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A new report, ‘Success in The Experience Era: Connecting Customer and C-suite,’ focusing on UK and US executives has found that senior managers rate the customer experience as more important than sales and revenue. This is something that the big industry analysts have been reporting for at least the past three years, but I’m always interested when additional research reinforces the message.

In this new research, a full 100% of the respondents said that prioritising the needs of their customer is their main area of focus. Just 58% said that sales and revenue is number one on their to-do list.

I am aware that there may be many managers who answer a survey question about strategy in a way that they think looks good and at the same time they maintain a private to-do list that prioritises sales, but I think this is the first time that I have seen 100% of executives ranking customer experience as their main priority. With 350 senior executives responding to the questions it is far from a small sample size too.

The reason why is clear. Over half of the executives questioned said that CX is one of the best ways their brand can differentiate their services from the competition. Focusing on CX allows the brand to stand out from the competition.

But they reported many issues in trying to make the strategic priority a reality:

  • 47% don’t feel that they have the right tools available
  • only 35% of marketing leaders believe that it is their responsibility to be creating customer insights using data and then acting on those insights
  • only 37% of CEOs get directly involved in CX initiatives

Once again, the intentions are good, but the reality is rather different. Half of all the companies in this research just don’t have the systems or tools and there is no leadership from the top that allows managers lower down the hierarchy to feel confident about shaking up their processes in a way that focuses more directly on the customer.

It is encouraging to see that 100% of the executives (in this research) now feel that CX is their main focus, but once again they are let down by the leadership and processes. I’d be interested in asking 350 CEOs why they are not personally getting involved in CX initiatives if they see this as their main focus. What do you think of these research findings? Leave a comment here or get in touch directly via LinkedIn.