There are times when my faith in humanity makes a comeback. More often than I'd like to admit, however, I lean back and scratch my head.

I'm a long-time advocate, even preacher, of both data-driven decision-making and customer centricity. I truly believe that a creative, customer-centric mindset combined with the right data and analytics toolkit can lead companies to the promised land.

With that, I'm excited to see companies committing to Customer Experience (CX) strategies. It's suggesting that companies truly recognize that customers are what drive their success (or failure), and that companies are willing to invest in their relationships with their customers, sometimes without immediate payback. This may not sound like ground-breaking thinking, but I really feel like it's a big deal given short-termism's seemingly unshakable grip on today's business decisions.

Having said that, I've also been brought back to reality during a few recent conversations. One friend — a global services executive who works with a wide range of large companies around the world — suggested that "CX is yet another flash in the pan and is in the autumn of its lifecycle." This wasn't an isolated point of view. Another Fortune 500 leader suggested CX is bordering on being a "bad word" at their company after they'd made big investments with little to show in return. I'm also hearing about CX teams being among the first to see layoffs as companies tighten their belts in uncertain times.

I refuse to believe this is CX's fate. Bezos and Amazon's customer obsession mantra has, justifiably from my POV, been a major inspiration for this movement, and I really believe it's the right strategy.

The Problem

My hypothesis: CX's implementation motto of "if you build it, they will come," together with a weak link to financial performance impact, has put CX in a challenging spot. NPS, CX's ubiquitous performance measurement metric, has the benefit of being easily understood, easily tracked, and easily benchmarked, but it doesn't provide CFOs with what they require to justify investments.

Learning from the Leaders

Assuming leadership perceptions haven't strayed too far off the rails, I actually think this is a solvable problem. Again, I think we can learn from Amazon. From the outset, Amazon recognized this fundamental requirement and adopted a logical framework and metric that links financial impact to customer experiences and engagement points.

The common explanation of Amazon having unparalleled customer data and systems is not the reason they're able to pull this off. They've adopted a mindset and analytic framework that breaks through barriers that often come with legacy and/or siloed thinking.

They've essentially turned "Customer Value Added to the Ecosystem" into the R in their ROI. When they invest in experiences, they quantify the impact on customers' behaviors, short and long term, across the Amazon ecosystem. They then link those behaviors to customer value drivers — purchases in the short term, profit margins, incremental purchase occasions created over the longer term, change in loyalty levels, purchase frequency, etc. — and from there to financial performance and ROI.

This feels surprisingly logical, bordering on obvious, for something that also feels so unique.

The Path Forward

So I'm obviously leading the witness a bit here; I have a very strong opinion that more companies, in fact all successful companies, will eventually see the light and adopt this mindset. With a bit of planning and connecting of "tried and true," historically isolated dots, together with today's machine learning and AI algorithms, pulling this off is imminently achievable. And proving it "works" doesn't have to be a daunting exercise; it can literally start with a straightforward crawl and use case.

I've been fortunate enough to work with a few forward-thinkers as they aim to move in this direction, and I truly hope to help more companies deliver on the promise of their data-driven, customer-centric visions. It really can be done, it's "simpler" than most can imagine, and the solution can ultimately have a game-changing impact on the customers, the operation, the business, and shareholders.

I'd love to hear if other people or companies are addressing the challenge of connecting CX to financial impact. In a similar manner? A different way? Is this not seen as a challenge in some companies?

If you're interested in learning more, bouncing ideas around, etc., please shoot me a note. I'm very passionate around this topic and would welcome the opportunity to speak live.