This series of articles will tackle your questions about Intentional Customer Experience Management (ICXM). Keep your questions coming via Infraction. I anonymize and even combine your questions to protect your privacy.

Jen wanted to know what red flags indicate her client is leaving Customer Experience to chance. There are three main types of flags:

• Missing or poor lagging indicators

• Missing or poor leading indicators

• ICXM capabilities are inconsistent or missing

Let’s go through those in more detail.

Missing or Poor Lagging Indicators

Businesses with customers generally start with lagging indicators, such as CX metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, or business metrics like churn rate or Net Revenue Retention (NRR). These metrics tell us how customers feel and what they have done as a result of those feelings—essentially, they show the aftereffects of the customer experience.

Lagging indicators are still a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted; they’re better than nothing and can serve as a starting point to identify existing problems. Jen should start by asking if her client uses any of these lagging indicators to track customer experience, as they can reveal issues causing dissatisfaction and unwanted customer behaviors. If these metrics are absent or ignored, it’s a red flag that CX is being left to chance.

Look Forward, Not Back

In ICXM, looking forward is better than looking back. Leading indicators tell businesses how they are performing on key aspects of their product, service, and touchpoints. These metrics are proactive: they’re like a quick health check that shows the current state and helps predict future outcomes.

Consider a few industry-specific examples:

• In e-commerce, average order fulfillment time can be a leading indicator. Slow fulfillment might predict potential churn or dissatisfaction.

• In tech, app load time or response time to customer inquiries could signal how well the customer’s experience aligns with expectations.

A retailer might create a delivery KPI or use a website UX metric to infer whether customers are happy. With time, lagging and leading metrics can be linked to establish a correlation and update performance targets. By examining these metrics from a customer’s perspective, Jen can assess if her client is measuring what really matters to customers. For example, if they’re using website UX metrics but customers primarily interact with a mobile app, the metrics aren’t targeting the right area. Inconsistent or missing leading indicators could signal a lack of alignment with what matters most to the customer.

ICXM Capabilities Must Stay Consistent

The best way to know if a client needs help with their customer experience is to understand whether they are employing ICXM capabilities well. These capabilities are the processes, skills, analysis, and communication efforts that together create an intentional and cohesive customer experience. Key ICXM capabilities include tools like journey mapping, feedback collection, and establishing a “Customer North Star” – a guiding vision for customer experience. As businesses grow, they can build customer experience maturity.

Journey mapping, for instance, helps visualize every touchpoint a customer has with a brand, uncovering pain points and clarifying ways to address them. Some companies might only implement these tools as marketing measures to attract new clients, but these efforts rarely build genuine loyalty if not designed around actual customer needs.

Jen can look for signs that her client regularly gathers customer feedback and whether they have an ICXM strategy in place that they’re following. Having a strong ICXM roadmap helps organizations build their customer experience maturity, aligning their growth and customer satisfaction, and lets them implement these capabilities more strategically.

One Final Assessment

All these flags are important, and in mature businesses, I recommend managing all three. Smaller businesses, however, might find these resources out of budget range or lack the data to track them effectively. In Jen’s case, she could ask her client questions to assess their level of maturity in this area:

• What metrics are in place, and how are they performing?

• Are there proactive measures to address CX problems before they become severe?

• Is there a defined ICXM roadmap with future actions and growth targets?

By answering these questions, Jen can help her client assess whether they’re adequately managing customer experience or if they’re leaving it to chance. If the metrics are strong, performance supports growth, and the client has a clear roadmap for CX, then it’s a sign that they’re on the right path. But if these elements are missing or underdeveloped, Jen can help them build a more intentional approach to customer experience.

Customer experience shouldn’t be left to chance. Visit infraction.io to learn how to assess key metrics, implement ICXM capabilities, and create roadmaps that align with customer needs.