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Obstacles To Customer Experience Success, 2009

February 27, 2009 2 Comments

I just published a new report called Obstacles To Customer Experience Success, 2009 that examines results from a survey of customer experience decision makers in Q4 2008. I also published a similar piece of research last year. Here are some of the findings:

89% felt that customer experience as either very important or critical to their firm’s strategy in 2009.
80% said that their executive teams aimed to differentiate their firm’s customer experience.
65% described their approach to customer experience as either disciplined or very disciplined (up from 58% last year).
57% have a senior executive in charge on improving customer experience across products and channels (up from 45% last year).
More than half picked lack of budget and lack of cooperation across organizations as major obstacles to their customer experience efforts.
What do they expect from a continued recession? 48% expect spending on customer experience to get cut less than in other places, while only 12% expect it to get cut at a higher rate.

The bottom line: Customer experience management won’t get pushed aside by the recession

Filed under Customer experience, Managing in a recession

About Bruce Temkin
I am a customer experience transformist, helping large organizations improve business results by changing how they deal with customers. As part of this focus, I examine strategy, marketing, interaction design, customer service, and leadership practices. I am also a fanatical student of business, so this blog provides an outlet for sharing insights from my ongoing educational journey. Simply put, I am passionate about spotting emerging best practices and helping companies master them. And, as many people know, I love to speak about these topics in almost any forum. My “title” is Managing Partner of the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm that helps organizations become more customer-centric. Our goal is simple: accelerate the path to delighting customers. I am also the co-founder and chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to the success of CX professionals.