Present Customer Asset Metrics in Whole Numbers of Customers, Not Retention Rates

When I ask executives if they know the volume and value of their new customers and compare it monthly, weekly and annually to the volume and value of lost customers – it’s not top of mind. “It’s in our data” is often the answer. But it’s buried data.

Silos own their portion of the information, such as sales performance or marketing performance, but a one-company articulation of the growth or loss of the customer base has usually not been established or tracked.

As a result, the opportunity to galvanize the organization around responding to the growth or loss due to the overall customer experience is lost:

• Customer asset growth or loss is not brought up in a fearless way at every key meeting with employees and customers.
• The numbers aren’t discussed and obsessed about.
• There isn’t a true measure of whether customers found value from their experience and treatment.

Leaders must start taking it personally that customers are departing from their business. They need to care about the ‘math’ between customers in and customers out – because that drives growth. They need to make the connection between customer experience improvement and the movement of these metrics. Customer Asset Metrics create a way for executives to know and care about the shifting behavior within your customer base, which indicates if their bond with you is growing or shrinking.

Present your customer asset metrics in whole numbers of customers, not retention rates. This ensures there is a clear connection between people and the math.

For example, we brought in 22,000 customers, but we lost 27,000 customers. That is much more powerful (and personal) than “Our retention rate is 78%.” We give ourselves a false positive when retention rates are reported because they don’t glaringly show the number of people who left – who deliberately stopped,  lapsed or reduced their business connection.

Customer Asset Metrics track what customers actually did versus translating (and debating) what they say they might do via survey results. No regression analysis by survey question, or debating results required. The company either grew the customer asset as a result of the experience delivered, or it did not. As leaders learn and embrace these metrics, their demand for improvement will rival their demand for meeting sales goals and revenue targets.