I have been working on something like this – what if the metrics are functionally grouped but instead are aligned along the customer journey from awareness to advocacy?  (For example, Awareness, Knowledge, Consideration, Buy, Satisfaction, Loyalty, Advocacy)

So awareness might contain your metrics on brand and social media and PR.  The buying phase would be where your sales metrics go (sales, win/loss, etc…)  Satisfaction might metrics related to customer service.  Loyalty could be retention, Net Promoter Score or repurchase intention measures.

I’m really interested in learning how you think dashboards can be more customer centric.  What examples can you share?  Where have you seen best in class ideas?

I see customer retention as a key metric and focus for a customer experience group.  I vote for leaving churn behind as a measure and developing a measure that helps focus efforts on improving the behavior we want – retention. 

I think it becomes a more interesting and actionable discussion, when you have a metric (or metrics) that focus on customer retention.  There are also different views of retention, for example –  

• # of accounts retained
• # of products/services within an account retained
• retained value

I don’t know but a “focus on reducing churn” sounds less customer focused than a “focus on increasing customer value”.  Some have said it is more about semantics (which could be right) but even so, semantics matter.  I’ve heard many versions of this phrase (Tom Peters to  Deming) but essentially you do get what you measure or at least that what’s people will focus on, so I think getting the focus on customer retention does matter, in the end.  What do you think?  And which one does your company measure?

So my side note of the moment – why do I get stuck inside my own head sometimes and why do I let it lead me astray?  Here’s the thing – I’m on a journey to become more healthy, sustainably healthy.  Not a diet, not a workout now and drop it later but real change.  As a result, I want to feel better, more energized, lose some weight, be stronger and set a good example of a healthy lifestyle for my daughter.  Be the change I wish to see in the world (and in her).  Thank you, Ghandi. 

I’ve made progress (lost 12 inches, given up fast food and soda, very limited food in that comes from boxes or cans – start fresh, dropped a size and working out on a very regular basis).  Turns out that I am loving the change but somehow, I’m still not happy enough with my progress.  Crazy right?  I think it is the evil scale in the corner of my bathroom.  It haunts me with it’s mocking digital readout that states that for all the change, I still have only managed seven pounds. 

I’d like to do the sane thing and chuck the scale, truly I would.  But, I am number kind of gal and while the measurements are great, some part of me still thinks the scale is a key metric I can’t do away with.  So, sad to say but it is not the scale, it is me, standing in my way in my head.  I can’t revel in how much good I’ve done so far because all I can see is what I haven’t done.  Thoughts? Comments?  Stories?  Cheery support?  Let me know what you think.  And thanks for joining me on my Side Note!

Let’s start with Customer Satisfaction vs. Customer Loyalty (including NPS) – what are you going to use it for? 

• Customer satisfaction is all about us – the company/product/service/employees – how did we do? 
• Customer loyalty is all about your customers and their behavior – what stories will they tell about you?  What will they say when someone asks them what they think about a company/product/service?

Picking one or the other (or using both) starts with knowing how you will use the data once you get it. 

• Customer satisfaction – great for repeatable events (like customer support or field service) that need a customer based metric on the scorecard and to drive repeatable excellence in the customer experience. 
• Customer loyalty – great for determining what stories customer’s are telling about you.  Good at showing (or even predicting) customer lifetime value.  Excellent source of customer feedback for product or brand improvement suggestions.

Once you’ve decided how you want customer feedback to apply to your business, it becomes easier to answer questions like “how often do I ask?” and “what method do I use to get the customer’s feedback?” or even “at what level do I ask the question (brand/product/service)?”  **We’ll get to these questions in my next post in this series.**

I’m big on actionable information.  I like to know what business questions customer feedback will answer or what business problems customer feedback will resolve.  It helps me find the right focus for applying customer metrics.  My program team is service oriented – we are here to help our business partners across the company and improve the customer experience at the same time.  This is important because it is feedback from the customers and my business partners that help fuel how I design a program.

These are my thoughts.  What do you think?  Share your experience with me.

Here are the areas we will cover together in the next couple of weeks:

• Strategy:
  • Appetite for risk
  • Customer focus
  • Embracing innovation
• People:
  • Executive buy-in
  • Employee engagement
  • Company culture
• Metrics:
  • Satisfaction and loyalty
  • Customer retention
  • Customer lifetime value

I look forward to hearing what you think as we go through these topics.

One subject came up as a question after a session and I couldn’t help chiming in – executive compensation on your customer KPI, most notably NPS http://www.netpromoter.com was mentioned, although others arose as well.   to be clear up front, I’m all for incenting the right behavior and having incentives that are rooted in improving the customer experience are great. 

What I’ve experienced and heard about from many in this field is that once you incent based on improving the customer KPI, you will often find an intense focus on how the number is captured, calculated and surrounded by debate on the score.  This results in a frustrating amount time spent justifying the number itself, rather than improving the customer experience.

So how do you get out of that hole?

The easiest way I’ve found is to change the focus of attention away from the number (whichever one you use) and instead focus on incenting for improvement initiatives that are based in customer feedback.  By doing this, you comfortably fit full control of the efforts and results into the hands of the executive being incented (which also encourages engagement) and you circumvent all of the arguments around the number. 

Do you have a customer based KPI?  Is there incentives for it?  I want to hear how you handle this challenge.