The Forget The Funnel Podcast Unlocking Retention and Growth: How to Set Customer-led KPIs (Part 2 of 2)
One study found that 70% of people who sign up for a product log in once… and then never again.
That’s why customer-led KPIs aren’t just about measuring when someone becomes a “customer” — they’re about measuring the critical customer outcomes that lead to high retention. To do that, you must focus on genuine customer value: getting them from their first moment of value to value realization, continued value and beyond.
So, how do you define your own customer-led KPIs? You need to know what “job” your customers are hiring your solution to solve for them. You need to understand what matters to them to map that value to the specific parts of your product that deliver that value.
In this episode of the Forget the Funnel Podcast — the second of two episodes on customer-led KPIs — Claire and Georgiana share how to build your KPIs around moments of value for your customers. They explain how to map the customer experience, share examples of customer-led KPIs, and explore how to rally your team around your new KPIs.
Discussed:
- What your customer journey map isn’t telling you and how the three phases of the customer experience will help you operationalize growth.
- The critical importance of getting the evaluation phase KPIs right and how to leverage Jobs-to-be-Done to measure value realization.
- How to rally your team around customer-led KPIs and maximize their impact on growth.
Key Moments:
1:47 - Claire and Georgiana explore the difference between customer journey mapping and customer experience mapping.
3:31 - Georgiana shares why the evaluation phase of the customer experience is critical for setting customer-led KPIs — and how many teams get it wrong. She also breaks down the importance of first value and value realization at this stage.
7:09 - Claire asks Georgiana to talk through examples of customer-led KPIs, and Georgiana walks through a hypothetical example of how to tie a particular product feature to a moment of value.
9:52 - Georgiana defines value realization (AKA reaching true product engagement) and what a corresponding KPI looks like.
11:10 - Before your customers get to value realization, your only job is to help them hit those value-focused KPIs — so you shouldn’t be throwing every possible feature at them. Georgiana explains that once they’ve hit value realization, you can shift to helping them get additional value through additional features or expanding to other team members.
14:06 - Claire asks Georgiana to speak about how to rally people around customer-led KPIs instead of letting those metrics sit on the shelf. (Hint: Customer-led KPIs are way more motivating than transactional measures of success.)
16:27 - Another way to embed customer-led KPIs for your team? Evaluate your current customer experience and figure out what’s misaligned with your new KPIs, which will open new opportunities.
17:48 - Claire finishes the episode by sharing advice for more mature and nimble companies to gather data to implement and track customer-led KPIs.
As always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: