In the recent Temkin Group report Customer Experience Accelerates In 2011, we examined the 2011 customer experience plans of large companies ($1 billion+). I decided to compare some of the data across North American and Westen European companies for for a slightly larger group of companies ($500 million+).
The data sample for the EU companies (52) is not large, so the data is indicative albeit not necessarily statistically significant.
In this first post, let’s look at the importance of customer experience…
The percentage of companies that plan to focus more on customer experience in 2011 than they did in 2010 is almost identical for NA (87%) and EU (86%) companies. But when it comes to those firms that plan a significant increase, the edge goes to NA firms (47% vs. 41%).
In my next post on this topic, I’ll look at where NA and EU firms plan to focus their efforts this year.
The bottom line: Customer experience management is becoming a global discipline
Great post that demonstrates the hunger for firms to differentiate themselves by providing a better ‘experience’. Going back some 15 years my first CRM projects really siezed this mantra as firms actually built or constructed their own ‘customer-in’ experiences to improve customer service. I think this was partly down to the ‘framework’ style technology we deployed at the time. Unfortunately as CRM became a commodity, a pre-built application, it became more about improving internal processes and organisational efficiencies (Order Management anyone? – what ‘customers’ ask for this?) than about the customer. We then had the wave of BI solutions to ‘unlock the potential of your CRM implementation’ and promote ‘real-time offers’ to customer. Again, how many customers actually want that or deem that a better experience?
As I said, it’s good to see that firms once again are looking at ways to truly differentiate themselves. Let’s hope they are happy to investigate new and competitively sustainable ways to do this.