CCO Aptitude #3: Guerrilla Metrics

To drive the customer action, we need traction that we’re just not getting naturally. That’s where guerrilla metrics come in. These are the metrics that will simplify, clarify, and kick-start the customer effort, and they’ll make the connection to revenue fast. Why call them “guerrilla”? Because getting them into your organization as a regular part of the discipline and conversation is a campaign you’ll need to forge.

If we could take a lesson from the sales force, we might find the answer to all this. It’s too hard to see how simple this is: just start counting customers. That’s it. The fact is that customers have simply not made it into our scoreboards. Customer survey answers have made it there, but not customers themselves.

Guerrilla Metrics: Count Your Customers

Why should a company ask customers if they’re going to stay when they can track who’s actually staying and going? Counting the flow of customers in and the flow of customers out has evaded us as a simple way to keep score. In our quest to be smart about all of this, we’ve simply overanalyzed ourselves out of our common sense. Those questions above form the foundation of guerrilla metrics.
• Are you counting your customers?
• Do you know which stay and which leave?
• Do you know why they’re coming and going? 

Guerrilla metrics establish a new language for your organization so that you can consistently manage customers as assets. Guerrilla metrics will give your leadership a platform to drive the customer agenda from. And guerrilla metrics will at last clarify the end game of what is trying to be accomplished with this customer work. Use guerrilla metrics to kickstart your customer effort or to breathe life into a stalled effort.