Editorial
Research Report
Business Leaders CX Report: What’s Working and What’s Not in AI-Driven CX
The Gist
- NPS is not the core problem. The bigger issue is organizations treating summary scores as strategy instead of diagnosing the specific pain points driving them.
- Granular analysis drives real improvement. Companies need to identify, prioritize and measure exact customer friction points across the journey.
- Ownership creates accountability. Sustained CX gains happen when one leader owns each issue, backed by action plans, metrics and executive visibility.
Sue Duris is right, NPS isn't broken, the real problem is analysis and action planning.
Sue, a CMSWire contributor like myself, criticizes what Bain called, the One Number, NPS. This is correct because the one number does not identify the granular issues that contribute to that number and what Duris calls the North star goal of the core business and CX. She then criticizes the culture that fails to lead to concrete business action and ownership.
However, my recent survey of Voice of the Customer processes has found that the two key missing factors impeding getting things fixed and moving the overall needle (whether NPS, customer satisfaction or customer effort) are analysis at the granular issue level and action planning which affixes accountability for fixing granular issue.
Table of Contents
- Action Must Be Built Upon Individual, Granular Points of Pain
- Replace Culture with Action Planning With Specific Accountability and Metrics
Action Must Be Built Upon Individual, Granular Points of Pain
NPS is a summary metric which everyone now agrees is relatively inactionable as well as having been misused — even Reichheld, who proposed it, says its application to individuals and areas of limited control result in begging and bribery. You can only fix NPS by fixing the underlying granular problems contributing to the score. The overall CX consists of a series of events that either go well and contribute to satisfaction or go badly and contribute to dissatisfaction. The measurement needed is to identify the Points of Pain (POP) that contribute to the overall level of satisfaction and the NPS score.
The measurement needed is the identification of the frequency and impact of the granular events and points of pain and delighters that contribute to the NPS score. The best method to identify actual POP prevalence is to present a random sample of customers with a list of issues across the customer journey. A list will surface three times as many issues as just asking if customers have had a problem (most customers don’t complain about most problems – look at your own behavior or see my recent article on customer rage in this publication.)
A fallback approach is to code complaints as specific issues rather than general categories, e.g. inappropriate late fee rather than including it as part of billing issues — a category that is too general to easily attack. AI can now be used to code all contacts in an efficient manner. The specificity becomes critical in the next phase, action planning and accountability.
The next challenge is to select a limited number of POP to attack, ideally based upon both their prevalence and the damage to loyalty and word of mouth. Most organizations cannot successfully attack a dozen issues at once because senior management attention is diluted. Yukiyasu Togo, president of Toyota Motor Sales, North America in the 1990s, stated that senior management could pursue only three-five initiatives at a time with assurance of success.
Related Article: What Is Net Promoter Score (NPS)? A 2025 Roadmap
How to Turn NPS Complaints Into Measurable Action
Editor's note: If NPS is the warning light, these four disciplines are the repair plan. Sustainable CX gains come from operational ownership, prioritization and measurable fixes.
| Action driver | What it means | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Identify specific POP | Pinpoint measurable points of pain across the customer journey that can be counted and tracked. | Moves teams beyond vague dissatisfaction scores into concrete issues they can solve. |
| Create an economic imperative | Quantify the revenue loss or business cost of leaving the issue unresolved for another month. | Builds urgency and earns executive attention for CX fixes. |
| Assign one accountable owner | Give each pain point to a single manager, backed publicly by executive leadership. | Prevents cross-functional finger-pointing and creates clear responsibility. |
| Measure process and outcome impact | Use operational metrics and customer outcome metrics to confirm the issue was reduced or eliminated. | Ensures teams prove results instead of declaring victory too early. |
Replace Culture with Action Planning With Specific Accountability and Metrics
Unfortunately, the term “culture” that Sue uses, is another general word that really contributes little to the conversation and undermines action. The cultural change Sue asks for really demands that the issues identified in the granular analysis at the POP level then be assigned to a single functional manage who is on the hook to fix the issue and provide metrics that prove he/she has fixed it.
Once the POP are identified, they must be prioritized and then action plans developed. This is the second key requirement. An action plan must have an individual owner, a set of action to be taken with a schedule and metrics to show that the action either mitigated or eliminated the POP.
The recent VOC Impact Study found that the companies with sustained YOY increases in customer satisfaction all had an action planning process that assigned each issue to a single manager or director, even when the issue was cross-functional in nature. This strategy mirrors the strategy portrayed in The Amazon Way by John Rossman. One manager is assigned and it is his/her responsibility to gain cooperation from all the other functional managers. That way one person is on the hook.
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A second golden nugget was the fact that many of the leaders had a pattern of senior executives communicating the POP and action plans via town halls and communications. This is critical because senior management is now publicly “on the hook” for achievement.
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