Customer Experience or “CX” has become one of the most overused and least understood business terms of the last two decades!
… And it’s high time to start turning those CX promises into accountable actions, as contact centre consultant Adrian Hawes explains!
Too Often CX Lacks Meaningful Measures or Tangible Outcomes
Customer Experience or “CX” has been inflated by marketing hype, vendor spin, and a desire by organizations to appear “customer-centric”, but it lacks a consistent definition, meaningful measures, or tangible outcomes.
In fact, since we allowed this terminology into our everyday working lives we’ve seen nothing but a steady decline in almost every measure of customer satisfaction across our industry. I don’t believe that is a coincidence!
Holding leaders to account for delivering something so vague is impossible. Instead, we must hold ourselves accountable for delivering the right level of customer service for our organization – and measure vendors on ROI that links directly to financial results.
Perspectives Need to Change on What CX Actually Means
It’s time to debunk the idea that “CX” (as popularly marketed) is a coherent, accountable discipline in itself.
Instead, here are 3 common-sense, straightforward ways we should drive this debate forward:
- Drop the vague “CX” label in favour of concrete, operationally defined customer service delivery.
- Align customer service accountability directly to the organization’s financial and strategic objectives.
- Measure what matters – with tangible operational and financial outcomes – rather than chasing empty “feel good” scores.
Unless It’s Proven to Influence Revenue, It Will Drop Down the Priority List
Is customer service an end in itself, or a means to an end?
However we dress it up, boardrooms care about what drives business performance. Unless customer service is proven to influence revenue, retention, or cost control, it will drop down the priority list – particularly in today’s tough financial climate.
The key here is to make the endgame transparent and explicit:
“We deliver service to this standard because it drives X% retention, Y% lower cost to serve, Z% higher repeat spend.”
In framing customer service in this way, we can grab the attention of our boardroom colleagues and underpin our previously tenuous conversations with real, actionable insight.
A great way to identify where to start is to perform a CX audit. For advice on this, read our article: A Quick Guide to CX Audits
Clarity of Ownership Is Much Needed Too
We cannot talk about the “how” without focusing on the “who”!
On the face of it, this should be straightforward… After all, the exponential growth in CX roles must have given us a myriad of people to hold to account for customer service?
But this is the paradox, this explosion of “CX” roles hasn’t improved service. In fact, overall industry performance has declined.
It’s not difficult to see why…
- Many CX positions lack operational control and budget.
- Service is splintered into silos instead of being embedded in every role.
- Without execution authority, “CX” becomes a safe haven for avoiding accountability.
So, what is the solution?
- Accountability should belong to those who run the customer service operation – not to abstract “CX” roles.
- Build service delivery into every role’s objectives – not siloed under a single department.
- CX leaders (if retained) must have budgetary and operational authority, or they’re just consultants or programme managers with no teeth.
Greatness Is Not a Mood, a Slogan, or Even a Score! It’s Operational Excellence!
One of our greatest challenges is that our industry has simply not found a robust means with which to measure “CX”. In my view, that’s because great customer service is not a mood, a slogan or even a score – it’s operational excellence!
At its core that means, rather than “CX fluff”, it should be anchored in operational delivery:
- Brilliant, intelligent planning and actionable insight
- Appropriate resources (people, tools, skills)
- High-quality execution
- Great leadership and robust performance management
- Continuous learning and improvement embedded as business as usual
Details may vary across industries and customer types, but the fundamentals do not change.
It Is Possible to Drive Accountability and Prove ROI!
Great service is a lead indicator of financial success, though it’s rarely an end in itself. Your measures need to align directly with strategic objectives and be transparent and fully understood across the organization.
That’s why the best way to gain traction for your customer service initiatives is to measure the leading indicators that can predict the financial results that the boardroom cares about, such as:
Operational Metrics
Traditional operational metrics work for a reason – they measure important aspects of a businesses. Of course, there are aspects that have evolved over time, but they remain key to success:
- First contact resolution (the end-to-end customer journey, not siloed)
- Speed/ease of access
- Quality of interaction and resolution
- Failure demand vs. total demand
For advice on the top customer experience metrics to use, read our article: Top 10 Customer Experience KPIs
Financial Linkage
This alignment with the bottom line of the business is of fundamental importance, as it’s what determines the viability of the organization:
- Customer retention/churn
- Customer lifetime value
- Cost-to-serve
- Revenue growth (new and existing customers)
Customer Feedback
Customer survey scores are fraught with risk and inaccuracy. Few customers enjoy completing them at all or diligently. Singular scores tell us very little, if anything and yet we obsess over them.
NPS has become the ultimate vanity metric, yet its suitability for measuring what we need is so fundamentally flawed it will require an article in its own right to examine this thoroughly.
What we really need to understand is:
- Verbatim analysis (speech/text analytics) at scale
- Trends and variation – not just single NPS/CSAT scores
If you are looking for advice on getting your VoC programme right, read our article: What’s Next for Voice of the Customer (VoC)?
Evidence That Solutions Will Reduce Costs
Vendors should not be measured on “CX impact” unless it is aligned to financial outcomes. It is time to hold all vendors accountable only for measurable, financial improvements – demand evidence that solutions will reduce costs, increase retention or boost customer spend – not just an “increase NPS by X points”.
In short, if your solution does not:
- Increase revenue
- Reduce churn
- Lower cost-to-serve
…then it is not delivering ROI, no matter what the vendor or customer survey says!
It’s Time to Stop Chasing the Ethereal Promise of “Great CX”
The industry has been failing customers for around two decades. It’s time to stop chasing the ethereal promise of “great CX” and remove the wriggle-room of accountability for vague “CX” ideals.
Define what great service means in your organization’s context – you are unique – and embed it in every role, measure it against financial results, and demand the same from your vendors/suppliers.
In this way, you can:
- Tie everyone’s performance directly to what the organization MUST achieve.
- Avoid wasting time and money on vanity metrics.
- Bring the conversation back to operational excellence, something measurable, improvable, and directly linked to the bottom line.
This is how you hold people accountable and change the narrative!
Written by: Adrian Hawes, Director/Consultant at Select Planning Ltd
If you are looking for more information to help improve customer experience in your contact centre, read these articles next:
- Balance Automation and Personalization in CX
- 10 Ways to Go Deeper With Customer Journey Mapping
- Proven Ways to Get More Budget for Your Contact Centre
Author: Adrian Hawes
Reviewed by: Xander Freeman
Published On: 3rd Nov 2025
Read more about - Customer Service Strategy, Adrian Hawes, Budget, Customer Experience (CX), Customer Feedback, Customer Service, Metrics, Service Strategy, Top Story
