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Gap between retail winners and losers getting bigger

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December 18, 2019

Retailers must not only embrace the customer experience evolution but the customer experience revolution taking place, according to a Confirmit report conducted with Engage Business Media.

There is an increasing gap, according to the State of Customer Experience 2019 report, between retail winners and losers and retailers are struggling to prove the value of their programs, according to a press release on the findings.

The survey polled 800 CX professionals worldwide and revealed the number of CX leaders, and CX programs benefiting from increased investment, is on the decline.

"The truth is that CX is hard," said Claire Sporton, senior vice president of CX Innovation at Confirmit. "Driving real business change based on customer insight is a real challenge. It takes serious planning, requires a range of diverse skills, and needs evidence of financial success."

Most respondents (67%) felt evolution is right for them but a quarter (26%) are ready for a revolution, according to the release. The report identified three key issues that could provide needed change in 2020:

• Data silos that have dogged CX since its inception are still causing huge problems. Organizational silos are not helping either.
• Communicating CX goals and achievements should be a top priority but the figure for internal communications strategies is going backward, with the number of companies that have an internal communication strategy in place now below 2017 levels (65% down from 73%).
• Data collection, analysis, and simplification drives smarter decision making but more than half of the executive teams surveyed are making decisions without considering customer insight, even in businesses which have invested in CX.  
• Too few companies are empowering teams around the business to make decisions that are informed by customer insight – particularly for middle managers and frontline teams.
• CX teams are not making the critical link between insight-based decisions and actual business value.

"The results of the survey suggest that there is a huge opportunity for CX teams to evolve, grow, and drive business change," said Sporton in the release. "The success of CX initiatives can be boosted and our ability to prove that success can be improved. It's time to be bold, embrace the catalysts for change, and shift from 'measuring reality' to 'changing reality.'"