A new study of more than 400 global business executives has found that companies prioritizing customer experience initiatives “fare substantially better” across business measures, according to Harvard Business Review Analytics Service.
SAS sponsored the research, which found that 71% of business leaders believe that efforts in the area of customer experience provide a competitive advantage. And closer examination found that belief to be well-founded. The study noted that companies prioritizing customer experience programs outperform other companies, sometimes by a factor of two or more, in KPIs including revenue growth, profitability, and customer retention rates.
“What matters most is the complete customer relationship journey — how each experience is orchestrated, how the bumps are handled, and what the customer’s perception is along the way,” said Adele Sweetwood, VP of marketing at SAS. “The right mindset, approaches and technologies help manage experiences and help truly understand what customers want, to build loyalty and ultimately to create higher profitability.”
However, integration and data issues can be high hurdles for developing such programs; and connecting those programs to business outcomes in order to prove a return on investment is also difficult, the study acknowledged.
Among other findings from the research:
- 64% of execs said their programs were adequately funded.
- Around 75% said they had the proper support processes in place.
- More than half of participants saw multi-channel management as important and were likely to have as many as 10 customer channels, including new options such as social media and mobile.
- The companies were more likely to tie customer experience into their overall corporate strategy.
“Customer experiences reflect the clearest impact of digital transformation efforts in business today,” said Wilson Raj, who is global director of customer intelligence at SAS. “Successful customer experience leaders view data, analytics and technologies as a unified digital business capability — to mirror the customer expectations of a unified relationship with the company, regardless of channels.”
Read the study here.
