A common reason is that CX work is often perceived as more complex than it needs to be. When organisations decide to start measuring customer experience, there is often a tendency to try to do everything at once. They want to map the entire customer journey, measure every touchpoint and ask numerous questions in order to quickly gain a comprehensive view. The ambition is positive in principle, but in practice it often leads to long surveys, low response rates and data that is difficult to act upon.
The organisations that succeed in building long-term, value-creating CX programmes often do the opposite. They start simple and develop the work step by step.
Start by understanding the current situation
The first step in successful CX work is to understand the current situation from the customer’s perspective. For many organisations it is tempting to begin with extensive sets of questions, but in practice a much simpler method can provide equally valuable insights.
A common starting point is to ask a single key question, for example NPS (Net Promoter Score), where the customer answers how likely they are to recommend the company to a friend or colleague. When this question is combined with an open free-text question where the customer explains their answer, a surprisingly clear picture often emerges of how customers actually perceive the company.
The free-text responses are a particular strength in this type of measurement. They make it possible to capture opinions, frustrations and suggestions for improvement that the organisation may not even have thought to ask about. When surveys instead rely on many specific questions, there is a risk that the organisation — consciously or unconsciously — steers customers’ responses through the way the questions are phrased. The result is often data that confirms internal assumptions rather than insights that challenge the organisation’s view of reality.
By starting simple, the barrier is kept low for both the organisation and the customers. At the same time, an initial database of insights is created that can form the basis for more strategic decisions later on.
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From insight to priorities
Once the first measurement has been completed, the real value creation begins. Customer feedback needs to be analysed and put into context. This involves identifying recurring themes in the free-text responses and understanding which aspects of the customer experience have the greatest impact on the overall perception.
In many cases, quite clear patterns emerge. Customers may repeatedly mention deliveries, support experiences, or shortcomings in communication around products and services. When these insights are analysed and broken down, it becomes possible to link them to different parts of the organisation.
At a strategic level, the results can show which areas have the greatest impact on the customer experience and therefore should be prioritised in business development. At an operational level, the organisation can break the results down, for example by department, and work more concretely with improvements in specific parts of the business.
This is also where a crucial aspect of CX work becomes clear. The measurement itself does not create value. Value only arises when the organisation uses the insights to make better decisions and implement changes that genuinely improve the customer experience.
Develop the measurement when the organisation is ready
After working with the first set of insights for a period of time, organisations often feel a need to deepen their measurement. By that point, there is usually a better understanding of which parts of the customer journey are most critical and where more detailed feedback would be most valuable.
Future relationship surveys can therefore be more in-depth within specific areas, or sent to particular customer groups that have been identified as more dissatisfied.
Complement with transactional measurements when needed
Organisations may also start using additional measurement methods. For example, they may begin following up the customer experience in specific interactions — such as after a support contact (transactional surveys), after a delivery, or during the onboarding of new customers. This type of more transactional measurement makes it possible to capture feedback close to the actual experience and therefore link it more clearly to concrete improvement initiatives.
When CX work evolves in this way, measurement does not remain an isolated initiative but becomes an integrated part of the organisation’s continuous improvement efforts.
The decisive factor: response rate
One of the biggest challenges in any customer survey programme is getting customers to respond. The response rate is crucial for the quality of the insights and therefore for the value of the entire measurement.
Simplicity plays a central role here. The shorter and more relevant a survey is, the more likely customers are to take the time to respond. It is also important to clearly communicate the purpose of the survey and explain why customer feedback matters. The shorter the survey, the more free-text comments your organisation will receive — and these are extremely valuable.
It is equally important to close the loop on the results. When customers see that their feedback leads to tangible improvements, their willingness to participate in future surveys also increases. Customer feedback then becomes not only a data source but part of the relationship between company and customer.
Avoid the temptation to measure too often
Once organisations begin working systematically with CX, there is sometimes a tendency to want to measure more and more frequently. However, customer experience rarely changes dramatically from one month to the next — particularly if the organisation has not yet implemented any major improvements.
In many cases it is more valuable to allow time between measurements and instead use the period in between to work with the insights that already exist. Only once changes have been implemented is there real value in measuring again to see what impact they have had on the customer experience.
In summary: start simple
For many organisations, the biggest obstacle in CX work is not a lack of tools or methods, but getting started in the right way. The most effective approach is often to begin on a small scale, listen carefully to what customers are actually saying, and then allow those insights to guide the next steps.
When CX work develops in this way, it grows naturally alongside the organisation’s needs and its ability to act on the results. Measurement then becomes not an end in itself, but a strategic tool for understanding customers better and making more informed decisions.
And in many cases, it quite literally starts with a single question ✨
