Major XI Industry Challenge: The Confusion, Mistrust And Disappointment Over Metrics

Over the past 20 years, a veritable Greek chorus of colleagues (and I) have commented, reported, or both, regarding accuracy and reliability of actively used and widely accepted CX, EX, and BX metrics.

Recent articles, such as the one in Forbes by Jon Picoult, and posts, such as Ricardo Saltz Gulko’s on the CustomerThink portal, raise a distasteful, and even embarrassing, subject for those whose profession is to understand, and report, real-world drivers of stakeholder experience and potential effects on downstream behavior. Namely, it is the consistent inability, and often failure, of well-accepted metrics to identify, much less anticipate, the impact on marketplace action of perceived customer and employee value factors.

When considered in the context that these metrics are frequently used by senior functional and corporate executives to plan, develop, and execute strategic marketing and operational programs, the consequence of this issue becomes more apparent. The issue undermines, and even compromises, the ability of CX, EX, and BX analysts to reliably guide their employer in how scarce resources (time, money, people, facilities, and technology) are used to best effect.

As reported by Picoult: “Customer experience quality in the U.S. has just hit an all-time low. And, in related news, customer experience quality in the U.S. has also hit an all-time high.” The cause of this statement, and what it represents, is competing experience metrics from two different studies, one by ACSI (Survey Research Center, University of Michigan) and the other by Forrester. He further states: “What business leaders see is an industry that can’t get its story straight: Is customer experience quality at an all-time high or an all-time low? Apparently, it wholly depends on which Customer Experience Index you’re citing – which isn’t a good look for the CX industry.” Succinctly said, and well said.

But wait, there’s more, and it gets worse. In Gulko’s post, he states: “Net Promoter Score (NPS) has established itself as a popular metric for evaluating customer loyalty, satisfaction levels, and the likelihood of customer churn. Widely adopted across industries, NPS has faced increasing scrutiny for its limitations in offering a complete view of the customer experience.” and “NPS, encapsulated by a single question — ”How likely are you to recommend us?” — offers a narrow and momentary transactional perspective on customer sentiment. Despite its simplicity, more than 75% of organizations are projected to phase out NPS as a Measure of Success for Customer Service and Support by 2025, according to Gartner. This simplicity overlooks the complexity of customer relationships and experiences, failing to capture nuanced feedback crucial for improving overall customer satisfaction.” Again, well said.

Gulko, recognizing the impact of how experience metrics are used, concludes: “It’s essential to move beyond singular transactional satisfaction and focus on consistent, longitudinal insights to truly understand customer behavior and preferences.” and “By embracing a more nuanced approach, organizations can gain a comprehensive understanding of customer sentiment, facilitating more informed decision-making and enhancing overall customer satisfaction.”

He calls for a 360-degree experience metrics review and reset within the profession. As someone who has been doing this work for more decades than I care to reveal, who frequently challenges the real-world utility of these well-accepted metrics on the basis of actionability, and who believes in the pivotal enterprise success role that CX, EX, and BX practitioners represent, I wholeheartedly agree. It’s time. In fact, it’s long overdue.

As I wrote in a CustomerThink post on this subject exactly eleven years ago, “Much more than insufficiencies of individual performance metrics, especially when they appear simple and universal, what’s largely at issue is the complacency, and risk aversion, often ascribed to marketing, customer experience, and brand research professionals, sometimes accurately and sometimes not. A small infusion of analytical creativity can go a long way.”