Is Your Customer Experience as Good as You Think It Is?—CX Trends You Need To Know
For our 2019 CX Trends Report, Pearl-Plaza surveyed both consumers and brands to understand the alignments and disconnects in how well or poorly customer experience is delivered. While there are some bright spots, the overall takeaway is that most brands are still struggling to find ways to do right by their own needs while also serving the evolving needs and expectations of their customers.
As a CX professional, I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about your customers’ increasing expectations. Well, I’m right here with you. This statement may be common, but it’s incredibly over simplified.
Yes, customers expect more from brands, but they do so because there are brands out there delivering phenomenally simple, fast, different and even profound experiences. As Paul Papas, global leader of IBM Interactive Experience said: “The last best experience that anyone has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experiences they want everywhere.”
By these new measures, when a brand doesn’t keep up, gets sloppy, or doesn’t do the work to understand what its customers really value, those customers notice — and they put the culprit on notice.
For our 2019 CX Trends Report, Pearl-Plaza surveyed both consumers and brands to understand the alignments and disconnects in how well or poorly customer experience is delivered. While there are some bright spots, the overall takeaway is that most brands are still struggling to find ways to do right by their own needs while also serving the evolving needs and expectations of their customers.
One big red flag was the mismatch in how companies and consumers responded to whether brands are getting better at delivering an excellent customer experience versus just completing a transaction.
Fifty percent of brands responded that they are “definitely” doing better, but only 11 percent of consumers said the same.
Worse, nearly 10 times as many consumers than brands believe that experiences are definitely not getting better.
It doesn’t help that brands aren’t taking the right accountability for falling short. When asked how much responsibility customers have in helping create better experiences, 40 percent of brands reported that that customers were “very” responsible, with an unbelievable 12 percent stating that customers are “completely” responsible. Customers, on the other hand, see responsibility as a shared endeavor.
While these statistics make the state of CX may sound bleak, our research also uncovered wise counsel on how brands can reverse unproductive practices and make serious strides in the other direction.
Download the full “2019 CX Trends Report” to learn about the five trends you need to know as well as actionable takeaways to help you bridge the gap with your customers and create excellent customer experiences!
