It is late October, meaning somewhere across your office a spreadsheet is turning into a strategy. Prior-year figures go in. Next year’s targets come out. In the middle lies a routine everybody knows and no one challenges: take the annual average, attach a growth assumption, and call it a plan.
The problem lies in the input. An annual average represents a full year of customer actions smoothed into a single neat metric. Retention held at 91%. CSAT landed at 8.2. Win rate stayed flat. Such metrics feel concrete because they include decimals. Yet they are merely summaries, and each summary discarded details long before it reached you.
Our own research demonstrates this point with uncomfortable clarity. AI surfaced in 40% of the 33 studies Ideba conducted in 2025. Beneath the surface were two conflicting narratives: AI boosted satisfaction when deployed securely and practically, but degraded it when value felt unclear or adoption stalled. Blending both yields a neat midpoint reflecting zero real clients. Base your funding on that middle ground, and you will allocate resources to the wrong side.
Customer service reveals a comparable pattern. Around 30% of those studies highlighted breakdowns in communication and coordination as the primary chance to improve client ties. Such insights rarely appear on an executive dashboard, and they almost never secure their own line item in a budget.
Before any figure claims a spot in your 2027 roadmap, test it against three questions:
- What did this figure leave out?
Each average conceals a wider distribution. Demand to examine it. A 7.5 composed of sevens and eights paints an entirely different picture than a 7.5 produced by tens and fives. - Who is excluded here?
Dropped prospects never submit your CSAT survey. Accounts that churned quit replying. The clients who will define next year are frequently the individuals last year’s reporting completely missed. - Would this metric withstand a direct conversation?
Select five clients it claims to reflect and speak with them. If their feedback disputes the statistic, believe the people. The data was never anything more than an approximation of them.
Retain the dashboard. Metrics quantify problems, resolve disputes, and maintain budget discipline. However, they serve as poor predictors of edge cases, and edge cases are where next year normally begins: the cohort quietly slipping away, the buyer expressing a problem in terms your team has never encountered, or the account that renewed purely from momentum and won’t do so again.
Budgeting season prizes confidence. Leadership decks demand a clear line moving up and to the right. Present one if necessary, but construct that trajectory using real buyer feedback gathered this autumn, treating the median simply as the starting point for inquiry.
Build around the median and you will deliver the year everyone predicted. Build around the edges and you may create the outcome you actually require.
James Rice – Chief Digital Officer
