Are you customer obsessed, really?
Learning how to measure what your customers care about.
How do you know you’re giving your customers what they truly need? Are you measuring it? What systems do you currently have in place that will give you real insight into what they are experiencing?
KPIs are one we all know well, key performance indicators. But this is ultimately about how the business is performing. Then there is NPS - net promoter score, this is about a customer’s willingness to recommend a company’s products or services, but only companies care about this, customers typically don’t, so NPS is just another KPI.
And then, there are CPIs.
Customer performance indicators - what do customers actually value. These are about the expectations and desired outcomes of a customer.
In many industries this might be things like, providing payment schedules, or turnaround times, or response times to inquiries.
But in pharma, what might the expectations and desired outcomes of our HCPs be? Well, our research tells us a few things about what HCPs value. Things like content and tools that help with learning (whether that be for themselves or to socialize patients to concepts), meeting them where they are in their daily lives (so understanding their behavioural patterns and not making them deviate from that) and things that save them time.
So, let’s play out a scenario. An HCP is looking to understand side effects of a product in their particular field. He or she pops onto the product website, sees not only the information, but a podcast available for him or her to listen to that answers this question and more, rather than a long text heavy webpage.
There’s a dual CPI there; the provision of relevant materials that helps them learn and a digital tool that helps them save time and carry on with their day.
CPI’s are ultimately going to depend on understanding your audiences and their needs.
They are also, the most accurate predictor of growth. “While these examples may not be metrics that companies have traditionally tracked, they’re what customers actually care about. And by tracking what’s important to customers, companies have better visibility into actions they can take to improve customer outcomes, which directly impact business performance.”1
There are two elements that qualify a metric as a CPI. It has to be an outcome customers say they care about, i.e. not what you assume they care about. Secondly, it has to be something they value.
So next time you’re thinking about your KPI’s on a given project, think about what it would look like if you added a CPI along with it.
Because if you really want to know how you’re performing, measure how you’re performing for your customers.
1Cornfield, 2020 “The Most Important Metrics You’re Not Tracking (Yet)” [online], Harvard Business Review
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