Customer experience efforts have been a problem for firms of all sizes, but new research shows that the largest companies are struggling mightily with their CX processes, as less than five percent of these business giants are credited with excellent ratings.
CX research, consulting, and training firm Temkin Group recently announced the results from its ninth annual study, State of Customer Experience (CX) Management. The report is based on a survey of 171 companies and examines the activities, competencies and maturity levels within large firms.
Using Temkin Group’s CX Competency & Maturity Assessment, the research uncovered that only 4 percent of firms have achieved the highest level of CX maturity.
“Companies want to reap the benefits of delivering great customer experience, but they haven’t put in the effort required to become customer-centric,” said Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group, in a news release.
The distribution across all six levels of CX maturity are as follows:
Despite the low levels of maturity, the report found significant CX efforts underway: 70 percent of large companies have a senior executive leading their CX efforts and 41 percent of CX organizations employ more than 10 full-time CX professionals.
Companies get in their own way when it comes to CX improvements
Sixty-four percent of companies selected “other competing priorities” as a significant obstacle, which is the largest problem identified in the study. It’s also been the top issue for several years.
The study examined 20 organizational behaviors that lead to customer-centricity. The two lowest scoring areas are marketing departments doing brand marketing internally and senior executives making trade-offs between short-term financial results and long-term customer loyalty.
The research also looked at the specific experience that companies deliver. Two-thirds of respondents believe that their company typically delivers a good experience with phone-based agents. At the other end of the spectrum, only 20 percent believe that they deliver a good experience across channels. Also, despite the rising popularity of chat bots, only 30 percent of companies think they deliver a good experience with this emerging channel.
The research also compared companies with higher CX maturity with companies with lower CX maturity. The analysis shows that CX leaders enjoy stronger financial results, are more likely to have senior executives leading company-wide CX efforts, employ more full-time CX employees, use more experience design agencies, and feel more supported by senior leaders.
CX leaders are also more likely to describe their culture as being Customer- or Mission-Centric, while CX laggards are more likely to describe theirs as Sales- or Profit-Centric.
