Customer Performance Indicators

Originally published March 2021. Updated March 2026.

A few weeks ago, at the grocery store, the guy bagging my groceries started bragging to the bagger in the next lane that he was the fastest bagger in the store. He went on and on about how nobody could beat him.

I tend to avoid confrontation, so I stood there silently while he mangled my produce. But what I really wanted to tell him was that he might be fast, but whenever he bags my groceries, there are holes in every bag, and something is always crushed. I don’t care how quickly my groceries get into the bag. I would much rather arrive home with intact grapes and bags I can reuse.

Clearly, this grocery chain has instilled in its employees that speed is important. It makes sense. The faster you can get people through the checkout line, the more people you can ring up. And sure, nobody likes to wait in line, but I think most shoppers would rather wait a few more minutes and not arrive home with a flattened loaf of bread.

The grocery store is measuring what’s most important to them, not what’s most important to the customer. On the grocery chain’s website, it says they are customer-focused—not a big surprise. Nearly every company claims to be customer-centric, but is that really the case if they don’t measure what’s important to their clients?

WHAT IS A CUSTOMER PERFORMANCE INDICATOR?

What comes to mind when you think about business metrics? Most of us think about key performance indicators (KPIs), which might be sales-cycle length and number of new leads, or web traffic and email-open rates, depending on what your role is within your company. What all of these measures have in common is that they don’t mean anything to your customers.

A recent Forbes article by Andrew Neal warned that many customer success teams are focused on the wrong KPIs. Why does this happen? According to Neal, it’s because “we often confuse activity with impact.” Even KPIs that are seemingly customer focused, like net promoter score (NPS) or ticket resolution time, lack depth. They measure customer perception and not customer outcomes. Customer happiness and customer success are two different things.

Neal recommends measuring metrics like time to first value and feature adoption/usage depth. These kinds of measurements tell you more of a story about the customer’s experience. Neal also points out that everyone’s metrics (not just customer success) should connect to broader business goals. He warns that, “If your customer success team is tracking one set of KPIs while sales, product, and finance are tracking others, you’re likely flying blind in at least one direction.” (Wait, customer success, sales, and product working together outside of silos? That sounds a lot like go-to-market strategy.)

We talk a lot about the importance of uncovering the impact your solution will have on a prospect. Measuring that impact once they are your client can be difficult to do, but by measuring outcomes important to your customers, you can get a much better idea of your level of impact and have a measurement that speaks to prospects.

How many people are looking at your website? A customer does not care. What about an NPS score? While this indicates whether previous customers are pleased with your service, it does not communicate specific values a buyer cares about. A measurement of how long customers spend on hold when calling in with a problem? That’s somebody’s time. That’s something they value. That is a CPI.

CPIS LINK TO KPIS

Yes, your company is customer-centric. Yes, you want to solve problems for your clients. But you also have investors who want to see company growth. The great thing about CPIs is that they help you as a company in two important ways. The first is that they can always be connected to at least one KPI.

Think about it. Your client wants any issues with your product or service solved effectively and quickly. Maybe the CPI you’re measuring is customer service issues solved in a single call. Happy customers who get their problems solved quickly translate directly into less client churn, likely a KPI you are measuring.

If you are now tempted to look at your KPIs and trace them back to the CPIs you think they are connected to, please don’t. That’s doing things backwards. That’s assuming grocery shoppers won’t change stores because you get them through the checkout line quickly when what would really keep them from changing stores is fewer bruised apples.

In order to come up with the right CPIs, you need to examine the experience your customer is having all along their journey. You already ask questions to determine what impact your prospects are hoping your product or service will have, but to develop CPIs, you need to look for other impacts your relationship could and does provide along the way. There are likely other companies out there that can solve the same customer pain points. CPIs get to the metrics of how your company is better.

Are you providing the time tracking system that their employees actually remember to fill out? Are you supplying them with a CRM that reduces the number of angry customers they have to talk to? Are you furnishing their house with tomatoes that aren’t squashed? (Can you tell I’m mad about my ruined produce? Because I’m pretty distraught about my ruined produce.) CPIs don’t just let you know how well you’re doing. They let you know why you’re doing well.

USING CPI METRICS IN MARKETING

I wrote above that CPIs can provide benefits to your business in two ways. Besides helping you figure out why you are or are not meeting your KPIs, CPIs can serve as powerful marketing tools. By measuring CPIs, you now have a metric that speaks directly to your prospective clients.

Do you want to use “the best time tracking software,” or do you want to buy “the time tracking software that decreased the number of reminders bosses had to send to their employees by 75 percent?” Everyone says they are the best in the field, but not everyone has metrics that prospective clients care about to back it up.

Having a high net promoter score indicates to your prospects that your current clients would recommend you to others. It can be used in marketing materials, but what do you think resonates more with a prospect? “Hey, people like us!” or “Hey, our clients see value within 30 days”? It’s great that your clients like you, but it doesn’t speak to the problem that made them come looking for you in the first place.

KPIs can sometimes tell you whether or not you have happy customers, but they can’t tell you why they are happy or what you could do to make them happier. The power to do that lies with CPIs. You better believe if a grocery store could promise me a less-than-one percent rate of product damage by their baggers, I would go there in a heartbeat.

Interested in reducing the length of your sales cycle, increasing deal size, and increasing your conversion rate? Those are Maestro’s CPIs. Reach out at mastery@maestrogroup.co for more information.