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Introducing oCX, the New, AI-Generated CX Metric

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Whenever a company is seeking to evaluate the quality of its customer experience, nothing is more important than the opinions of the customers who actually have the experience. This is why virtually all metrics designed to measure CX quality today are derived from surveys administered directly to customers.

But oCX, or “Observational Customer Experience,” is a metric that accurately gauges the quality of a company’s customer experience without using a survey at all. oCX is based on an AI-powered technology that identifies and analyzes the judgments of individual customers about the customer experience, as these judgments are made known through the unsolicited text comments made to friends and others in social media, or on review sites, or via other online mechanisms. In essence, oCX is capable of accurately measuring the quality of a company’s customer experience based on simply observing the opinions rendered by its customers “in the wild,” so to speak.   

Using AI tools to decode the sentiments and emotions behind written-text comments, oCX predicts the response that each observed customer would likely have provided had they been asked to rate their own “likelihood of recommending to a friend,” on a scale of 0 to 10, as shown in the “Sample Reviews” box, below. With these individual ratings, oCX then computes an NPS-like score that has been shown to be a very accurate representation of the actual score the business would have achieved with a survey, if it had fielded one. 

ocx_examples

Turn unstructured feedback into action with oCX 

Since oCX is not based on structured, quantitative survey data but instead relies on interpreting unstructured data represented by written text, the oCX metric can provide a richer and more authentic reflection of the actual customer experience a company delivers. And while unstructured data already represents 80% to 90% of the data available today, it is growing at an astounding rate, in excess of 50% annually, so oCX will inevitably become an indispensible assetwhen it comes to extracting genuine insight from this sort of unstructured customer experience data. [i]

Moreover, because it is derived from such unstructured data, oCX may also present a clearer way to understand Gen Z consumersthe dialoguers,” according to a recent McKinsey report, who not only make their decisions based on what others think and say on Instagram, Youtube and Tiktok, but also have more fluid expectations of the companies they deal with on a daily basis.[ii]

“When a customer gives you feedback (good and bad), it’s a gift. Finding a way to analyze and measure that feedback is crucial to understanding how customers react to your products and services. The new oCX (Observational Customer Experience) metric is intriguing. This is the type of metric that can help you operationalize the feedback and reviews to create a better customer experience for your future customers.”

Shep Hyken

Customer Experience Expert and New York Times & Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author

How is oCX calculated?

oCX converts comments into a 0–10 score using trained NLP models, calibrated and tested against human ratings. We also provide an NPS-style view (0–6, 7–8, 9–10) to make results easy to interpret.

Learn your oCX Score

Curious to know what your customers are truly thinking about you? Contact us to book your personalized oCX session.

To learn more about oCX or inquire about your brand’s oCX score, feel free to contact us here.

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Introducing oCX, the New, AI-Generated CX Metric

 

  • oCX, or “Observational Experience,” is a unique metric that assesses the quality of a company’s customer experience without relying on traditional surveys.
  • This metric is powered by AI technology that analyzes individual customer opinions expressed in unsolicited text comments on social media, review sites, and other online platforms.
E-Commerce oCX Report Fall 2024

South Africa Everyday Apps oCX Report April 2025

 

Our latest report uncovers key insights, real customer sentiment, and our unique Observational Customer Experience (oCX) score analysis, capturing the voice of mobile users across 40+ South African apps. 📱

  • Winners vs Losers

  • 4 Different oCX Leaderboards
  • South African Apps vs Global Benchmarks

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