The great metrics debate - Are companies going too far?

[MoonCat]

When my sister worked at Kohl's, she said that more than half of the applications they got for store credit were declined, generally because the signee's credit wasn't good enough. But the store didn't care. Their whole focus was on getting those numbers up. So employees who got more sign-ups were praised to the skies, even though most of their sign-ups didn't pan out...and those who didn't get as many were written up.

So, in other words the store's practices were not actually resulting in more sales. But those numbers of sign-ups were nice and high! They had completely missed the point of getting people to sign up for the store credit card.

[Gurndigarn]

So, in other words the store's practices were not actually resulting in more sales. But those numbers of sign-ups were nice and high! They had completely missed the point of getting people to sign up for the store credit card.

That's the problem right there. It's not that credit card or warranty sales are bad for the company doing them. It's that most companies make one of many serious mistakes when doing them:

1) Annoy customers so bad that they avoid the store. Years ago, Radio Shack actually had to run advertisements stating that they weren't data mining any more, that's how bad they had gotten. (They didn't use those exact same terms, of course.)
2) Require employees to do stuff that doesn't work. At all. As demonstrated by the large number of complaints on this board. ("You want fries with that?")
3) Annoy other customers when something is successful. Ever get stuck behind someone at Target who decided to apply for that card? I've got to wait why?
4) Improper consideration of what metrics to use-- like your example above.
5) Forgetting basic things like customer service.
6) Focusing on the metric at the expense of logic and common sense. My company, for a while, was focusing on revenue/game. Makes sense, right? Except that you get higher revenue per game if you reduce the number of games. Which, in turn, reduces bottom line, since there is less variety for your customers. Can you guess where that one led us?

[taurinejunkie]

My dept. has a target for conversation time for relay operators to meet. In a job where the customers (on both ends of the call) effectively decide how long they want to talk.