Millions of customers, thousands of employees, and more than 1,500 stores mean that Petco has a myriad of data and metrics to pull from to track its business growth and success.
The challenge, like many other companies, is knowing which metrics to prioritize and measure.
Chief Customer Officer Darren MacDonald believes that what gets measured gets managed. It’s impossible to track and analyze every piece of data, so the company has to be strategic in its CX metrics. With Petco’s goal of providing a seamless end-to-end customer experience, the company looks at a wide variety of metrics to track the entire customer journey. Petco needs to get the data to tell whether or not it is successful in its goals.
MacDonald says that instead of looking just at revenue, companies should look at their big drivers: Are you priced correctly? Are you delivering products quickly? Do people in the store have a great experience? Is the web experience convenient? Is the right organizational structure in place? The list goes on and on. Those key drivers determine the customer experience. If companies focus on driving all those inputs, the outputs like revenue and growth follow.
MacDonald points out that metrics and data can provide what he calls juicy insights to drive a brand’s customer experience strategy. But it requires companies to really understand the needs of their customers. Too often, companies look at things too much through the lens of a business instead of the lens of what the customers need. Starting by understanding customers and meeting their needs opens the doors to tremendous feedback and insights of how to meet their needs and build an effective strategy.
Ruthless prioritization is also crucial to CX measurement. With so many possibilities of metrics to measure, companies have to focus on the things that matter most. Trying to measure and do everything spreads a company too thin and makes its efforts lose effectiveness. But prioritizing what matters to customers and meeting their needs highlights those crucial inputs.
Metrics are crucial to any successful business. But they aren’t everything. Focusing on customers and highlighting those key inputs that drive the bottom line can help brands know what metrics and efforts to prioritize to deliver consistently amazing customer experiences.
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Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist and the bestselling author of The Customer of the Future. For regular updates on customer experience, sign up for her weekly newsletter here.