In the 1960s, as mainframe computers were entering the business world and inspiring much awe, sociologist William Bruce Cameron observed that wouldn’t it be nice if everything could be represented in numbers and run through an IBM machine? But he warned, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” 

This quotation is sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein and, though the source is not entirely clear, the message is. And it’s fair warning, we’ve got to be mindful about the metrics we establish, how much we read into them and how we use them to guide decisions. 

This video from my LinkedIn Learning course “Service Metrics for Customer Service” outlines some common pitfalls I see when using service metrics in customer service. 

Pitfalls to avoid from Service Metrics for Customer Service by Brad Cleveland