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In-Depth Information
Push-back time was probably considered something employees could control
and reasonably correlated with on-time arrivals. In addition, push-back time is
straightforward to measure—unlike the seething anger of a customer trying
to get on a plane that is still sitting at the end of the jetway.
Most companies make the mistake of evaluating performance (establishing
success metrics) along functional activities. This perpetuates disconnected,
dysfunctional silos within an organization. Marketing becomes focused on
driving revenue. Operations focus on driving down costs. Product develop-
ment is a success if new features appear on time. The results of these incentives
are predictable: Marketing, which is focused on new customer volume, brings
in customers who have low life-time value; operations, seeking to minimize
costs, squeezes customer service at the price of customer satisfaction; and
product development, focused purely on the clock, doesn't bother to deliver
the features that can help marketing bring in new customers.
One alternative is to put customer experiences or processes at the forefront by
defining success metrics that cut across organizational structures. No matter
what industry you work in, happy and high-value customers are at the center
of your businesses success—but require multiple functions to work together.
Customer-centric metrics ensure you are aligning your organizational pro-
cesses to this wanted goal. A commonly accepted metric with strong leader-
ship support and real accountability can be a catalyst to get these formerly
unconnected groups working together.
Along these lines, consider the following when deciding on appropriate metrics:
Trending, distributions, and comparison
—A single, lonely number
often doesn't reveal a true understanding of an organization's perfor-
mance. It is necessary to put a concept around the value to allow peo-
ple to gain a more complete understanding of the relative goodness
or badness. By showing trending, distribution, and comparison, you
improve understanding for the audience of the metric. Trending shows
whether the metric moves closer or further from a goal. Comparisons
to industry benchmarks show how your organization stacks up in a
larger context. Finally, break out the value by different dimensions
(for example, locations, products, and customer segments) to reveal
whether one factor is propping up or dragging down the metric value.
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