Why NPS Surveys are a Poor Indicator of CX / Demographic Time Bomb / Jobs Apocalypse was Overhyped / Instead of Doomscrolling, Call someone you Love
Why NPS Surveys are a Poor Indicator of Customer Experience
Research from Texas Tech University Studies shows that roughly 83% of customers say they intend to refer the brands that they like, but only about 29% do.
Businesses that only measure Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey results are falling significantly behind. Today, customers have survey fatigue. Customer surveys are a dinosaur and broken. Today, survey response rates are lower than ever. The problem with NPS is that it asks, “How likely are you to recommend us?” The challenge with that question is that you are trying to measure the customer’s intent. I don’t care about their intentions; I care about their actions. Did they actually refer us?
The two most undervalued metrics business leaders can track, obsess over, and build awareness around are customer retention and customer referrals. The best measure of a brand’s customer experience is Earned Sales Growth. ESG measures recurring revenue—the revenue growth generated by returning loyal customers and their referrals. Your revenue comes from two places: 1) Bought sales (advertising) and 2) Earned Sales (repeat and referrals).
*Related – A New Customer Experience Measurement Which Should Be Every Company’s Primary Focus
Overhyping the Impact AI will have on jobs
The reasoning felt airtight in its simplicity: cut costs, move faster, trim training budgets, and let AI plus a leaner workforce pick up the slack. But the actual outcome looks very different. Workloads aren’t shrinking — they’re climbing. And by gutting their junior ranks, companies have walked straight into a slow-moving demographic problem, just as older employees start retiring in unprecedented numbers.
Demographic Time Bomb
Between 2024 and 2032, an estimated 18.4 million experienced workers aged 55 to 64 with postsecondary education will leave the workforce — but only 13.8 million younger workers (ages 16 to 24) with comparable qualifications are positioned to replace them. Even as AI automates certain tasks, businesses still need people who bring judgment, context, institutional knowledge, and sector-specific expertise — qualities no algorithm can replicate.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman says he was wrong about the Jobs Apocalypse
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has made a series of sweeping predictions about how AI would reshape the job market. He’s claimed AI would likely take over most jobs people currently perform, that some professions would disappear entirely, and that displaced workers would eventually find new kinds of work to fill the gap. More recently, though, Altman seems to have shifted his position — saying he’s happy to have been mistaken about how disruptive AI’s impact on employment would actually be.
“I don’t think we’re going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about,” said Altman. He went on to explain that the “human part” of employment could not be replaced by AI and that people care about interacting with one another at work.
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Stop measuring what customers say they’ll do and start creating experiences that drive what they actually do. The DiJulius Group can help you build a customer experience strategy that turns satisfied customers into loyal customers, repeat business, and referrals. Schedule a call with us today.
