Research

We surveyed more than 200 large companies and found an abundance of Customer Experience (CX) ambition and activity. Most companies have a CX executive leading the charge, significant CX activities being coordinated by a central team, and a staff of six to eight full-time CX professionals. Using Temkin Group’s CX competency assessment, we found that only seven percent of companies are truly customer-centric as firms struggle the most to master Employee Engagement and Compelling Brand Values. When compared with CX Laggards, CX Leaders have more ambition, more CX leadership, are better at using VoC programs and NPS, and they focus more on employees and less on cutting costs. Comparing results over the previous three years we found more analysis of email and chat conversations, improvements in VoC governance, and a wider gap between companies that are good at CX versus those that are not.

The research shows that only 7% are very strong at customer experience today. We found this exact same percentage in what respondents said about their companies and in results from the Temkin Group CX competency assessment which shows that 35% of companies are in the lowest stage of CX maturity. But companies have high ambitions; 59% of respondents state that their company’s goal is to be the industry leader in CX within three years.

Here’s one of 27 figures in the report:

Here are some other findings from the research:

• The weakest CX competencies are employee engagement and compelling brand values. Only about one-third of companies scored highly in these areas.
• Nearly six out of 10 respondents have a senior executive leading customer experience efforts across the company.
• On average, companies have six to eight employees focused on customer experience; 28% have more than 20 employees in this area.
• Nearly 80% of companies with voice of the customer programs report that they are already delivering positive business results.
• Voice of the customer programs run into the most obstacles when it comes to integrating CRM data and analyzing social media conversations.
• The percentage of companies using NPS increased from 49% last year to 56% this year.
• Companies with higher levels of customer experience maturity focus more on employees and culture and less on cutting costs.