CX in general
Customer experience as a competitive advantage
As the economy has shifted from service to experience, companies need to differentiate themselves on the basis of the experience that they provide to their customers. According to Deloitte, 62% of companies view customer experience delivered by the contact centres as a competitive differentiator.
Innovations in customer experience
Companies that want their customers to stay loyal, have to invest in the experience. As a result, Gartner predicts that by 2022, more than 50% of organisations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations.
Omni-channel servicing
With more technology and digitisation, companies need to maintain a balance between online and offline. According to research by Aberdeen Group, companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, as compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel strategies.
Word-of-mouth marketing
13% of customers tell 15 or more people if they’re unhappy. Conversely, 72% of consumers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people. 8 in 10 consumers report that businesses are meeting or exceeding their expectations for service, compared to 67 per cent in 2014. In fact, 40% say businesses have increased their focus and attention on service, a significant increase in just three years (up from 29% in 2014). (AmericanExpress, 2017)
What employees believe about Customer Experience?
55% of the employees working in the CX domain feel that their companies aren’t fast enough to catch up and will face disruption from more innovative and customer-focused competitors. Only 43% of such executives have faith in their company’s preparedness for the future.
Impact of CX on business
According to Forrester, 2016, customer-obsessed businesses expect to be 7x more relevant to customers, 5x more likely a top provider of products, and 4x more profitable. A moderate improvement in CX would impact the revenue of a typical $1 billion company by an average of $775 million over three years. (Temkin Group)
Customer experience and the C-Suite
According to a 2018 ContactBabel report, the metrics that the C-Suite keep their eye on most are overall revenue growth (24%) and Net Promoter Score (23%). (ContactBabel CX Decision-Makers Guide 2018)
According to a Genesys report, 58% of companies that say they are more profitable than their competitors report that the CEO is in charge of customer experience. Only 37% of the less profitable companies say the same.
According to a study by West Monroe Partners and the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) called “Adapt or Fail: The Customer Experience Imperative”:
61% of CX executives say that their company’s ability to quickly adapt is a top strategic priority. Despite this, nearly a quarter of the respondents’ organisations have no one dedicated to these efforts.
Some other findings include:
54% of organisations cite culture as the primary challenge to becoming more agile, followed by the inflexibility of legacy technologies.
Agility is becoming a priority, though, with only 2% of organizations not trying to become more agile. Agility is all about knowing the customers and adjusting CX accordingly.
According to data from Oracle, 2018, though information is an important part of CX, only 32% of CX professionals feel they have access to the required information to understand customers’ needs and past interactions, and can apply it to improve their experience.
With respect to the importance of measuring tools, according to Temkin 2017, 78% of companies expect customer interaction history to become an increasingly important source of insights, while only 33% feel the same about multiple choice survey questions.
Customer Feedback and Focus Groups
While feedback is the most basic form of CX measurement, 39% of companies don’t regularly ask customers for feedback about their interactions (Forrester, 2016). 70% of companies that deliver the best CX use customer feedback versus an industry average of 50%, while the number stands at 29% for laggards. According to data from (Oracle, 2011) about online modes of interaction and CX, 79% of consumers who shared complaints about poor customer experience online had their complaints ignored.
Happy vs unhappy customers
According to research by Bain, 2014, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by anywhere between 25% and 95%.
89% of the customers would most probably start the business with a competitor after a poor customer experience. (Oracle 2011)
According to data from Temkin, 2017, after a bad experience, 22% of customers cut their spendings with the company and 19% stopped their relationships with the company completely.
Social media CX
55% of customer requests for service on social media are not acknowledged. According to multiple surveys, 72% of Facebook interactions (posts, direct messages) are not responded to.
While 67% of escalated social interactional are diverted back to the channel of origin, 84% of social media service interactions are escalated to other channels.
CX in Retail
53% of millennial shoppers feel that store associates are incapable, lack necessary tools and information, such as mobile devices to look up shopper profiles and provide product recommendations, to deliver great customer service. (Salesforce)
54% of UK consumers feel more loyal to brands that show a deep understanding of their preferences and priorities. (Wunderman)
Only 37% of shoppers feel that their preferences are known by the retailer. (Salesforce)
By industry, supermarket chains provide the best customer experience, while TV and Internet service providers provide the worst. (Temkin, 2018)
CX in B2B businesses
23% of B2B CMOs see improving customer experience as one of their top 3 priorities. (Forrester)
86% of B2B CMOs reported that they consider customer experience to be a very important parameter, yet 57% of them reported only marginal improvement in CX performance and didn’t have appropriate plans with measurable metrics for improvement. (Accenture)
Dimension Data discovered that 52% of companies do not share customer intelligence outside of the contact centre. In other words, different areas of the business, such as sales, marketing, and HR, are left in the dark as to how customers feel.
Only 16% of B2B companies think that their customers rate their CX on par with a B2C business.
Only 37% use company purchase history and 34% use individual purchase history in order to improve the online experience.
39% saw fragmented data as a barrier to improving digital commerce, second only to legacy tech (42%). With respect to data, only 29% use this data to change CX.
CX in Banking
In 2018, citizens and credit unions earned 83% Temkin Experience Rating. This is in contrast to banks such as Chase, PNC, and U.S. Bank, which each earned 75%. (Temkin Group)
41% of customers who opened a new account in 2014 did so because they expected a good customer experience (EY)
The percentage of customers who would switch bank accounts due to bad customer experience stood at 33% in 2016 and 41% in 2017.
53% of the financial institutions use the NPS for measuring CX, 45% use CSAT, 42% measure attrition rate, while 26% measure problem resolution time.
Banks that are in the top 100 with respect to providing a great CX have 163% higher rate of growth compared to others that don’t.
70% of the customers would give better business if there was an improvement in the advisory services. In most cases, bank employees are not perceived knowledgeable enough to be trusted with guidance.
Customer analytics is the CX initiative that is most challenging for financial institutions. This is followed by multi-channel customer service.
63% of the young millennials use mobiles to access the bank’s website while 57% of the senior millennials do so, followed by Gen Xers and baby boomers at 49% and 34% respectively. Thus, having mobile-friendly apps and websites becomes important in the banking sector.
CX in Hospitality
In this hyper-connected world, a travel company’s digital offerings are more important than ever. In a research, it was found out that almost 70% of travellers indicated that a hotel’s website, app, and other digital tools impact their decisions to book a stay. Those who feel most strongly about these factors were twice as likely to consider customer service/experience as their top priority when booking.
Offline touch-points are important in this sector. But there are wide opportunities for this industry to improve the CX with respect to online media. According to IDC Research, today, 97% of travellers carry a mobile phone or device when they travel, while more than 148.3 million people use the internet to book their accommodation, tours, and activities each year.
Air travel and hospitality are the key sectors where upselling better experiences can generate incremental revenue and shoot up customer loyalty. 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for an upgraded experience.
CX in Automotives
According to a survey conducted by CISCO, 83% of the consumers prefer to research cars online while 17% prefer to call or visit the store in-person. With regards to online research, 47% trust other websites while 37% trust only the manufacturer’s website in particular.
With regards to the three touchpoints in the digital experience, 50% prefer interactive kiosks for obtaining information, 55% would like to use virtual means to interact with the car dealership, and 64% would be willing to use an automated dealership to service their cars.
With an average of 2.4 dealer visits throughout the buying experience, dealers remain pivotal but their role is changing. More than 60% of the customers decide on the brand, model, and price before visiting a dealership.
NPS vs CES
The most popular metric to measure CX is NPS and it is used in more than two-thirds of the companies (Lumoa, 2018). Customer experience varies according to the user persona as well. According to Temkin 2017, when compared with detractors, promoters are 4.2x more likely to repurchase, 5.6x more likely to forgive a company for a mistake, and 7.2x more likely to try a new offering. With respect to buying influencers, according to Nielsen data 2015, 83% of customers would trust recommendations from the people they know: colleagues, family, and friends. 66% would trust other consumer opinions posted online. NPS can certainly be used as a metric for growth. According to the London School of Economics, 2005, an average NPS increase by 7 points correlates with a 1% growth in revenue.
Why is Customer Effort Score important?
According to a Gartner 2018 report, 96% of customers with a high-effort service interaction are more disloyal, compared to only 9% with low-effort interactions. The efforts on the customer side should always be minimized. Supporting this, data by Gartner 2018 shows that 94% of customers going through an effortless experience are likely to repurchase. This is in stark contrast to only 4% of those who go through a high level of effort. The metric is important for referrals as well, which is one of the highest points of generating new potential leads. According to the Gartner 2018 data, 81% of customers going through a high level of effort are likely to share their bad experience with friends. This is in sharp contrast with only 1% of those who go through an effortless experience.
Business Impact of CX
According to research by Lumoa, following are the statistics depicting the impact of CX on revenue:
Watermark Consulting’s latest analysis shows that customer experience leaders outperform laggards by a huge margin, where leaders’ stock outperforms the S&P 500 index by 35%. Further, they surpass laggards by almost 80%.
According to research by Lumoa, among 100+ customer experience metrics, NPS is used in two-thirds of the companies. CSAT is used in less than a half and CES is used in only 14% of companies.
A report by McKinsey proves that 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels he or she is being treated.
According to the SQM Group, a 1% improvement in First Call Response = $276,000 in annual operational savings for the average call centre.
According to Econsultancy, 2018 data, organisations with cross-functional verticals working together are twice as likely to exceed their business goal by a significant margin.
Thus, the above statistics prove that CX is capable of impacting organisations across all the verticals and functions irrespective of the sector. The new experience economy is here, is your organisation ready for it?