CX metrics, mistakes and missed opportunities: CX Mini Masterclass – E63

Welcome to Decoding the Customer, a podcast about customer experience and how to realize customer-centric change in today’s dynamic business world. I’m Julia Ahlfeldt, certified customer experience professional, business advisor, and host of this program. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you’re new to the show, welcome.

If you’re a returning listener, thanks, and it’s great to have you back. This episode is part of my CX mini masterclass series here on Decoding the Customer. These weekly episodes are published each Thursday and designed to be punchy, bite-size overviews of key customer experience concepts and ideas for how you can help your organization thrive through customer centricity. Whether you’re new to the field of customer experience, are preparing for the CCXP exam, or are a seasoned professional looking to brush up on a few basics, this series will help you improve your knowledge, skills, and performance to stand out as a CX professional.

This is episode 63, and today I have another mini masterclass presented by a leading customer experience expert and friend of the show, Stephanie Thum. If you missed Stephanie’s insights on reframing how organizations should think of customers in episode 45, her take on CX and government in episode 50, or her advice to CEOs in episode 56 on how to take the lead with customer-centric change, then be sure to check those out. They’re great episodes.

It’s a pleasure to have Stephanie back on the show again. She’s a seasoned CX professional and a CCXP, who’s one of the founding members of the CXPA. She’s remained closely involved with the association, even spending some time as part of the association staff team. In her career as a customer experience practitioner, she’s amassed deep expertise through her diverse professional background.

She’s had the opportunity to drive customer-centric change within government. And while she’s known for her background as one of the US federal government’s first agency CX leads, she’s also been a practitioner and a consultant in the B2B world, working with small and mid-size companies. Customer experience metrics are always a hot topic in our profession. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if you’re looking to spark a debate with others in the field, a surefire way to do this is to ask a group of your peers what they think about a specific metric.

Drop that question into the mix and you are pretty much guaranteed a lively conversation. For as much as we talk and fret about the theory or calculation methodology, how much time do we spend sharing our mistakes or sharing our lessons learned about how to use the numbers to drive customer-centric change? That’s where Stephanie jumps in today. She shares great insights on mistakes and missed opportunities with how organizations use the data.

If you’re looking for some excellent food for thought on how to launch or fine tune your approach to CX metrics, then this episode is for you. As always, if you happen to be out for a jog or driving to work, and here’s something that you’d like to remember later, don’t worry about writing it down. You can find an overview of the key concepts that we’ve covered today in the show notes for this episode which are on my website, juliaahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com. I’ll include links to find out more about Stephanie’s work and how you can get in touch with her.

So with that, I’ll let Stephanie take it away. Hi, everyone. Stephanie Thum here. Some people absolutely love numbers.

They love ratios, percentages, scores, ratings, targets, charts, and spreadsheets. But there are others who simply don’t like the data or the story told by the data. And in the case of customer experience performance metrics, some unfortunately still cling to some long-held lore about what, when, and where metrics matter. They really haven’t caught on to the ways in which customer-focused metrics can help to create a reputable, efficient organization.

Now, maybe you’ve had some pushback or maybe you’ve encountered some mistaken thinking when it comes to talking with your colleagues about metrics that matter. It’s really not uncommon to have these kinds of conversations as you’re building the CX work. Here are four of the most common mistakes and missed opportunities I’ve seen when it comes to customer experience data, along with some truths about what CX metrics can help you to do in your business. My hope is that you’ll find some talking points that can help you in your day-to-day world.

Metrics mistake number one. Top line revenue tells you everything you need to know about customer’s experiences with your organization. It’s just not true. Sure, falling revenue is usually a pretty clear signal that something is probably wrong, but that number doesn’t tell you what’s wrong.

Same with top line revenue. It doesn’t tell you what’s right or wrong. I see this mindset in company cultures that are driven by business development, sales and marketing functions. If customers are buying from you, then they must be happy and you must be doing everything right, right?

Well, not necessarily. Just because you win a new client doesn’t mean things were perfect when they signed the engagement letter and it doesn’t necessarily mean the business relationship in their eyes has sustained any level of value. A great top line also doesn’t mean that customers will continue to do business with you, doesn’t mean your business is running efficiently, and it certainly doesn’t mean your competitors aren’t doing all they can to lure your customer away. That’s mistake number one.

Here comes metrics mistake number two. Customer Experience Metrics Make Us Look Bad. Well, metrics should be viewed as a conversation starter for your team, not as a policing mechanism. The conversation starter mindset though can be a huge obstacle because regulators, auditors, inspectors, or oversight bodies continually scrutinize metrics and data from companies.

And asking a team to sit down together and review customer experience performance metrics can feel like more of that. You really need a strong team leader to set a tone of trust internally with your colleagues surrounding the metrics conversation. And if performance isn’t on track with the standards and targets that you’ve set for your customer’s experiences, don’t play a blame game. Instead, ask genuine questions like why is performance off?

Did we confuse the customer? And if so, how and why did that happen? Do we have a staff personality conflict, an IT problem, a staffing shortage, a skills shortage? How can we team up to fix these customer pain points?

Understandably, these can seem like scary conversations to have with colleagues because they’re very, very honest. But when they’re done with a tone of trust, these conversations can be very bold because you’re not avoiding the problems that the data wants to show you. You’re taking steps to surface the systemic issues. That’s number two.

Here comes metrics mistake number three. Customer satisfaction is the only customer experience metric that matters. For me personally, I’ve never been a fan of customer satisfaction scores. To me, customer satisfaction doesn’t tell you enough about the customer, their lifestreams, what it will take to keep and expand that business relationship, or really that much about the customer’s actual experience with your company.

There’s really not much of a story to build on there. To understand the full story of customer’s experiences, look at things like customer wait times, application processing times, your response times, transaction completion rates, acceptance rates, contact center volumes, and types of customer complements and complaints, for example. I always recommend monitoring customer wait times as a great experiential metric. It’s operational.

But one thing we know from multiple research studies is few things annoy customers more than waiting. So scan your internal resources for a wider scope of data points that can help you see what customers see and actually experience when they are with your company and trying to conduct business. That’s number three. Here comes metrics mistake number four.

A once per year customer experience data review is all we need. Well, customer needs and expectations aren’t static. Service standards like wait times, processing times, they should keep pace with customer expectations. And you may need to flex how, when, and where you collect customer feedback, set standards, and take measurements based on a changing product, a changing business, a regulatory landscape.

Doing things more than once a year can keep you ahead of customer complaints, social media backlash and firestorms, and employee tensions and attrition. It’s hard work, but it sure beats managing a public crisis. So keep a pulse on what’s happening. So what do you do?

For starters, don’t fear the data. That can be easier said than done, especially when customer experience data inside your organization may only be used for incentives and performance measurement and not as a tool to develop the organization and coach your people. But it can be done. As customer experience professionals, that’s part of the expertise that we bring to the table, that internal influence to make the change for customers.

Then seek the right metrics that will shed light on the truth about how you need to flex change and communicate as an organization in order to avoid slowdowns, mistakes and complaints. In conclusion, when you have a good mix of customer experience metrics and the right conversational collaborative mindset surrounding data inside your organization, then you can avoid these mistakes and missed opportunities. And you can use metrics to help you and your team better understand what you need to do to be successful with your customers. I’m Stephanie Thum.

Thanks so much for listening. So there you have it. Special guest, Stephanie Thum, taking us through the mistakes and missed opportunities when it comes to CX metrics. One of the exciting things about being a CX professional is working in a field that is constantly evolving.

Organizations need to continually adapt to changing consumer preferences. CX metrics as a result aren’t a stagnant thing. So even if you work in an organization that has a measurement framework in place, I hope that Stephanie’s insights have provided some food for thought as things evolve. To hear more of Stephanie’s pearls of wisdom, be sure to check out the show notes for this episode.

I’ll include links to her previous episodes, along with information about how to get in touch with her. If you’re on Twitter, Stephanie’s handle is at Stephanie Thum. She’s active on the platform and always sharing awesome insights.

I’ll be back next Thursday with another CX Mini Masterclass episode. If you’d like to get in touch in the meantime, you can send me an email, tweet, or LinkedIn message. My handle is at Julia Ahlfeldt and my full contact details are also listed on my website, juliaahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com. Thanks so much and I’ll see you next week.