Our customer success reps are hitting their weekly touchpoint metrics perfectly, but our churn rate is still climbing because they are just sending automated emails to count as a touch. How do we structure our scorecard to prevent this kind of metric gaming without adding manual oversight?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To stop your customer success team from gaming their touchpoint metrics with lazy, automated emails, you must introduce a paired quality metric. Tracking activity in isolation always invites manipulation. Your people are simply responding to the incentives you created. They want their scorecard to look green, so they take the path of least resistance.

To fix this, pair the volume metric with a quality or outcome metric. If your primary metric is weekly client touchpoints, the paired metric must be weekly client responses or client engagement scores. An automated, generic email rarely gets a meaningful reply. A personalized, high value check in does. By tracking the percentage of touches that result in active, two way engagement, you align their incentive with the actual relationship health.

Another option is to track the weekly percentage of accounts with red flags resolved. This shifts the focus from mindless activity to active problem solving.

As a Professional EOS Implementer, I teach leadership teams that every scorecard metric must have a counter balance. If you measure speed, you must measure accuracy. If you measure activity, you must measure impact. When you pair these metrics, you make it impossible to game the system without turning the other metric red. This forces your team to focus on the real result instead of just checking a box.