New Customer Experience Research

Bruce Temkin, formerly of Forrester just released a new report on customer experience in large North American corporations. Some of the highlights are below:

Only 16% think they always or almost always delight customers getting customer service online.
95% want to improve profitability, but only 43% want to improve the work environment for employees.
37% have had a customer experience leader for at least 12 months

The biggest obstacle to improving customer experience is “other competing priorities.”
57% have a formalized voice of the customer (VoC) program
45% that have a formalized VoC program tie compensation to customer feedback scores
32% have been using Net Promoter Score (NPS) for at least 12 months; 19% are not familiar with NPS
31% analyze conversations in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter

The customer experience competency assessment showed a wide range of results across the 20 questions:

Highest scoring: Senior executives regularly communicate that customer experience is one of the company’s key strategies
Lowest scoring: Marketing does as much brand marketing inside the company as it does outside the company

Here are the number of companies that were rated as “very good” in each of the four individual competency areas in the Temkin Group competency model:
Purposeful Leadership (16%)
Customer Connectedness (16%)
Compelling Brand Values (13%)
Employee Engagement (10%)

Clearly there is a long way to go for these companies. However, the recognition that customer experience ultimately drives business performance and can create competitive advantage is gaining momentum. The competencies Bruce outlines closely relate to the areas we measure in our culture model. For companies to be successful in delivering a great customer experience they have to change the behavior and mindset across the entire organization. Everyone must buy-in and understand exactly what they can do to execute in a way that has an impact.