In November 2014, I participated in the Hooked On Customers Summit, a webinar series hosted by Bob Thompson of CustomerThink. I joined Thompson, along with Jeanne Bliss, in the first webinar, “Creating Actionable Insight from a Customer Listening Engine.” Bliss talked about the role of the chief customer officer, while I ran through my six steps to turn VoC into action.

One of the questions posed by Thompson during the webinar was, “How can managers avoid the metric becoming a goal rather than an indicator?” This is a great question and one that needs to be addressed early and often in any customer experience management effort. All too often, we see companies chasing the metric, whichever one they choose, and trying to figure out how to move the number rather than appreciating it for what it is—a number that gives you a moment-in-time read on how you’re performing, and that’s it. It doesn’t tell you what you’ve done right or wrong, and it doesn’t tell you how to move the number.

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