Customer Experience (CX) Metrics | What you need to know for SCM?

Gartner has published an interesting press release Gartner says Supply Chain Leaders Must Include Customer Experience Metrics to Measure Supply Chain Success (05 NOV 2020). According to the press release, supply chain organizations are measuring and improving their internal operational metrics, but they rarely spend time to understand their impact on the customer. Furthermore, in Gartner’s study (2019) more than 60 % of customer experience leaders said that their most important priority is to integrate customer experience metrics across all business units.

Gartner encourages supply chain leaders to use customer experience metrics to see the world through the customers’ eyes. They suggest three well-known customer experience metrics to utilize in supply chain organization which are Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES).

I couldn’t agree more with Gartner that a strong customer experience should be the ultimate driving target for all organizations. That’s why this discussion is highly important. The next question is: How can supply chain leaders influence these metrics?

All world-class supply chain leaders are aware that the end-customer will see the outcome of poor supplier experience. This fact is not widely understood in other organizations and the supply chain organization often must struggle alone with this problem. In other words, if supply chain leaders should see the world through the customers’ eyes, the other leaders should understand the importance of supplier experience in a successful end-to-end delivery process.

Earlier this year, we introduced the concept of supplier experience which is holistic by its nature and approaches customer-supplier relationship from five viewpoints. By concentrating on 1) open governance, 2) operational transparency and automation, 3) new technology, 4) excellent interaction and 5) ecosystem thinking, it’s possible to establish strong supplier experience.

It’s possible to make a huge leap to fulfil the end-customer’s demands by focusing on supplier experience. A strong supplier experience has a significant influence on gaining the end-customer’s satisfaction. When the whole organization in all organizational levels recognize this causality, the customer experience metrics can be improved substantially.