This is a blog by Mark Verzijl, Consultant at Sciential.

When it comes to bottom-line business KPIs and targets, most businesses steer on the same metrics. Most of the time, it revolves around EBITDA, profit and margins and (to a lesser extent) market growth and market share. It surely makes sense to focus on these key metrics – all companies do.

However, from my perspective, it also makes sense to include the number of customer success stories as the main KPI. Having success cases as a clearly defined target forces your organization to really focus and listen to your client base. Making your customer the epicentre of your business will catapult the (perceived) quality, client satisfaction and brand loyalty. As a life science marketer, I get really excited by all the possibilities my happy clients offer – just think of all the beautiful (user-generated) content we can create and share with the audience. Not to mention the recurring and referred business. Happy customers can be leveraged to acquire new customers against lower acquisition costs. And last but not least – it is much more fun to work with happy and satisfied clients.

In short, this underestimated KPI basically can result in higher quality, satisfaction and business. And thus also in higher EBITDA and profit margins. So, if you think that “putting the client first” is a cliche, I challenge decision-makers to actually turn it into a key KPI, set ambitious targets and evaluate critically.