“Most leaders say they’re customer-centric, but if everything they measure is company-centric, how could that be true?” asks Gene Cornfield in the Harvard Business Review.
Revenue, growth, and similar Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) measure how customers are performing for the organisation, but not necessarily how the organisation is performing for its customers. He suggests CPIs – Customer Performance indicators, and believes that the more an organisation’s attention is focused on outcomes important to customers (CPIs), the better it will perform on outcomes important to the organisation (KPIs).
Customers (we might call them visitors or audience in the arts) bring a purpose, problem, need, intent, or question — a desired outcome — to every interaction along with expectations for how quickly or easily that outcome will be realised. The most effective approach for identifying them is contextual inquiry, an ethnographic research method speaking with or observing customers in the actual environments in which they think about or try to achieve specific outcomes. Examples of CPIs from the business world are mentioned in the article.
What would the CPIs be for your audience?
Image: Carlos Muza on Unsplash
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