According to new research from the Temkin Group, 87 percent of respondents to a new survey reported a positive business impact from their customer experience activities in 2013 and 99 percent 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 percent 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," said Bruce Temkin, managing partner, Temkin Group, in a statement.
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 percent 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 percent last year. And these teams are growing, as 51 percent of firms plan to increase these staffing levels compared with only 3 percent 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.