Reducing Customer Effort Scores

How to Improve API Performance? If you’ve built APIs, you’ve probably faced issues like slow response times, high database load, or network inefficiencies. These problems can frustrate users and make your system unreliable. But the good news? There are proven techniques to make your APIs faster and more efficient. Let’s go through them: 1. Pagination ✅ - Instead of returning massive datasets in one go, break the response into pages. - Reduces response time and memory usage - Helps when dealing with large datasets - Keeps requests manageable for both server and client 2. Async Logging ✅ - Logging is important, but doing it synchronously can slow down your API. - Use asynchronous logging to avoid blocking the main process - Send logs to a buffer and flush periodically - Improves throughput and reduces latency 3. Caching ✅ - Why query the database for the same data repeatedly? - Store frequently accessed data in cache (e.g., Redis, Memcached) - If the data is available in cache → return instantly - If not → query the DB, update the cache, and return the result 4. Payload Compression ✅ - Large response sizes lead to slower APIs. - Compress data before sending it over the network (e.g., Gzip, Brotli) - Smaller payload = faster download & upload - Helps in bandwidth-constrained environments 5. Connection Pooling ✅ - Opening and closing database connections is costly. - Instead of creating a new connection for every request, reuse existing ones - Reduces latency and database load - Most ORMs & DB libraries support connection pooling If your API is slow, it’s likely because of one or more of these inefficiencies. Start by profiling performance and identifying bottlenecks Implement one optimization at a time, measure impact A fast API means happier users & better scalability. ✅

A sluggish API isn't just a technical hiccup – it's the difference between retaining and losing users to competitors. Let me share some battle-tested strategies that have helped many  achieve 10x performance improvements: 1. 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 Not just any caching – but strategic implementation. Think Redis or Memcached for frequently accessed data. The key is identifying what to cache and for how long. We've seen response times drop from seconds to milliseconds by implementing smart cache invalidation patterns and cache-aside strategies. 2. 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗣𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Large datasets need careful handling. Whether you're using cursor-based or offset pagination, the secret lies in optimizing page sizes and implementing infinite scroll efficiently. Pro tip: Always include total count and metadata in your pagination response for better frontend handling. 3. 𝗝𝗦𝗢𝗡 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 This is often overlooked, but crucial. Using efficient serializers (like MessagePack or Protocol Buffers as alternatives), removing unnecessary fields, and implementing partial response patterns can significantly reduce payload size. I've seen API response sizes shrink by 60% through careful serialization optimization. 4. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡+𝟭 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 This is the silent performance killer in many APIs. Using eager loading, implementing GraphQL for flexible data fetching, or utilizing batch loading techniques (like DataLoader pattern) can transform your API's database interaction patterns. 5. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀 GZIP or Brotli compression isn't just about smaller payloads – it's about finding the right balance between CPU usage and transfer size. Modern compression algorithms can reduce payload size by up to 70% with minimal CPU overhead. 6. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗼𝗼𝗹 A well-configured connection pool is your API's best friend. Whether it's database connections or HTTP clients, maintaining an optimal pool size based on your infrastructure capabilities can prevent connection bottlenecks and reduce latency spikes. 7. 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗟𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Beyond simple round-robin – implement adaptive load balancing that considers server health, current load, and geographical proximity. Tools like Kubernetes horizontal pod autoscaling can help automatically adjust resources based on real-time demand. In my experience, implementing these techniques reduces average response times from 800ms to under 100ms and helps handle 10x more traffic with the same infrastructure. Which of these techniques made the most significant impact on your API optimization journey?

My favorite customer service tool isn't a survey. It's gemba. Gemba means "the actual place." Going "to the gemba" or doing a "gemba walk" means going to the place where customer service happens. You can learn a lot by observing. A university parking team got a lot of complaints from faculty and staff about the process used to issue annual parking passes. They got some insights from an existing survey, but not enough. Going to the gemba was essential. Visiting the parking office during renewal time made it immediately obvious why people were unhappy: 1. Going to the parking office was an inconvenience 2. Ironically, parking was scarce near the office 3. Wait times to get the pass were long All of this made people feel like they were wasting time. The parking team identified an easy fix: bring parking passes to faculty and staff. Stations were set up around campus during renewal periods. This allowed people to quickly get their pass near where they went to work. Give gemba a try. Pick a customer service challenge. Use three principles to guide you: 1. Go see. Observe the operation in motion. 2. Ask why. Talk to customers and employees. Ask why they do what they do. 3. Show respect. Demonstrate respect for employees and customers alike. That last one brings an unexpected benefit. I've found that respect makes employees very honest. They'll readily tell you why they do what they do if they believe you're there to help.

What’s the FIRST thing you do before visiting a venue or purchasing a service or product? You research online? You read online reviews? You search the apps? But what if the digital space, the apps and websites weren’t accessible? Meaning you weren’t able to navigate or find the information you needed? What is digital accessibility? The UAE has made it clear: digital platforms must be accessible — no excuses. Through the National Digital Accessibility Policy, led by TDRA, the focus is on ensuring people of determination and senior citizens can access every online service and piece of information, without barriers. The Authority’s platforms are built on the UAE Design System and comply with WCAG 2.2 AA — the latest international accessibility standards — setting the benchmark for a seamless and user-friendly experience for all users. This is not a “nice to have.” It’s a mandate. Here’s what that actually means: • If someone is blind, they should be able to navigate a government site with a screen reader just as easily as anyone else with a mouse • If content is in a PDF, video, or form, it must have captions, alt text, and formats that don’t lock people out. Accessibility isn’t just about design — it’s about whether the information itself can actually be used • Moving services online only works if everyone can use them. If a senior citizen can’t renew their license, or a person of determination can’t pay their bills through an app, then it’s not transformation — it’s exclusion. Now the real question: is your organisation ready? There isn’t one industry that doesn’t require digital accessibility. Accessibility is not something to add later. It’s something to design from the start. It’s how you prove that innovation is genuinely for everyone. If you’re building digital services in Abu Dhabi — or anywhere in the UAE — it’s time to audit, adapt, and act. The policy is here. The standard is clear. The responsibility is ours. Disabled people are your customers. #Accessibility #DigitalInclusion #AbuDhabi #UAE #PurpleTuesday #DigitalAccessibility Purple Tuesday #TDRA

Are you making it hard for clients to buy from you? This is one point that a lot of businesses miss out on. Even the ones with high quality products and established brands. They unintentionally complicate customer interactions: 👉🏼 lengthy sign-ups, 👉🏼 confusing processes, 👉🏼 unresponsive teams. This oversight has a cost, because high customer effort is frustrating. It silently pushes customers toward competitors, shrinks repeat business, and dramatically limits referrals. If it is not addressed on time, this complexity can, and will: Growth ❌ Profitability ❌ Word-of-mouth ❌ Customers today value ease more than ever. If dealing with your business feels like a chore, they'll quickly find another option that's easier to work with. Prioritize customer effortlessness. Making your business exceptionally easy to interact with transforms satisfied customers into loyal advocates. Customers may like your products or services, but they stay with you because you're simpler, easier and more enjoyable to work with. They naturally gravitate toward experiences that save time, remove friction, and respect their energy. Here are four simple practical actions you can take today to make it easy and effortless to do business with you: 1️⃣ Simplify your process: Audit your customer's journey. Remove unnecessary steps, simplify forms, and clearly explain each stage. 2️⃣ Eliminate wait time: Prioritize responsiveness. Quick replies, easy-to-find information, and clear timelines reduce customer anxiety and frustration. 3️⃣ Equip your team to solve problems immediately: Empower frontline teams to make decisions on the spot, removing layers of approval. 4️⃣ Constantly ask for customer feedback on ease: Regularly check in with your customers - "How easy was it to work with us?" and then act on their responses. Want your team to effortlessly attract, delight, and retain customers? Let's connect. #CustomerDelight #CustomerObsession

Company: Why aren’t we seeing results from our customer-centric strategy? Me: Do you want the truth or the version that won’t sting? Company: The truth This came up in a recent masterclass and I gave it to them straight: You’re not aligning teams around a shared vision of serving customers. You’re letting each department chase its own goals. You’re not making decisions based on the customer. You’re prioritising the balance sheet You’re not adapting to customers feedback. You’re just collecting it and pretending that’s the same thing. You’re not designing around what customers need. You’re shipping features they never asked for. You’re not really solving customer problems. You’re chasing an NPS score to decorate a quarterly report. Customer-centricity doesn’t fail because it’s the wrong strategy. It fails because companies treat it like a slogan, not a mindset If you want it to work, you have to: ✓ Reward behaviours that improve customer outcomes ✓ Design processes around what customers need ✓ Bring customer insights into every decision ✓ Align every team around the customer ✓ Measure what matters to customers ✓ Act fast when something’s broken ✓ Treat customer trust as an asset This isn’t a campaign. It’s a commitment. To change. To listen. To act. But every day. By every team. What else would you add? #cx #customerexperience #customerrelations

You've perfected your product, but can your customers extract value quickly? 👀 Streamline the onboarding process. Make the initial experience as simple as possible. Remove all obstacles on the path to value. Remember, your customers don't care about the complexity of your tech. They care about reaching their desired outcome swiftly. Focus on value realization first. Map out the quickest route to initial value. Ensure subsequent value is clearly communicated and easily achieved. This value-centric approach leads to stickier products and happier customers. Don't get caught in the over-engineering trap. Prioritize accelerating time to value above everything else. What are your go-to strategies for speeding up time to value? Share them below!

PagerDuty made one change that took them from "just another tech startup" to a billion dollar player. 👇 Most companies lead with features when they pitch their product. PagerDuty started the same way. Impressive technology, fancy demos, all the bells and whistles. But they were getting lost in a crowded market of digital operations tools. Prospects weren't biting. Then their CEO, Jennifer Tejada, made one critical shift. She stopped talking about what PagerDuty could do and started focusing on what customers were struggling with. Her team conducted in-depth interviews with prospects. They mapped out pain points. They listened to the real problems businesses were facing. 👉 What they discovered changed everything. Companies weren't looking for another digital operations tool. They were drowning in costly downtime and inefficient incident responses. So Tejada shifted the entire messaging strategy. Instead of talking about features, they talked about outcomes. Faster response times. Reduced downtime. Streamlined operations. And what those outcomes meant for their customers. The difference was immediate. Prospects stopped seeing PagerDuty as just another vendor and started seeing them as the solution to their biggest headaches. Without this shift, PagerDuty could have remained lost in the noise. They would have competed on features and price instead of value. They would have stayed just another option instead of becoming the obvious choice. 📌 Here's the lesson: Your value proposition isn't about what you built. It's about what problem you solve. When you lead with customer pain points instead of product features, everything changes. You stop selling and start solving. ✨ Enjoyed this post? Make sure to hit FOLLOW Leslie Venetz for daily posts about B2B sales, leadership, entrepreneurship and mindset.

After 10,000 hours of user research, here's everything I've learned distilled into 9 key takeaways (that you can start applying today): 1. User research is the best insurance policy you’ll ever invest in. The earlier you research, the less risk you take on. - For every $1 spent fixing an issue during development, it costs $10 to fix in production. - Early insights save time, money, and reputation. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eJVPUkBe 2. If no one is acting on your research, the problem isn’t them—it’s you. Insights only matter if they drive change. Here’s a simple formula to make your findings actionable: 1. Problem: What’s broken? 2. Impact: What’s the cost (time, money, frustration)? 3. Solution: What’s the fix? Stakeholders don’t ignore clarity. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eBu7KEyG 3. Users often don’t know what they need—and that’s okay. Users are great at describing problems, but rarely solutions. - Don’t ask them what they want—ask what’s frustrating them, what workarounds they use, and how they solve problems today. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eVBvDr9c 4. Pain points are treasure maps—follow them. Every time a user struggles, they’re handing you an opportunity to improve. - A client discovered users were copy-pasting passwords to log in. The fix? A password manager integration that reduced churn by 30%. The bigger the pain, the bigger the potential win. 5. Forget about tools—master the basics first. Fancier software won’t make you better at understanding your users. - A Google Doc and sticky notes can uncover world-changing insights. - Focus on asking the right questions, not which tool to use. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eqhy3Tzr 6. The best insights come early—before anyone’s built anything. The most expensive mistakes happen when you skip research in the ideation phase. - Don’t wait for prototypes. Get in the field, talk to users, and validate assumptions before anyone writes a line of code. - Early research saves late regrets. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ecBReAW8 7. Your stakeholders don’t care about “findings”—they care about results. Your report isn’t the product—impact is. Tie every insight to a business metric: - Churn? Reduced. - Revenue? Increased. - Efficiency? Improved. When insights = results, you’ll never struggle for buy-in again. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eAzkpxub 8. Your job isn’t just to research—it’s to align teams. Most UX problems are rooted in misaligned goals, not bad designs. Use research as a bridge between teams: - Show designers, PMs, and engineers what users actually need (and what they don’t). Alignment creates momentum—and better outcomes. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/e3wyQr25 9. Good research challenges assumptions. If your findings aren’t making people uncomfortable, you’re playing it too safe. Dig deeper. Push harder. The most powerful insights don’t validate—they transform. Image via Midjourney