NPS is Dead: Customer Experience = Success + Effort + Emotion

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Karl Sharicz (CX-PRO, EdM) recently asked a simple question about customer experience.

"I'm curious who out there in CX land might be using this dated but effective measure of customer experience?"

Fifteen years ago, Bruce Temkin , as part of The Temkin Group, introduced a trio of customer experience (CX) metrics: Success, Effort, and Emotion. Initially designed to measure the holistic customer experience, Temkin's metrics have retained their foundational simplicity and effectiveness.

However, many organizations embrace newer metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge customer sentiment. In today's fragmented, multidimensional environment, where consumers are constantly transforming , NPS is increasingly insufficient to capture customer interactions' nuances.

As Fred Reichheld, the inventor of NPS, acknowledged, "I had no idea how people would mess with the score to bend it, to make it serve their selfish objectives." This distortion reduces the accuracy of NPS as a KPI and, in turn, diminishes its value as a strategic tool for improving CX.

The ongoing focus on NPS, often more applicable to brand perception than service experience, has led some organizations to overlook the rich insights that the Success, Effort, and Emotion framework can deliver, especially in better understanding exactly what customer experience is.

Understanding the Metrics: Success, Effort, Emotion

Temkin's model is straightforward:

• Success:?The degree to which customers can accomplish their goals
• Effort:?The difficulty or ease in accomplishing their goals
• Emotion: How?the interaction makes customers feel
• Customer Experience = Success + Effort + Emotion

When these metrics are combined, they provide a comprehensive snapshot of how well a company is delivering on its promise of a positive customer experience. CX professionals who understand the importance of these metrics can build a clearer picture of customer satisfaction and loyalty, driving actionable insights to enhance service delivery.

But be aware that this process is about perspective. Too often, I see organizations with KPIs that are self-serving and profit-focused. Reversing your perspective on the critical nature of customer metrics is the key to tracking their success. Here's how:

Success: Do Your Customers Achieve Their Goals?

Success, in the context of customer experience, focuses on the tangible outcomes of interactions. Did the customer accomplish what they set out to do? Whether completing a purchase, resolving a service issue, or accessing information, this metric helps measure how well the experience is aligned with the customer's objectives.

Customers can have multiple experiences across multiple channels—online, mobile apps, in-person, AI, or call centers—making the definition of Success complex. However, the simplicity of this measure makes it universally applicable. By understanding the degree to which customers meet their goals, businesses can identify friction points in the customer journey and streamline processes.

When Success is measured, it becomes easier to pinpoint bottlenecks and inefficiencies. The brand risks eroding trust if many customers fail to achieve their desired outcomes. Where customer expectations for efficiency are high, the success metric is about your customer's goals, not your ability to achieve your own goals or profits.

Success: What Is NOT a Customer Goal?

1. Renewing a Subscription or Contract: This is a business goal. While renewals are a crucial measure of customer retention, they reflect the company's desire to keep customers locked into a financial commitment, not whether they achieved their goals. A better customer success metric would be how the product or service helped the customer solve a problem or meet their objectives.
2. How Quickly You Onboard a New Customer: Speed of onboarding is often considered a success metric for companies. Still, customers don't care how fast you onboard them—they care about being ready to use your product or service effectively. A better success metric would be whether the customer feels prepared and equipped to reach their goals after onboarding, rather than how fast the process took.
3. Uptake of New Features: Businesses love tracking how many customers use newly released features, but the customer's goal is different. The customer's Success is based on whether those features help them solve a problem or achieve their goals, not on how many features they've adopted. (Especially if you force them to use the feature.)

Effort: The Customer's Experience with Friction

While Success measures the outcome, Effort gauges the journey. How easy or difficult is it for customers to accomplish their goals? This metric is particularly relevant in customer service, where ease of resolution is critical. Research consistently shows that customers are likelier to remain loyal to a brand when their interactions are simple and friction-free.

Reducing customer effort has become an increasing focus in CX. In today's multichannel environment, customers expect seamless transitions between different touchpoints, whether they start on a mobile app and finish on a website or interact with customer support via chat and later over the phone. High Effort leads to frustration, while low Effort correlates with customer satisfaction and loyalty.

For instance, a recent survey by Gartner found that 96% of customers who experience high-effort service interactions become disloyal compared to just 9% who have low-effort interactions. This demonstrates that Effort is not just about convenience but a critical driver of loyalty.

Effort: What Is NOT a Customer Goal?

1. Time Spent Resolving Issues: Many businesses measure success by reducing the time it takes to resolve a customer's issue, but speed alone does not capture the ease of the experience. Customers might appreciate a quick resolution but value a seamless, stress-free interaction. Cutting down resolution time doesn't necessarily mean the process was easy or pleasant.
2. Reducing Call Transfers: Businesses often pride themselves on metrics like "fewer transfers between departments," but for customers, the real goal is to solve their problem in one interaction. Whether it's one person or multiple people involved isn't as important as resolving the issue efficiently. Efforts should measure whether the customer felt they had to jump through hoops to solve their problem, not how well your internal routing systems work.
3. Improved Internal Efficiency: Companies frequently track how streamlined their processes have become, aiming for lower overhead or faster workflows. While internal efficiency may benefit the company, it's not the customer's goal. The customer cares about how easy and intuitive the experience is for them, regardless of how much time or money the company saved on the back end.

Emotion: How Does the Interaction Make Customers Feel?

Emotion might be the hardest of the three metrics to quantify, but it is arguably the most critical. How a customer feels during and after an interaction plays a pivotal role in shaping their perception of the brand. Positive emotions like satisfaction, happiness, or relief build loyalty, while negative emotions like frustration, anger, or indifference can drive customers away.

The psychological aspect of customer experience is often missed. It's about understanding how the interaction makes customers feel—not just about the outcomes they achieve or the Effort they exert. While brands have become adept at measuring tangible outcomes, they are often less successful at gauging emotional reactions, even though these reactions heavily influence future behavior.

Emotional insights into customer experience programs can differentiate a brand from its competitors. Emotionally engaged customers are likelier to become repeat customers, promote the brand, and have a higher lifetime value. Businesses can tailor their strategies by measuring emotion to evoke positive feelings, creating deeper customer connections.

Emotion: What Is NOT a Customer Goal?

1. Customer Satisfaction Scores: While relying on CSAT surveys to measure emotional impact is tempting, these scores often reflect generic satisfaction rather than the depth of the customer's emotional connection to the brand. Customers don't set out to "feel satisfied" after an interaction—they want to feel valued, respected, and supported. Satisfaction scores are helpful but don't necessarily equate to emotional success.
2. Minimizing Negative Feedback: Businesses sometimes focus on reducing the volume of negative reviews or complaints, assuming this indicates positive emotions. However, lowering complaints doesn't mean customers are emotionally connected or loyal—it might just mean they didn't bother to voice concerns. The goal should be cultivating authentic, positive emotions during interactions rather than just reducing negativity. Also, in the digital world, most people don't believe reviews.
3. Promoter Scores (NPS): While NPS can help gauge overall brand loyalty, it doesn't directly reflect the emotional experience tied to individual interactions. Customers' emotional goals are tied to feeling understood, trusted, and appreciated during each touchpoint, not simply whether they'd recommend the brand to others. NPS reflects a future behavior (referral), but it doesn't capture the emotional depth of the current interaction.

Shifting the Focus from Business Goals to Customer Goals

To create meaningful CX metrics, companies must ask themselves, "What is the customer trying to achieve?" Customer goals are not about speed, internal efficiency, or product uptake. They are about outcomes, ease, and emotional satisfaction.

Success Should Measure Customer Outcomes, Not Internal Metrics

Customer success metrics should focus on whether the customer reached their goals, not whether the business accomplished something operationally. Did the customer achieve what they intended with your product or service? How well did the solution meet their needs? These are the kinds of questions that lead to actionable insights and stronger customer relationships.

A more meaningful KPI could be: "Percentage of customers who report achieving their personal or business goals using the product/service."

Effort Should Measure Customer Ease, Not Business Efficiency

Effort metrics should measure customer friction during an interaction, not the operational smoothness behind the scenes. Customers don't care how many steps you reduce internally—they care about how many hoops they must jump through. The easier you make it for them, the better.

A useful KPI might be: "Number of customer-reported pain points or friction areas in achieving their goals."

Personally, I always look for how easy it is to unsubscribe or cancel a service. This is an excellent example of the difference between a customer-first mindset and profit-first operations.

Emotion Should Capture the Customer's Feeling, Not Just Satisfaction Scores

Emotion is about the depth of the customer's experience. Did they leave the interaction feeling positive, relieved, or frustrated? Emotional metrics shouldn't be restricted to generic satisfaction scores. Instead, they should capture the real emotional drivers influencing loyalty—whether customers feel understood, respected, or emotionally connected to the brand.

An impactful KPI could be: "Percentage of customers who report feeling valued and respected after interacting with our brand."

CX Metrics Must Be About the Customer, Not the Business

Customer experience is all about the customer—how they feel, how easily they can accomplish their goals, and how successful they are in achieving what they set out to do. Businesses often make the mistake of designing KPIs around internal goals like speed, efficiency, or cost, but true CX excellence lies in understanding and improving customer outcomes, ease, and emotions.

By placing the actual experience back at the heart of CX measurement, companies can enhance customer satisfaction and unlock new opportunities for growth and differentiation in an increasingly competitive landscape.

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Chris Hood is a customer-centric strategist and author of “Customer Transformation ,” and has been recognized as one of the Top 40 Global Gurus for Customer Experience.

To learn more about building customer-centric organizations or improving your customer experience, please contact me at chrishood.com/contact .