Which KPI should be used to balance “New customers (#)”?

“New customers (#)” can be increased by acquiring low-fit or low-margin customers, which may harm profitability and strain operations. A strong balancing KPI is profitable customers (%) , because it ensures growth is healthy and sustainable—new customer acquisition should improve the quality of the customer base, not just the count. Option D is an objective/goal statement, not a KPI selection. “Time to process orders” is operational and may be impacted by growth, but it’s a capacity/efficiency measure rather than the primary balance to acquisition quality. Complaints are useful as a quality guardrail, but they don’t directly ensure the customers acquired are economically attractive; you can have low complaints and still have unprofitable customers. Measurement challenges include defining “profitable” (contribution margin after variable costs, CAC payback, lifetime value) and ensuring profitability is assessed over an appropriate time window. In practice, acquisition metrics are best balanced by unit economics (LTV/CAC, gross margin, payback period) and retention, so teams don’t optimize top-line growth at the expense of long-term value.