Title Alternative: Is Your SLO Straying from Its Purpose? The Significance of Expertise-Based Objectives
Title Alternative: Is Your SLO Straying from Its Purpose? The Significance of Expertise-Based Objectives
Mehdi Daoudi serves as the CEO and co-founder of Catchpoint, a company focused on internet resilience.
Many businesses pride themselves on hitting their internal service level targets (SLTs), yet customers remain unhappy. This disconnect is apparent when industry benchmarks reveal poor web performance across sectors such as finance, hospitality, and retail. How can companies declare success when websites are slow or unreliable?
The explanation lies in the focus of these SLTs.
The False Sense of Success: Internal Analytics vs. Client Experience
Too frequently, SLTs are centered on internal technical indicators like server uptime, which may not correlate to a favorable client experience. Internal teams might believe there are no issues due to their monitoring data, but customers are telling a different tale.
We've all encountered this situation: A customer support representative assures you the system is working perfectly while you stare at a spinning loading icon. It's akin to IT departments living in a "Matrix" of green dashboards and soothing telemetry, blissfully unaware that their clients are experiencing anything but satisfaction.
I've witnessed an IT department of a large corporation being confident about performance based on their internal telemetry—all indicators pointed to "good"—but customer complaints about slow web performance grew in numbers. This is the point where the concept of experience level objectives (XLOs) comes into play—objectives that prioritize how clients experience the service, not just how the servers function.
Valuing Customers' Time
A fundamental theme here is the importance of time and punctuality.
Performance is about respect. When a customer visits your website, they trust you to deliver an efficient and swift experience. They don't care about your servers' smooth operation—they seek hassle-free activities such as booking flights, reading articles, paying bills, ordering food, scheduling doctor's appointments, or completing purchases without delays.
Time is the only resource they can't get back, and each wasted second on a sluggish website damages their faith in your business.
XLOs can help shift that focus to the essential matters—the client's experience. Instead of aiming for 99.99% server uptime, imagine an XLO committed to a page loading in under 2.5 seconds for 95% of users. This kind of metric aligns IT efforts with the business's actual requirements: a serene, enjoyable customer journey.
Measuring the Essential
The goal here isn't to replace SLTs but to adjust them.
Are we measuring what genuinely affects the client? Are we willing to be truthful about our shortcomings, even if it results in uncomfortable conversations? It's not about adding more acronyms or fancy terminology like XLO—it's about making sure the objectives we set mirror the experience that our clients deserve.
Companies committed to their digital transformation initiatives must prioritize XLOs. Synching internal metrics with customer expectations and outcomes will not only enhance user satisfaction but also bring IT and business teams closer, fostering a united front that truly respects and values the client experience.
The Danger of Detachment
There's a real threat when there's a divide between internal metrics and client experience. Companies can veer off course when they cease listening to their clients and start focusing on metrics that make them feel secure.
Starbucks provides an example. The company recorded decreased client engagement and financial performance during its latest quarter, with U.S. sales dropping by 6% compared to the same period last year, marking the worst quarter since the pandemic-induced shutdowns. The number of purchases decreased by 10%.
The challenges forced the new CEO, Brian Niccol, to initiate a strategic overhaul aimed at returning the brand to its origins. Niccol emphasized the importance of refocusing on what made Starbucks unique—a cozy coffeehouse environment that delivers premium, handcrafted beverages efficiently. The new strategy involved drinks prepared in four minutes or less, simplifying the menu, removing extra charges for non-dairy milks, bringing back the condiment bar, and redesigning stores to enhance the in-store experience.
Niccol stated, “It is clear we need to fundamentally change our strategy to win back customers.”
Significantly, Starbucks is also distinguishing between mobile orders and in-store customers, allowing for tailored experiences in both scenarios.
Essentially, Starbucks is implementing XLOs—objectives that prioritize what clients genuinely care about. By aligning its goals with customer needs, Starbucks is taking steps to create a more engaging and satisfying client experience, illustrating the significance of listening to and understanding the people you serve.
The same lesson applies to digital performance. If you're only measuring internal metrics, you might overlook the real-world frustrations of your clients. That's how companies fall behind—by disregarding the individuals they're supposed to serve.
The takeaway? Measure what matters. That means critically reviewing whether your SLTs reflect what clients care about, and if they don't, having the courage to make a change.
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Mehdi Daoudi, as the CEO and co-founder of Catchpoint, can provide valuable insights on how companies can shift their focus from internal technical indicators to prioritizing how clients experience their services, as highlighted in the importance of experience level objectives (XLOs).
To effectively measure and improve digital performance, it's crucial for companies like Starbucks to implement XLOs, aligning their goals with customer needs, much like Mehdi Daoudi and his team at Catchpoint advocate for internet resilience.