Doing so can build company value
Ask yourself these questions….is my team getting strategic insights from the various customer experience metrics we track….and are we tracking the right ones?
Most businesses have KPI’s (key performance indicators) but these often become stale in two ways. First, you’re no longer conducting effective reviews of your customer experience metrics. Second, the customer experience KPI’s you are tracking don’t get refreshed periodically to raise the performance bar for you and your team to challenge looking for ways to drive improvements. Here are some discussions to have with your team that could generate fresh, new dialog:
- Discuss your company KPI’s with key managers to determine if you’re monitoring the right ones and are the individual targets the right ones? Some to consider: On time delivery of your product or service, Response time to Queries, Response time to Quotes, Quality Ratings, Returns/Credits. And at my companies, we looked at these not only for our consolidated customer base, but also by each of our top customers. We found there were times when our consolidated metrics were good but for a specific customer they were not. This helped us avoid being surprised by losing a good customer.
- Do your team members, that can impact any of your KPI’s, know what targets you’ve set so they know what they are responsible for supporting?
- Is your presentation of the KPI’s effective in terms of showing you any trends? Many times, leadership teams will monitor a KPI for the current period but what is that period being compared to? Develop trend lines for key metrics so you can see how they compare to prior periods as well as to the target you’re striving to achieve. Your metrics will tell a more strategic message when you view them over time versus just for a single period.
- Discuss whether employee incentive plans are aligned with any key metrics you’re looking to improve. Too often employee or team incentive plans aren’t directly aligned with key metrics which is a missed opportunity. Incentive plans are designed to reward the right behaviors and deliver results, ensure those results are aligned with KPI’s you’re wanting to improve.
We could go on and on here, but you get the idea. Don’t let your customer experience KPI’s and/or your team get stale regarding how you’re managing this important area of your business. Refresh your process and in so doing, you could be building new company worth.
