If you work in Customer Experience long enough, you eventually collect a lot of metrics.
A lot of metrics.
NPS. CSAT. Customer Effort. First Contact Resolution. Response time. Service level. Quality. Productivity. And, lest we forget, that one metric that’s been on the dashboard since 2017 and nobody is entirely sure why we still measure it.
We put them on dashboards. We color-code them. We build action plans when they’re red and celebrate when they’re green.
But how often do we stop and ask a much simpler question?
If this metric improved by 20%, would the customer actually notice?
I keep coming back to that question.
Not every metric needs to affect the customer. But if we’re going to call something a customer experience metric, it’s fair to ask what experience it’s actually measuring.
And that’s where things can get uncomfortable. Because sometimes a dashboard can be very green while the experience behind it is still pretty red.
What We Measure Gets Attention
Most metrics probably answered an important question when they first reached the dashboard.
The problem is that metrics have a very long shelf life.
Processes change. Customers change. Technology changes.
The dashboard? Somehow, the dashboard survives.
Over time, we stop asking why we’re measuring something and focus on hitting the target. Dashboards don’t just tell teams how they’re performing. They tell them how to win.
We set a target, track progress, color-code results and recognize success. Maybe there’s even some friendly competition.
We’ve created a game.
If speed is the goal, people get faster. If productivity is the goal, they produce more. People optimize around the score.
They’re doing exactly what we asked them to do.
The problem comes when winning the game becomes disconnected from the customer experience. The metric is green. Meanwhile, the customer is wondering why they had to call three times.
Perhaps the opportunity isn’t to stop gamifying performance. It’s to design a game where winning on the dashboard also means winning for the customer.
Before adding another KPI, ask:
What behavior will this metric encourage?
And then:
Is that behavior going to create a better experience for the customer?
Once we put a number on a dashboard and give it a target, we shouldn’t be surprised when people optimize around it.
We told them it mattered.
The 20% Test
The test isn’t scientific. There isn’t anything magical about 20%. It’s simply enough movement that we should expect something to be different.
The point isn’t the number. It’s the conversation it creates.
Take any metric on your CX dashboard and imagine that tomorrow it improves by 20%.
- Response time drops by 20%.
- Repeat contacts decline by 20%. Even better.
- Productivity improves by 20%.
Now ask:
Would the customer notice?
Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it’s no. But the most interesting answer is:
“I’m not sure.”
If we call something a customer experience metric, we should be able to explain what changes for the customer when that number moves.
If we can’t, we may be asking the metric to do the wrong job.
Instead of immediately asking, “How do we improve this number?” spend a little more time asking, “What is this number supposed to tell us?”
You might be surprised how different the conversation becomes.
Ask the People Who Actually Do the Work
There’s another question worth asking: What’s missing?
Leaders are good at deciding what we want to know. We’re not always as good at knowing what we should know.
We’ve been encouraging employees to challenge our metrics and propose new ones.
That might sound backwards. Usually, leadership creates the scorecard. But the people doing the work have a view of the customer experience most leaders simply don’t.
They know which problems keep coming back, where customers get stuck and which processes require three extra steps for no good reason. They also know which “simple” processes aren’t nearly as simple as the PowerPoint said they were going to be.
That perspective is data.
Our continuous improvement work gives employees ways to question what we’re measuring and point out things leadership may not see.
Some of the best conversations start when someone closest to the work says:
“We’re measuring X, but what we really need to be looking at is Y.”
A handoff. A delay. A repeat contact. An unnecessary approval. A workaround employees have performed for so long that everyone has forgotten it’s a workaround.
Individually, those things can look operational. To the customer, they’re the experience.
Ask the people doing the work. They may already know what your dashboard doesn’t.
Every Metric Needs a Job
Not every metric needs to be something the customer can see or feel. Productivity, cost, compliance, quality and risk matter, even if no customer has ever woken up excited about our internal productivity rate.
The key is understanding each metric’s job. Some measure business or operational health. Some diagnose problems. Others tell us about the customer experience.
Trouble starts when we confuse one for another. A great internal metric can be exactly that: a great internal metric. We don’t need to dress it up as CX to make it important.
So, the next time you review your CX dashboard, pick a metric and, before asking whether it’s green or red, ask:
If this improved by 20%, would our customer notice?
Then ask your team.
You may find the metric is exactly where it belongs, that you’ve been asking it to tell you something it can’t, or that something important is missing altogether.
We don’t need another metric just because we can measure it. And we certainly don’t need another dashboard. Most of us have enough of those.
Because what we measure gets discussed. What gets discussed gets attention. And what gets attention has a pretty good chance of getting better.
So maybe the goal isn’t a better CX dashboard.
Maybe it’s making sure we’re improving the things our customers can actually feel.
About the Author
Miguel Murillo is a global Customer Experience and service operations leader with more than 20 years of experience transforming organizations through continuous improvement, operating model design and customer-focused execution. He serves as Associate Director, Global Customer Service at Avanos Medical and regularly speaks on CX strategy, operational excellence and leadership.
