There are lots of ways to measure employee performance, and at many companies it comes down to how much money the employee saves or makes for the company. But changing the mindset and the performance metrics within an organization can have a huge effect on improving customer experience and your company’s performance.
In marketing and sales, performance is typically measured on how much money each employee or team made for the company, and customer service is normally measured by how much money an employee has saved by cutting costs. These goals are typically linked back to the overall goals and focus of the company. The board of directors is focused on shareholder value, stock price, and financial performance, while the CEO and other C-level executives want to please the board and focus on financial improvements and sales. However, if a company is focused solely on financial metrics, it becomes very clear to the customers as the customer experience slips. Focusing solely on profits hurts the employee experience and the stock price because customers will flee if they feel they aren’t important to the company. If you’re only measuring your company’s and employees’ performance on how much money is made or saved, customer experience gets left behind. You are what you measure, which means measuring customer experience needs to be a focus on the company if you want happy customers to stick around.
Switching the focus and metrics from solely finances to a focus on the customer can lead to a near-instant improvements in company culture and the quality of the products and services. That’s because everyone will realize that their job has an impact on the customer experience even if they aren’t interacting directly with the customer. Consider the example of a bakery: it’s not just the person at the cash register selling the cake that impacts customer experience. There are also factors from people like the person who bought the ingredients, made the cake, chose the packaging, manufactured the kitchen equipment, and more. All of these little things contribute to how a customer views and interacts with your company. If the focus is on financial metrics, many of these pieces could get left behind or forgotten, which would hurt the total experience.
While it’s important to measure financial progress, performance metrics should also be tied to customer experience. Without a customer focus, companies won’t forget why they went into business in the first place—to serve the customers.
Blake Morgan is the author of More Is More. Sign up for her weekly customer experience newsletter here.