September 16, 2025 • 14 mins
Navigating today’s uncertain business landscape means balancing what’s behind us with what’s ahead. In this episode, we explore how CX leaders can use leading indicators to predict satisfaction while relying on lagging metrics to evaluate performance.
Rather than collecting more data, it’s about collecting the right data—spotting early signals in engagement patterns, service inquiries, and employee feedback before they show up in CSAT or NPS. We also look beyond internal data to market trends, competitor activity, and global behavior shifts to understand evolving customer expectations.
As technology—and customer access to AI—advances, the information gap is shrinking. CX leaders must rethink how they deliver value in this new reality. By blending historical insights with forward-looking indicators, we can move from reporting what happened to shaping what happens next.
What signals are you watching for in your business?
Want to ask a question? Visit askjeannie.vip to leave Jeannie a voicemail! (And don't forget to follow Jeannie on LinkedIn! www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniewalters/)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeannie Walters (00:02):
One, two, three , four.
How do you plan for what isahead of us as a customer
experience leader?
Some of that might be aboutwhat's already happened.
Let's talk about it.
We have a great question todayon the Experience Action Podcast
.
Listener Question (00:20):
Hey, Jeannie.
It's Shawn from the ExperienceInvestigators Mailroom.
I found the perfect questionfor the podcast.
It reads Jeannie, what can mybusiness do to effectively use
leading indicators to predictcustomer satisfaction and
improve experiences proactively,while also relying on lagging
indicators to evaluate pastperformance and shape long-term
(00:42):
strategy?
What's the right mix of data?
Jeannie Walters (00:45):
Thanks, Shawn, and thank you question asker.
You know, if you are too shy toleave a voicemail, don't forget
you can also find me ataskjeannievip and go ahead and
send in your question and wewill read it on your behalf.
But today, let's talk aboutthis.
This is a big one.
We are in, it's fair to say, anunpredictable market right now.
(01:10):
The landscape of being inbusiness right now is really
uncertain in many cases.
What we have to do as customerexperience leaders is look to
the past, figure out what can welearn from the data and look
ahead.
What are those leadingindicators?
So those leading indicators aresignals to us.
They give us an early read onwhat might change, how to
(01:35):
actually have an impact on howsatisfied or delighted customers
feel, as well as the behaviorsthat we want to drive.
We want to make sure that theyare loyal because they feel good
, they're emotionally connected.
We want to make sure that thatloyalty translates into more
purchases, into higher word ofmouth sentiment, into fewer
(01:56):
returns and service issues.
So when we're talking aboutleading indicators, that's what
we're talking about.
How do we look ahead?
What are those signals?
And then, of course, laggingindicators are things that we
use in business to really learnfrom the past.
We evaluate what happened,let's confirm what happened,
(02:17):
let's look at the data pointsthat are central to our version
of success and then let'sevaluate whether our strategies
worked and what do we need to doto maybe shift or modify our
plans for the long term.
So a lot of the things that arecommonly looked at in customer
experience work things likecustomer satisfaction rate or
(02:40):
CSAT, net promoter score (NPS),even customer effort score (CES)
those things are really laggingindicators.
They tell us about how peoplehave felt already.
This is the feedback that wereceive from customers after
they have had some sort ofinteraction with us or while
they are actually in thelong-term relationship with a
(03:03):
brand.
That could be a relationalmetric.
However, when we look at thingslike churn and retention rates,
when we look at the revenueimpact from a marketing campaign
or a sales campaign, all ofthat is actually lagging.
We are learning about whathappened and we are evaluating
(03:24):
what happened.
When we talk about leadingindicators, we want to look
ahead.
We want to figure out what arethe signals that can give us
some insight so that we can makesure we are staying ahead of
those customer expectations.
We are living in the age ofcustomer expectations.
These are changing.
They are changing both fromexternal motivations like the
(03:47):
economy and globalization andall of those things, and,
frankly, internal motivation aswell.
Are my values as a customerstill aligned with this brand?
Am I receiving exactly what Iexpected at the moment that I
need it?
Do they value and appreciate meas a customer?
Those are internal motivationsfor an individual.
(04:09):
So think about what you can lookat for your leading indicators
and your specific customers.
One of the things I like tothink about is you know, are we
constantly evaluating customereffort, not just with something
like customer effort score, butare we looking at things like
are we keeping up in ways thatcustomers expect us to around
(04:31):
how many steps does this take?
Leading indicators really tellus about what is it we should be
paying attention to, what arethose red flags, what are those
warning symbols, as well as thethings that tell us, hey, this
might be working.
Let's put a little more focusand attention on it.
We want to look at things likeengagement metrics.
(04:51):
We want to see what ishappening with our customers.
Are they actually engaging moreor less with the site or the
app or the product that we askthem to?
Are they engaging more withservice?
Are they reaching out more forservice?
Now, when I say more, this mightnot be a huge spike in your
(05:11):
data.
These leading indicators couldbe something subtle.
They could be something likeone or two more calls or
something like more time on aservice call.
This is where patternrecognition and AI can be very
helpful, because we might notrecognize that as a red flag,
but if we recognize a patternlike you know what these
(05:33):
customers who are calling in allordered the same product around
the same time it gives us anopportunity to look at what's
going on and how to prevent moreservice issues from happening.
You might have something where,on a certain date, we made some
promises about delivery thatunfortunately, we couldn't keep
for some reason.
That is something that we wantto know.
(05:56):
If more people are calling inabout that.
We want to get in front of thepeople who haven't called in yet
and try to improve the customerexperience for them.
Front of the people who haven'tcalled in yet and try to
improve the customer experiencefor them.
Another leading indicator, whichis internal within our
organization, is around theemployee experience.
How are employees feeling?
What are they telling you?
(06:16):
Are they reporting that theyare feeling a little less
appreciated, that they arehearing more complaints?
That sort of anecdotalinformation will show up before
it shows up on your feedbackdata.
So look for those smoke signalsthat customers and employees
(06:36):
are actually showing you throughtheir behavior.
Of course we want the right mixof data here.
We want to look at quantitative, we want to look at qualitative
.
Want the right mix of data here.
We want to look at quantitative, we want to look at qualitative
, we want to look at thoselagging indicators, because that
gives us information to improveupon.
But we also want to look atthose leading indicators and we
(06:56):
want to really make decisionsbased on our goals.
If we know that we have aservice issue that we cannot fix
, we might not want to spend awhole lot of time looking into
the data around that.
We know what's happening there.
What we do want to know is okay, if we were proactive and we
called a few customers inadvance of that service issue
and gave them more information,would that actually make them
(07:18):
report better feedback?
So we have to really put thistogether almost like a puzzle.
Now there's another thing herethat we have to remember.
We are part of a global world.
We all interact with differentbrands, different suppliers, we
have vendors, we have shipmentissues, we have tariffs.
We have all sorts of thingshappening.
(07:39):
So, while we want to look atour own internal data and what
customers and employees aretelling us and what the feedback
metrics show and what simplyour operational metrics tell us
as well, we also want to look atthings like market trends and
industry benchmarks and reallyjust seeing kind of where the
world is going.
So this could be looking atcompetitor performance what is
(08:03):
happening with some of ourlarger competitors.
Sometimes they feel things orshow things before the little
guys.
Sometimes we want to look attracking NPS rates against a
benchmark.
So we want to make sure that weare expanding the scope of
where we're looking so that wecan really make sure we're not
(08:25):
ignoring the rest of the world,because our customers and our
viewpoint is limited, no matterwhat.
So we have to make a point ofreally looking beyond our
specific company, our specificindustry and even our specific
customers and go beyond that andthink about what is actually
happening here.
(08:46):
The big one that I look at arecustomer behavioral trends.
What are people doing?
How are they behaving?
What's important to them?
Now, some of this is hard tosee in the moment, and so this
also includes a little bit ofyour risk tolerance.
How much do you want to trythings just to see what is
(09:07):
happening with customer behaviorNow?
We know now that behavior haschanged.
We know that during thepandemic, for instance, we all
became a lot more interested inhobbies and personal time.
That has not gone away, so weknow that that happened and that
will influence things for theforeseeable future, but we don't
(09:28):
always know that in the moment.
So what you want to look for arethings like rising complaints
or themes that maybe are beyondyour industry.
Are people complaining abouttime?
Are they complaining about howexpensive things are?
Are they explaining or are theycomplaining about service?
(09:48):
If you're seeing that at themacro level, at the global level
, you want to think about howdoes this apply to our customers
?
How does this apply to how wewill prepare them for what we
are doing in the future?
How is that a leading indicatorfor me?
We also want to look at thingslike reviews that customers are
(10:09):
sharing publicly.
Maybe you want to look atReddit forums to see what people
are saying about theirexperiences within your industry
and beyond your industry aswell.
And then we also want to lookat things like are people
spending money differently?
Are companies spending moneydifferently?
We want to really expand whatwe're looking at when we're
(10:31):
thinking about forecasting andgetting ahead of customer
expectations.
This is where we really canstand out as customer experience
leaders.
We want to make sure we're notjust reporting on what's
happened.
We're using that informationcombined with really looking
ahead and trying to identifywhat are the insights that
(10:54):
really matter to us, ourorganization and this is
important our definition ofsuccess.
Because if your customers aresuper invested in your brand and
you think that's going to carryyou for a long time, I would
suggest that you take a stepback and think about why are
(11:16):
they loyal today and why willthey be loyal tomorrow?
And the only way to answer thatquestion is by looking at what
will change in their worlds notwhat will change between our
brand and them, but what willchange about their real lives.
This is where we get intothings like the customer life
(11:39):
cycle as well.
People have different needs atdifferent times.
We want to make sure that weare aware of that and respectful
of that and can personalize theexperience for that as well.
And, of course, we are living ina world that is evolving very
quickly with technology,artificial intelligence, all
those things.
How will that impact both theway your company operates and
(12:04):
the way your customers behave?
One of the things that I'vebeen looking at is you know,
there's a shift right now aroundhow customers are reaching out
and how they are using AI, andI'm not sure many organizations
are really thinking about this.
We need to think about how willcustomers rely on AI?
What will happen when they arecalling the customer service rep
(12:28):
with more information in frontof them than maybe that rep has?
We have to start preparing forthat.
So all of this comes down to youknow what we have to really
look at, both leading andlagging indicators, and we have
to expand the scope of wherewe're looking.
That's how we stay ahead ofcustomer expectations.
(12:49):
That's how we, as customerexperience leaders, can really
be partners in the strategicvision and execution of our
brands and really have that seatat the table to lead the
organization, and that's how wewin.
That's how customer experiencebecomes a winning business
strategy.
You have to make sure that youare treating it as if it is one
(13:14):
of the leading ways that you canpull both your organization and
your customers ahead.
So great, meaty question here Ilove hearing from you.
Don't forget you can leave mewhatever question you want at
askjeannievip.
Thanks for joining me on theExperience Action Podcast and I
cannot wait to hear what you askme next.
(13:36):
See you next time.
To learn more about ourstrategic approach to
experience, check out freeresources at
experienceinvestigatorscom,where you can sign up for our
newsletter, our Year of CXprogram and more, and please
follow me of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie
(14:02):
Walters, on LinkedIn.
One, two, three , four.
How do you plan for what isahead of us as a customer
experience leader?
Some of that might be aboutwhat's already happened.
Let's talk about it.
We have a great question todayon the Experience Action Podcast
.
Listener Question (00:20):
Hey, Jeannie.
It's Shawn from the ExperienceInvestigators Mailroom.
I found the perfect questionfor the podcast.
It reads Jeannie, what can mybusiness do to effectively use
leading indicators to predictcustomer satisfaction and
improve experiences proactively,while also relying on lagging
indicators to evaluate pastperformance and shape long-term
(00:42):
strategy?
What's the right mix of data?
Jeannie Walters (00:45):
Thanks, Shawn, and thank you question asker.
You know, if you are too shy toleave a voicemail, don't forget
you can also find me ataskjeannievip and go ahead and
send in your question and wewill read it on your behalf.
But today, let's talk aboutthis.
This is a big one.
We are in, it's fair to say, anunpredictable market right now.
(01:10):
The landscape of being inbusiness right now is really
uncertain in many cases.
What we have to do as customerexperience leaders is look to
the past, figure out what can welearn from the data and look
ahead.
What are those leadingindicators?
So those leading indicators aresignals to us.
They give us an early read onwhat might change, how to
(01:35):
actually have an impact on howsatisfied or delighted customers
feel, as well as the behaviorsthat we want to drive.
We want to make sure that theyare loyal because they feel good
, they're emotionally connected.
We want to make sure that thatloyalty translates into more
purchases, into higher word ofmouth sentiment, into fewer
(01:56):
returns and service issues.
So when we're talking aboutleading indicators, that's what
we're talking about.
How do we look ahead?
What are those signals?
And then, of course, laggingindicators are things that we
use in business to really learnfrom the past.
We evaluate what happened,let's confirm what happened,
(02:17):
let's look at the data pointsthat are central to our version
of success and then let'sevaluate whether our strategies
worked and what do we need to doto maybe shift or modify our
plans for the long term.
So a lot of the things that arecommonly looked at in customer
experience work things likecustomer satisfaction rate or
(02:40):
CSAT, net promoter score (NPS),even customer effort score (CES)
those things are really laggingindicators.
They tell us about how peoplehave felt already.
This is the feedback that wereceive from customers after
they have had some sort ofinteraction with us or while
they are actually in thelong-term relationship with a
(03:03):
brand.
That could be a relationalmetric.
However, when we look at thingslike churn and retention rates,
when we look at the revenueimpact from a marketing campaign
or a sales campaign, all ofthat is actually lagging.
We are learning about whathappened and we are evaluating
(03:24):
what happened.
When we talk about leadingindicators, we want to look
ahead.
We want to figure out what arethe signals that can give us
some insight so that we can makesure we are staying ahead of
those customer expectations.
We are living in the age ofcustomer expectations.
These are changing.
They are changing both fromexternal motivations like the
(03:47):
economy and globalization andall of those things, and,
frankly, internal motivation aswell.
Are my values as a customerstill aligned with this brand?
Am I receiving exactly what Iexpected at the moment that I
need it?
Do they value and appreciate meas a customer?
Those are internal motivationsfor an individual.
(04:09):
So think about what you can lookat for your leading indicators
and your specific customers.
One of the things I like tothink about is you know, are we
constantly evaluating customereffort, not just with something
like customer effort score, butare we looking at things like
are we keeping up in ways thatcustomers expect us to around
(04:31):
how many steps does this take?
Leading indicators really tellus about what is it we should be
paying attention to, what arethose red flags, what are those
warning symbols, as well as thethings that tell us, hey, this
might be working.
Let's put a little more focusand attention on it.
We want to look at things likeengagement metrics.
(04:51):
We want to see what ishappening with our customers.
Are they actually engaging moreor less with the site or the
app or the product that we askthem to?
Are they engaging more withservice?
Are they reaching out more forservice?
Now, when I say more, this mightnot be a huge spike in your
(05:11):
data.
These leading indicators couldbe something subtle.
They could be something likeone or two more calls or
something like more time on aservice call.
This is where patternrecognition and AI can be very
helpful, because we might notrecognize that as a red flag,
but if we recognize a patternlike you know what these
(05:33):
customers who are calling in allordered the same product around
the same time it gives us anopportunity to look at what's
going on and how to prevent moreservice issues from happening.
You might have something where,on a certain date, we made some
promises about delivery thatunfortunately, we couldn't keep
for some reason.
That is something that we wantto know.
(05:56):
If more people are calling inabout that.
We want to get in front of thepeople who haven't called in yet
and try to improve the customerexperience for them.
Front of the people who haven'tcalled in yet and try to
improve the customer experiencefor them.
Another leading indicator, whichis internal within our
organization, is around theemployee experience.
How are employees feeling?
What are they telling you?
(06:16):
Are they reporting that theyare feeling a little less
appreciated, that they arehearing more complaints?
That sort of anecdotalinformation will show up before
it shows up on your feedbackdata.
So look for those smoke signalsthat customers and employees
(06:36):
are actually showing you throughtheir behavior.
Of course we want the right mixof data here.
We want to look at quantitative, we want to look at qualitative
.
Want the right mix of data here.
We want to look at quantitative, we want to look at qualitative
, we want to look at thoselagging indicators, because that
gives us information to improveupon.
But we also want to look atthose leading indicators and we
(06:56):
want to really make decisionsbased on our goals.
If we know that we have aservice issue that we cannot fix
, we might not want to spend awhole lot of time looking into
the data around that.
We know what's happening there.
What we do want to know is okay, if we were proactive and we
called a few customers inadvance of that service issue
and gave them more information,would that actually make them
(07:18):
report better feedback?
So we have to really put thistogether almost like a puzzle.
Now there's another thing herethat we have to remember.
We are part of a global world.
We all interact with differentbrands, different suppliers, we
have vendors, we have shipmentissues, we have tariffs.
We have all sorts of thingshappening.
(07:39):
So, while we want to look atour own internal data and what
customers and employees aretelling us and what the feedback
metrics show and what simplyour operational metrics tell us
as well, we also want to look atthings like market trends and
industry benchmarks and reallyjust seeing kind of where the
world is going.
So this could be looking atcompetitor performance what is
(08:03):
happening with some of ourlarger competitors.
Sometimes they feel things orshow things before the little
guys.
Sometimes we want to look attracking NPS rates against a
benchmark.
So we want to make sure that weare expanding the scope of
where we're looking so that wecan really make sure we're not
(08:25):
ignoring the rest of the world,because our customers and our
viewpoint is limited, no matterwhat.
So we have to make a point ofreally looking beyond our
specific company, our specificindustry and even our specific
customers and go beyond that andthink about what is actually
happening here.
(08:46):
The big one that I look at arecustomer behavioral trends.
What are people doing?
How are they behaving?
What's important to them?
Now, some of this is hard tosee in the moment, and so this
also includes a little bit ofyour risk tolerance.
How much do you want to trythings just to see what is
(09:07):
happening with customer behaviorNow?
We know now that behavior haschanged.
We know that during thepandemic, for instance, we all
became a lot more interested inhobbies and personal time.
That has not gone away, so weknow that that happened and that
will influence things for theforeseeable future, but we don't
(09:28):
always know that in the moment.
So what you want to look for arethings like rising complaints
or themes that maybe are beyondyour industry.
Are people complaining abouttime?
Are they complaining about howexpensive things are?
Are they explaining or are theycomplaining about service?
(09:48):
If you're seeing that at themacro level, at the global level
, you want to think about howdoes this apply to our customers
?
How does this apply to how wewill prepare them for what we
are doing in the future?
How is that a leading indicatorfor me?
We also want to look at thingslike reviews that customers are
(10:09):
sharing publicly.
Maybe you want to look atReddit forums to see what people
are saying about theirexperiences within your industry
and beyond your industry aswell.
And then we also want to lookat things like are people
spending money differently?
Are companies spending moneydifferently?
We want to really expand whatwe're looking at when we're
(10:31):
thinking about forecasting andgetting ahead of customer
expectations.
This is where we really canstand out as customer experience
leaders.
We want to make sure we're notjust reporting on what's
happened.
We're using that informationcombined with really looking
ahead and trying to identifywhat are the insights that
(10:54):
really matter to us, ourorganization and this is
important our definition ofsuccess.
Because if your customers aresuper invested in your brand and
you think that's going to carryyou for a long time, I would
suggest that you take a stepback and think about why are
(11:16):
they loyal today and why willthey be loyal tomorrow?
And the only way to answer thatquestion is by looking at what
will change in their worlds notwhat will change between our
brand and them, but what willchange about their real lives.
This is where we get intothings like the customer life
(11:39):
cycle as well.
People have different needs atdifferent times.
We want to make sure that weare aware of that and respectful
of that and can personalize theexperience for that as well.
And, of course, we are living ina world that is evolving very
quickly with technology,artificial intelligence, all
those things.
How will that impact both theway your company operates and
(12:04):
the way your customers behave?
One of the things that I'vebeen looking at is you know,
there's a shift right now aroundhow customers are reaching out
and how they are using AI, andI'm not sure many organizations
are really thinking about this.
We need to think about how willcustomers rely on AI?
What will happen when they arecalling the customer service rep
(12:28):
with more information in frontof them than maybe that rep has?
We have to start preparing forthat.
So all of this comes down to youknow what we have to really
look at, both leading andlagging indicators, and we have
to expand the scope of wherewe're looking.
That's how we stay ahead ofcustomer expectations.
(12:49):
That's how we, as customerexperience leaders, can really
be partners in the strategicvision and execution of our
brands and really have that seatat the table to lead the
organization, and that's how wewin.
That's how customer experiencebecomes a winning business
strategy.
You have to make sure that youare treating it as if it is one
(13:14):
of the leading ways that you canpull both your organization and
your customers ahead.
So great, meaty question here Ilove hearing from you.
Don't forget you can leave mewhatever question you want at
askjeannievip.
Thanks for joining me on theExperience Action Podcast and I
cannot wait to hear what you askme next.
(13:36):
See you next time.
To learn more about ourstrategic approach to
experience, check out freeresources at
experienceinvestigatorscom,where you can sign up for our
newsletter, our Year of CXprogram and more, and please
follow me of CX program and more, and please follow me, Jeannie
(14:02):
Walters, on LinkedIn.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.