Next-gen KPIs for digital transformation and process optimization: Redefining customer experience measurement

As customer expectations evolve and technology continues to reshape service delivery, digital transformation has become a top priority for customer experience (CX) leaders. Insights from Deloitte’s Measuring Value from Digital Transformation survey reveal that more than two-thirds (68%) of respondents view digital transformation as the most critical investment for driving long-term enterprise value.

What’s fueling this urgency? For many, the goal is to improve service quality, strengthen customer loyalty, streamline the customer journey and achieve cost efficiencies.

Customer experience leaders are actively implementing several key initiatives to accomplish these goals, including:

1. AI applications in customer experience: Artificial intelligence has moved beyond experimentation to become a fundamental component of CX strategies, with industry leaders already demonstrating measurable success in AI-powered customer interactions. Nearly half (44%) of leaders surveyed by TELUS Digital, in collaboration with Statista, said they would be focusing on AI-driven customer interactions in 2025.
2. Personalization and data-driven insights: Organizations are implementing sophisticated AI-driven personalization systems that combine real-time data analytics with machine learning. The result is hyper-personalized offers, products, messaging and engagements that delight customers. This starts with a strong foundation, and 51% of those surveyed by TELUS Digital said they would be honing in on their data analytics for this year.
3. Omnichannel experience: The seamless integration of customer touchpoints has become the standard, with leading organizations already delivering consistent experiences across all channels. However, the complexity of legacy systems, particularly in sectors like banking and retail, means achieving true connectivity requires ongoing investment.

As organizations dedicate significant resources to these digital transformation initiatives, and more, it's essential that they can measure their impact. Without the right metrics, it’s impossible to know what’s working — and where there’s still room to grow. This means moving beyond traditional metrics and adopting digital transformation and optimization key performance indicators (KPIs) as well.

Expanding your measurement framework

Customer experience metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and customer effort score (CES) remain essential tools for monitoring the success of digital transformation initiatives. They offer valuable insights into how customers perceive new experiences and help track changes in loyalty, satisfaction and ease of interaction.

Bal Mahal, senior product manager, intelligent automation at TELUS Digital asked, "How do your customers feel?" in the Questions for now episode: Is automation the key to more human, personalized experiences? Mahal continued, "Customer satisfaction scores, Net Promoter Scores, customer effort score and any sentiment analysis would be relevant. In addition to that, customer lifetime value. Are you retaining your customers? What's your repeat purchase rate? Is your churn rate increasing?”

While these metrics are crucial, they don’t tell the full story. To fully understand the impact of digital transformation, organizations need to incorporate next-generation KPIs into their measurement framework.

Metrics like digital self-service adoption rate, process automation rate and digital maturity index help assess the operational side of transformation, giving businesses a clearer view of scalability, efficiency and long-term CX gains. Yet, adoption of these newer metrics remains low. The research from TELUS Digital, in collaboration with Statista, found that only 23% of CX leaders track digital self-service adoption, 20% measure process automation rate and only 17% monitor contact center digital maturity.

Without these critical KPIs, companies risk flying blind — missing key opportunities to optimize digital investments, improve the customer experience and align transformation efforts with business growth.

Digital transformation and process optimization: KPIs to watch

To ensure digital transformation and optimization efforts deliver real business value, organizations need to track the right KPIs. Here are some key metrics to watch.

Digital maturity index

A strong digital foundation is essential for delivering seamless customer experiences. However, without a clear way to measure progress, organizations risk making fragmented technology investments that fail to drive meaningful CX improvements.

What is the digital maturity index?

The digital maturity index (DMI) assesses an organization’s ability to integrate and optimize digital technologies for customer engagement. It evaluates key areas such as AI adoption, omnichannel capabilities, automation maturity and data-driven decision-making. More than just a measure of digital capability, the DMI provides a benchmark for transformation progress, helping businesses gauge their readiness to leverage technology for enhanced customer experiences.

Why does measuring your digital maturity index matter?

The DMI offers a high-level view of how digital capabilities work together across the business, making it essential for tracking transformation progress over time. Rather than focusing on isolated tools or features, it helps organizations assess whether their digital strategies are cohesive, scalable and aligned with customer needs.

For example, a company may invest in AI-powered support or launch an omnichannel experience — but without evaluating how these tools integrate with back-end systems or support end-to-end workflows, it may overestimate its digital maturity. Tracking DMI allows businesses to uncover these disconnects, prioritize areas for improvement and ensure digital investments lead to measurable CX and operational outcomes.

By continuously assessing DMI, businesses can benchmark their progress, identify capability gaps and refine their strategies to keep pace with evolving expectations and technology trends.

Digital self-service adoption rate

Self-service has become a preferred option for customers trying to solve issues. According to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Customer Service Report, 78% of customer relationship management leaders noted that customers prefer solving issues independently. While digital self-service tools have advanced significantly, issues like endless loops, dead ends and low resolvability continue to frustrate customers. A well-designed self-service experience should empower customers, not frustrate them.

What is digital self-service adoption rate?

Digital self-service adoption rate tracks how frequently customers use automated support options such as chatbots, interactive voice response (IVR) systems or online knowledge bases. A high adoption rate indicates that customers find these tools intuitive and effective, reducing their reliance on live agents for support.

Why does measuring digital self-service adoption rate matter?

Tracking digital self-service adoption helps businesses assess whether their automated support channels are actually meeting customer needs. For example, an ecommerce company might invest in an extensive online knowledge base to help customers troubleshoot common product issues. If adoption rates are low, it could indicate that the knowledge base is difficult to navigate, lacks relevant information or isn't properly promoted.

By monitoring this KPI, organizations can identify usability gaps, improve content quality and ensure self-service options truly empower customers. Additionally, measuring adoption rates offers valuable insights into cost efficiency, as successful self-service interactions reduce reliance on live agents, freeing them up for more complex customer needs.

Process automation rate

As organizations strive to streamline operations and boost efficiency, process automation has become a critical lever for CX leaders to consider. Automating repetitive tasks helps reduce errors, improves consistency and frees up employees to focus on higher-value work.

What is process automation rate?

Process automation rate measures the percentage of routine, rules-based tasks and workflows that have been automated within an organization. These might include automating functions like ticket routing, data entry, customer authentication or order processing.

Process automation rate is typically calculated as:

A higher process automation rate indicates a more automated organization.

To turn this percentage into a more meaningful performance metric, many organizations assign time and cost values to each task based on factors like average handle time, labor cost or system resource use. This enables businesses to estimate total time saved and cost reduction. For example, automating 5,000 tasks per week that each take two minutes could save approximately 167 hours of manual work.

Why does measuring process automation rate matter?

Tracking process automation rate gives organizations visibility into how broadly and effectively automation is being implemented across different workflows. And by connecting the process automation rate to time and cost savings, businesses can assess the true ROI of automation efforts, identify underperforming workflows and continuously optimize. This insight helps ensure automation initiatives are aligned with broader goals — not just adopted for the sake of modernization, but to deliver tangible improvements in productivity, customer satisfaction and bottom-line performance.

Cost per contact

As businesses look for ways to improve operational efficiency while delivering quality customer experiences, tracking cost per contact (CPC) is a key metric. This helps organizations understand how effectively they are managing the resources dedicated to customer support, from staffing to technology.

What is cost per contact?

Cost per contact measures the average cost incurred by an organization for each customer interaction, whether that’s through a phone call, email, chat or any other support channel. This metric includes the total expenses associated with handling a customer inquiry, such as agent salaries, technology infrastructure, training and overhead costs. A lower CPC indicates that an organization is handling more interactions efficiently, while a higher CPC suggests potential inefficiencies or higher resource consumption per contact.

Why does measuring cost per contact matter?

Tracking the cost per contact helps businesses assess the efficiency of their customer support operations and identify opportunities for cost optimization. For instance, if a company sees that its cost per contact is increasing over time, it may signal that customer interactions are becoming more complex or that resource allocation needs adjustment.

Consider a telecommunications company that handles thousands of customer service calls each day. If the CPC is high, the company may want to evaluate the effectiveness of its current support processes and consider alternative solutions, like automating certain inquiries through self-service options or enhancing agent training to reduce call times and increase first-call resolution.

By regularly measuring and analyzing CPC, businesses can make informed decisions about staffing, technology investments and process improvements. It helps ensure that customer support remains cost-effective while still delivering quality service.

Turn insights into action

Digital transformation isn’t just about adopting new technology — it’s about ensuring those investments drive meaningful impact. By combining traditional CX metrics with next-generation digital transformation and process optimization KPIs, organizations can gain a clearer picture of how digital initiatives enhance efficiency, scalability and customer experiences.

Without the right framework, businesses risk overlooking key insights that could optimize their transformation efforts. At TELUS Digital, we bring together the people, processes and technology to help brands accelerate their digital transformation and track the right metrics for success. Contact our team today to learn how we can help you build a smarter, data-driven measurement strategy that drives long-term growth.

This article is part three of our series on redefining CX measurement, where we explore the next-generation KPIs that CX leaders should consider. Missed parts one and two? Catch up here: Next-gen KPIs for CX; Next-gen KPIs for agent experience.