In this episode of CX Dialogues, James Elliott calls on CX leaders to leave legacy measurement behind and step into a more accountable, impact-driven future.
“Ask yourself whether NPS has delivered beyond the cultural. Has it delivered growth? Has it delivered innovation itself? Has it delivered agile change and improvement where you can track the value realised? And if the answer to that is no, then I think that answers the question; is it now doing more harm than good?” says James Elliott, Former Head of Experience at Bupa Global.
Customer Experience has long been dominated by metrics and measurement and often reduced to surveys, dashboards, and Net Promoter Scores. But as technology advances and automation takes over reporting functions, the next era of CX demands a sharper focus: driving real, measurable change across customer journeys and business operations.
Welcome to our CX Dialogues video series! In this episode, we sit down with James Elliott who discusses how CX must evolve from a passive reporting function into a proactive, change-driving discipline. Metrics like NPS have helped foster a customer-first culture, but often fall short of producing tangible outcomes.
WATCH MORE: CX Dialogues: Jo Boswell, Customer Experience Leader
“If your CX program is best described as a function for reporting insights then I think there’s an AI threat. Conversely, if your CX program is best described as a value stream for change improvement and increasing customer value, then I think the future is bright” he says.
James also discusses how CX leaders must embrace behavioural signals over sentiment alone, adopt smarter metrics like customer effort, and ensure their tech stacks are supported by people capable of delivering real transformation.
Top Insights:
- Success means evolving products and services to meet customer needs continuously, and proving it with before-and-after behavioral data.
- Shifting from survey-based CX to real-time, signal-driven CX unlocks faster gains in retention and churn reduction like $21 million saved from a 10% churn drop.
- AI will soon automate the repeatable, insight-reporting side of CX, posing a real threat to teams focused only on VoC and dashboards.
Watch the full video for more.
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