Customer experience needs as much fixing today as did quality in the 1970’s.

This is the conclusion of the research firm Forrester.

Here’s some of what they’ve found through their research that shapes this belief:

Customer experience is critical for firms

85% of customer experience professionals (from their Customer Experience Peer Research Panel) told them that customer experience will play a very important or critical role in their firms’ competitiveness over the next three years. And in a joint survey between Forrester and the American Banker, they found that 97% of North American banking execs see customer experience as very important or critical.

…but they just aren’t enjoyable to work with...

They asked consumers how much they enjoyed doing business with 14 different types of firms. At the top of the list, 73% of consumers enjoy doing business with discount stores. But enjoyability drops off quickly after that – only 5 of the 14 industries are enjoyable to at least half of their customers. At the bottom of the list, less than one-third of consumers enjoy interacting with health insurers and cable TV providers.

… and they deliver poor experiences...

Forrester applied their 57-criteria Cross-Channel Review methodology to the experiences at 16 firms - four of the largest credit card issuers, consumer electronics retailers, PC manufacturers, and wireless providers. While Dell and Circuit City received the top overall scores, none of the 16 companies received a passing grade.

…because they lack customer experience discipline.

When Forrester asked customer experience executives to desribe their company’s overall approach to customer experience, only 11% said that they had a very disciplined approach and 31% said that they had a somewhat disciplined approach. But a total of 57% of firms said that their approach to customer experience was undisicplined.


What say you? Comments? Ideas?


Eric Fraterman
eric@customerfocusconsult.com
http://www.customerfocusconsult.com/