Companies that prioritize customer experience initiatives fare “substantially better” across business measures, according to a new study by the Harvard Business Review Analytics Service sponsored by SAS.
More than 400 global business executives found that 71% of business leaders believe that efforts in the area of customer experience provide a competitive advantage.
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,” Adele Sweetwood, VP of Marketing at SAS, said in a press release. “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.”
But, integration and data issues remain imposing 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 revealed.
Here are some other key takeaways from the study:
64% of executives said their programs were adequately funded
About 75% said they had the proper support processes in place
More than half of participants viewed multichannel 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,” Wilson Raj, global director of customer intelligence at SAS, said. “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.”
The customer experience has become a key differentiator for competitive businesses. Top organizations are improving both customer loyalty and profitability by creating consistently positive end-to-end experiences for their customers.
The Harvard Business Review research paper examined how forward-looking organizations take a strategic view of the customer experience, including how to:
Design, implement, and manage the customer experience in a disciplined way
Address challenges such as channel explosion, data deluge and emerging technology risk
Develop best practices for customer understanding, measurement, design and strategy