The Current State Of Customer Experience

June 21, 2010 10 Comments

We just published a new Temkin Group Insight Report, The Current State Of Customer Experience. This report, which is based on a survey of 140+ large North American companies, provides insights into the progress that companies are making on their customer experience journeys.

It looks at topics like the adoption of voice of the customer (VoC) programs and Net Promoter Scores, the use of social media activities, and the goals, obstacles, and ambitions for customer experience. Here’s the executive summary:

Using the Temkin Group customer experience competency model, we found that only 3% of firms were “Customer-Centric Organizations” while 33% of firms were “Customer-Oblivious Organizations.” While companies rated highest in the area of Purposeful Leadership, only 16% received “very good” ratings in that competency area. This data highlights that companies are still in very early stages of customer experience maturity. We expect the results to improve over time; as 65% of respondents want to be customer experience leaders within three years.

Download report for $195

The report has 20 figures; with lots of data. Here are some interesting factoids:

  • 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
  • 71% identified “other competing priorities” as a significant obstacle to their customer experience efforts; the most commonly selected of the 11 obstacles we asked about.
  • 57% have a formalized voice of the customer (VoC) program
  • 45% that have a formalized VoC program tie compensation to customer feedback scores; one of the 15 VoC activities we asked about.
  • 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 most commonly used of 11 social media activities we asked about.
  • 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

In addition to the data insights, the report has a number of self-assessment tools that you can use to compare your efforts to the 140+ respondents:

  • In the Temkin Group Insight Report, The Four Customer Experience Core Competencies (free download), we introduced an assessment tool for our competency model. This report allows you to compare your results with 140+ other companies.
  • A tool for gauging your voice of the customer (VoC) activities
  • A tool for gauging your social media activities

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Customer experience management is still immature

Filed under 4 CX Core Competencies, Compelling Brand Values, Corporate culture, Customer Connectedness, Customer experience, Customer-centric DNA, Employee Engagement, Executive leadership, Net Promoter, Purposeful Leadership, Social Media, Temkin Group Research, Voice of the customer

About Bruce Temkin, CCXP
I'm an experience (XM) management catalyst; helping organizations improve results by engaging the hearts and minds of their employees, customers, and partners. I enjoy researching and speaking about these topics. I lead the Qualtrics XM Institute, which is the world's best job. We're igniting a global community of XM Professionals who are inspired and empowered to radically improve the human experience. To achieve this goal, my team focuses on thought leadership, training, and community building. My work is driven by a set of fundamental beliefs: 1) Everything starts and ends with human beings, so you need to understand how people think, feel, and behave; 2) XM is a discipline that needs to be woven throughout an organization's entire operating fabric; and 3) Building the XM discipline requires a combination of culture, competency, and technology.

10 Responses to The Current State Of Customer Experience

  1. nahela bernal says:
    June 21, 2010 at 12:39 pm

    95% want to improve profitability, which is quite true in each organization but the Qs is how??.Creating a brand name with not only working with the traditional methods of capturing VOC but converting the VOC into such CTQs which anticipates the unspoken expectations of customers will definatly lead to expected % of profitability.
    -Nahela Bernal ( A BB 6 Sigma Quality Management Professional For Bpos)

    Reply
    • Robert bacal says:
      December 8, 2010 at 12:00 pm

      What’s disturbing about this is that the title of the report and the methodology used don’t match. This isn’t about the state of customer experience. It’s about the respondents’ OPINIONS of the state of customer experience.

      Those opinions may be important to know. That doesn’t make it right to mistitle and mislead, even if this is common practice among ALL social media and customer service oriented companies doing research.

      Reply

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