[PRACTICE NOTE] Bespoke: The Future of Experience Measurement

Synopsis. The future of customer experience measurement is shifting toward bespoke approaches that prioritize tailored metrics reflecting the unique value exchanges between companies and their customers. These custom metrics—referred to as Customer Performance Indicators (CPIs), Customer Value Indicators (CVIs), or Customer Success Indicators (CSIs)—go beyond traditional benchmarks like NPS and CSAT, focusing on journey-specific, actionable insights. CPIs serve as leading indicators for customer effort, satisfaction, churn and business outcomes, enabling real-time responses and targeted interventions at the pace of modern business. To learn more order “The Customer Excellence Enterprise: A Playbook for Creating Customers for Life” at all major booksellers.

The future of experience measurement is bespoke. In the context of customer experience measurement, a game-changing approach used by CXEs is to create and deploy tailored metrics that reflect the unique value exchanges between individal companies and their customers. These metrics—referred to as Customer Performance Indicators (CPIs), Customer Value Indicators (CVIs), or Customer Success Indicators (CSIs)—are tailored to measure what truly matters to both companies and their customers. Unlike traditional CX metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), which provide valuable benchmarks for comparative analysis, CPIs are highly specific to journeys and actionable at an operational level. They act as leading indicators of business KPIs, enabling companies to respond to customer needs in near real time and driving targeted interventions that enhance the customer journey. These attributes are crritical for the real-time world that we live in.

This Practice Note is not meant to be a “pile on” on the vigorous discourse and ideological sniping surrounding traditional metrics like NPS and CSAT. Those metrics have and continue to serve their purpose as high-level indicators of customer sentiment and benchmarking across sectors. However, they are not sensitive enough to capture the nuanced, operational realities of modern omni-channel journeys. Whether for e-commerce shopping or in-person stay at a hotel, today’s omni-channel journeys require real-time, hyper-relevant insights to meet ever-evolving customer expectations and drive impactful interventions. CPIs offer this precision, allowing companies the latitude to measure what matters most to their unique customers and context. Tailoring CX metrics to specific value drivers allows companies to not only better align with customer expectations but also create metrics at an altitude that resonate more strongly with internal stakeholders, ensuring clarity for prioritization, meaningful action and cross-functional engagement on behalf of the customer and their experience. 

“…bespoke experience measurement regimes that are tailored, to the specific dynamics of their business and the specific nature of their, brand promise and value exchange with customers…”

OPS Bold Move #9: Reimagine Experience Measurement

Industry Examples of CPIs

In healthcare, traditional metrics such as Patient Satisfaction Scores or NPS provide a broad picture of patient sentiment but fail to address critical operational challenges. A bespoke CPI like Time-to-Treatment Efficiency—the average time from a patient’s first appointment to receiving care—captures a hospital’s ability to deliver timely and effective treatment. This real-time metric enables healthcare providers to identify bottlenecks in their processes, optimize resource allocation, and improve patient outcomes, directly addressing what matters most to both patients and providers.

For e-commerce platforms, general metrics like CSAT or Retention Rate offer insights into overall performance but are insufficient for guiding personalized promotional strategies. A tailored CPI like Personalization Engagement Rate—the percentage of customers who interact with and purchase products recommended to them—tracks the success of AI-driven personalization efforts. This metric provides actionable insights that help refine algorithms and enhance the customer experience, ultimately driving higher conversion rates and revenue growth.

In the airline industry, metrics like NPS or complaint volume may reveal customer dissatisfaction but do little to address operational pain points. A bespoke CPI such as Disruption Recovery Speed—the average time required to rebook passengers or resolve issues during flight delays—offers a focused view of how well an airline handles disruptions, a factor that customers really care about. Tracking this metric allows airlines to proactively improve their contingency plans, ensure efficient issue resolution, and preserve customer loyalty, even in challenging situations.

Why Bespoke is Better

Bespoke metrics like CPIs empower companies to measure what is truly relevant to their customers’ experiences. This freedom allows them to move beyond generic benchmarks and focus on the specific factors that drive loyalty, satisfaction, and advocacy within their unique context. As CXEs tailor metrics to their operational realities, they create a language that resonates more strongly with internal teams. Stakeholders see the direct connection between these metrics and their daily roles, motivating them to take immediate, meaningful action on behalf of the customer. Standardized CX metrics have value, but they often fail to capture the complexity of modern customer interactions. Bespoke CPIs, CVIs, and CSIs solve this challenge by:

• Capturing Unique Value Exchange: These metrics are specifically tailored to reflect what customers care about most in their interactions with a company, making them highly relevant and actionable.
• Enabling Real-Time Interventions: Unlike traditional metrics, CPIs offer real-time insights that allow companies to respond to issues or opportunities as they arise, ensuring a proactive approach to CX.
• Aligning CX with Business Outcomes: Acting as a leading indicator of business performance, CPIs connect customer experience efforts directly to measurable KPIs such as revenue, retention, and efficiency.
• Driving Stakeholder Engagement: Bespoke metrics resonate more with internal teams because they reflect the operational realities of the business, fostering a sense of ownership and accountability.

Preventing Brand Erosion.

CPIs are particularly impactful in an operational context where real-time sensitivity is critical to deliver on brand promises, protect brand equity and build good will with customers. Whether it’s responding to a delay in treatment, adjusting a personalization strategy, or resolving flight disruptions, these metrics provide actionable insights that enable companies to intervene swiftly and effectively, preventing the cascading of customer issues and the resultant “fire drills”. This ability to act on data as it’s generated makes CPIs invaluable for modern CX management, where agility and precision are key to delivering exceptional experiences.

Troubleshooting and root cause analysis at the CPI level is essential for ensuring customer success and goal attainment — the essence of delivering on brand promises. Identifying and addressing the specific issues that hinder these customer outcomes, CXEs proactively reinforce brand propositions, building trust and good will. For CMOs and Modern Marketers, this approach is invaluable—CPI measurement reinforces brand credibility and value, preventing issues that could lead to dissatisfaction or disengagement, not only protecting but strengthen their brand, avoiding the risks of erosion, fostering long-term customer relationships and unaided advocacy.

Key Takeaways.

• As customer expectations continue to rise, traditional metrics like NPS and CSAT will remain valuable for benchmarking but are no longer sufficient for driving operational and commercial excellence.
• Bespoke CPIs (or CVIs, and CSIs) represent the future of CX measurement, offering companies the flexibility to measure what matters most to their customers.
• CPIs align naturally with business KPIs to create actionable insights that compel internal stakeholders to take meaningful action. In doing so, they not only enhance customer experiences but also ensure that CX initiatives contribute directly to business success. 

Questions to Consider.

• How do we define and measure success from the customer’s perspective, and are these metrics integrated into our key performance indicators?
• What processes and systems do we have in place to track customer outcomes, such as effort, success and goal attainment, across the customer lifecycle?
• How often do we review customer performance indicators and feedback, and how do these insights inform our decisions on improving customer experience and driving customer success?

To learn more, order “The Customer Excellence Enterprise: A Playbook for Creating Customers for Life” at all major booksellers.