Since I just wrote a post on the word “Mediocre” I thought I would take it one step further and talk about Metrics and Mediocrity. Mostly because I read a great post by Lisa Earle McLeod from Forbes called, “Why Metrics Drive Mediocrity.” But it also drives much more…some of which might not be so good for your business!
A great quote she uses from the master of leadership, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, actually says, “It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.” That is a great quote because many get it wrong and assume if you can’t measure it then you can’t manage it. But not everything can be managed the same way.
Accounting, shipping, production runs, supply chain all have built in metrics that you can track accurately and measure. Make some changes, the measurements change and you can continually improve the process. The genesis of “lean manufacturing” everyone embraces today.
But what about the “qualitative” sides of the business? What about the passion, emotion, and of course the experiential aspects? There are ways to measure some of this, such as with a NPS (Net Promoter Score) and other techniques, but they don’t do enough.
How do you measure the passion of an employee for example? Yet that passion is something that could be one of the most valuable assets of the organization…especially when it comes to the customer experience. And it is also one of the key elements that gets “talked about” on social channels and can lead to massive word-of-mouth. How is this measured? It isn’t…not in the traditional sense.
And what about the overall customer experience you give your customers. While there are many aspects of it you can measure and track and report on, it’s the emotional and commitment side that is sometimes the most valuable to a company. For example, at Zappos, their call centers don’t measure time on call…they focus on trying to ensure the customer has a WOW experience…regardless of how long it takes. How do you measure this…directly? It’s difficult.
One thing to keep in mind when it comes to measuring is to keep the big picture in mind. Sometimes we can get so narrow and focused on what we are measuring that we forget to step back and look at the bigger picture. For example, if we aren’t hitting all our conversion metrics for converting a lead into a customer, but when we look at it from a bigger picture and find out we have more customers coming in from word-of-mouth than ever before is that such a bad thing?
It’s great to measure…no argument. But sometimes the gold lies beyond the metrics and into other factors that the customer appreciates, recognizes, and talks about even more. Don’t forget about these “other metrics” when thinking about measuring the success of the business. You just might be surprised at the overall results you can achieve when you look at them in a different way.
