I just had lunch with one of our Aveus board members, who often starts team meetings with the question “where’s the smoke?” What a great way to create fast clarity about where to focus and why.

You’ve heard me talk about our recent research, which proved the link between customer experience and financial performance.  (We learned those that have a definition of customer experience that’s well understood throughout the organization were twice as likely to BEAT their profit targets—yep, 2X!). But the real proof for most leaders – understandably – comes from seeing their own customer experience actions directly lead to financial performance payoffs.

Would you know where to look to see this evidence in action at your organization?  Don’t worry if not — you’re in good company. Just this week at Common Good Books I asked a group of leaders:

Is your customer experience making your organization money? Costing you money? Do you know?

In this, as in every group I’ve asked that question, many admit that they don’t know and wouldn’t know where to look. Where’s the smoke?

The thing is it’s not so much an issue of where to look as it is an issue of how to interpret what you see where you are already looking.  For example, I’ll bet you already keep tabs on the size of your demand or sales pipeline, your customer retention rates, customer satisfaction scores, cost of goods sold by product line, and so on.  The trick is to consider these metrics in a new way, by asking yourself these questions:

What does our performance (demonstrated in a given metric) have to say about how well our operations are aligned to our ideal customer experience?

What might we want to start, stop, or change regarding our day to day activity to better align, so we can see positive change in this metric?

Consider your target, ideal customer experience.  It is what happens and how customers feel as they realize they have the need or problem that you solve, try out their options, buy, use your product or service to solve the need and then evolve to another need over time.  The common performance metrics that you already monitor can easily be mapped to the steps that make up this customer experience.

Said differently, the things you already use to measure your performance are exactly the indicators you need to show how well your daily actions and decisions are moving your organization toward your ideal customer experience. Moving – bit by bit – toward your target experience is exactly what gets you into the group with those leaders who are beating their revenue and profit goals.

Take the size of your sales pipeline. This metric is a great indicator of how well your operating actions earn consideration from prospects as they learn about options. Are you present where they first think to go looking for a solution? Are you connecting with them in their language over the problem or need they want to solve or are you pushing products or price? A healthy pipeline = good alignment of your actions with this step of your ideal experience. A thin pipeline….you get it.

Or consider what it costs for you to serve and support your existing customers. This metric indicates how well your daily decisions and actions prove your promise as your customers use your product or service to solve their problem. Do you follow up to ensure the need that triggered your customer’s journey to you is solved? Do you help customers leverage their first purchase or do you push this quarter’s new service? High customer support costs are a great clue that your operating actions are out of alignment with your target experience.

Use the metrics you already have to see the smoke.  When they’re off, they’re telling you where in your customer experience you can change operating actions to get better performance.

Need help matching up your metrics with your customer experience? Unsure how to evaluate what your metrics tell you about how to change your customer experience to drive better financial performance? Domino can help.  I wrote it explicitly to help guide you through the answers to those questions.

In the meantime, I will launch a series of blog posts that will explore each step of any customer experience matched to the metrics most companies already use.  Watch this space.  Steal freely.