Companies Know That Customer Experience Counts

A white paper was published by Verint Consulting in the UK and was based on international research by Ventana Research. Although they didn't mention the sample size and the countries they surveyed in their summary (which was all the information I received), their results are very interesting. Some of the key findings from the research are:

1. 81 percent of the organizations surveyed agree that the customer experience impacts loyalty and advocacy.
2. 73 percent agree that the customer experience impacts satisfaction and the amount they spend.
3. Less than 33 percent of the companies use analytics to understand what is happening in their customer interactions
4. More than 50 percent rely on subjective, irregular and delayed feedback from agents and customers.
5. More than 33 percent of the companies lack documented processes to govern telephone calls. This percentage rises to 65 and 66 percent for web and IVR-based self-service, respectively.
6. 28 percent of the companies have documented processes for handling a single interaction across multiple channels.
7. 61 percent are making a correlation between customer experience and customer loyalty, 56 percent with levels of complaints, 43 percent with customer lifetime value and 39 percent with customer advocacy.
8. 20 percent of the companies have already deployed analytics and/or business intelligence tools.
9. 42 percent of the companies noted they will begin using analytics next year.

The bottom line that jumps out of this research is that most companies know that the customer experience is important. Unfortunately, the companies either don't know how to manage the customer experience or haven't given it the priority. I think the real issue is that most of these companies don't realize that there are analytics that will provide them with some guidance for management.