Temkin Group released new research, Customer Experience Plans and Expectations for 2014. The data snapshot examines what 152 large companies plan to do about customer experience in 2014, and compares their responses to similar studies completed over the previous three years.
Eighty seven percent of respondents reported a positive business impact from their customer experience activities in 2013 and 99% expect a positive impact in 2014. Eighty-five percent say that customer experience will be even more important to their company in 2014 than it was in 2013, which is an increase over 77% who felt the same way when we asked them to look ahead to 2013 in late 2012.
“We’re seeing a surge in customer experience activities. More executives are recognizing the link between customer experience and loyalty which is leading to more investments in 2014,” states Bruce Temkin, Managing Partner of Temkin Group.
Spending is on the rise. Sixty-three percent of companies expect to increase spending on customer experience in 2014, which is the highest level over the previous three years. Last year, 54% of respondents expected to increase spending on customer experience in 2013.
Staffing levels are also on the rise. Forty-two percent of respondents have more than 10 full time professionals in their centralized customer experience organizations, which is an increase from 30% last year. And these teams are growing, as 51% of firms plan to increase these staffing levels compared with only 3% that expect a decline.
Here are some additional findings in the research:
- Companies plan to increase spending in 2014 across all of the vendors we listed in our survey. Text analytics vendors and CX consultants appear to have the most momentum.
- The web remains the interaction channel that will get the most increased attention in 2014, closely followed by mobile.
- Customer experience measurement and metrics is the customer experience activity that will get the most increased attention in 2014.