Best Practices

I can’t take seeing yet another article extolling the virtues/lambasting the shortcomings of NPS. So I want to lay it all on the table – the pros and the cons – and try to offer a balanced assessment.

In an age where customers have seemingly infinite choice and near-instant access to alternatives, how a business delivers is often just as important as what it delivers. That’s where Customer Experience (CX) comes in.

Some marketers display a near-religious devotion to Net Promoter Score (NPS) , while others display an equally devout opposition and adopt an anything-but-NPS mantra. Both sides do the field a disservice.

The value of a company – your company – is best measured in terms of the current and future value of cash flows from customers. This makes customers your most prized asset.

Churn is approaching crippling levels, and customer acquisition costs are spiraling out of control. Boosting customer lifetime value through improved retention and cross-selling/upselling must be the top priority.

Many B2B firms have fewer than 10,000 customers, with some under 1,000 or even fewer. Small customer populations make it difficult to gather sufficient feedback for reliable statistical analysis.

Let’s get real: just about every company says they care about customer experience. Some even scream it in their ads. But caring is not doing. And doing is not doing well.

Customer Experience is a science. CX isn’t a “hard” science like chemistry or physics because people don’t behave like chemicals or atomic particles. But CX – or at least CX done right – is systematic in measurement, design, and application and sits squarely in the domain of the social sciences.

We’ve always said that everyone owns the customer experience. But let’s be real—when the customer is mad, they’re not calling the product team, or marketing, or Gary in procurement.

X + O = the motherlode, the Holy Grail of data. Most firms, however, simply fail to connect the dots across data sources. The result is a failure to realize the benefits of data integration.

Let’s be honest—”customer experience” is one of those phrases that gets tossed around a lot, usually alongside “delight,” “omnichannel,” or “synergy.” But if you’re a Chief Customer Officer, you know it’s way more than just corporate lingo.

The promise is bold: you can do everything yourself without the need of expensive support and get away from reliance on the research geeks. The problem is the gap between the promise and reality.