What the New Forrester CX Index Reveals About Your Untapped CX Opportunity
The newest Forrester Index is out and, frankly, the findings are extremely eye-opening. For most U.S. brands, customer experience improvement has hit a plateau. Overall, according to the research in Forrester’s 5th annual U.S. Customer Experience Index report, CX grew only 0.4 points between 2018 and today, up to 70.2.
But here’s what really caught my eye – and revealed just how much opportunity awaits the brand who is reading and able to commit to CX: fully 81% of customer experience scores stayed flat, with 14% improving, and 5% actually slipping.
Indeed, many of America’s elite brands remained stuck.
The report is expansive, surveying more than 100,000 U.S. adult consumers, testing 260 brands from 16 industries.
Check out how Rick Parrish, Principal Analyst at Forrester, breaks down the results and what they say about the powerful role that consumer emotion plays in truly winning in the CX game.
If you’d like to know how Skybridge Americas can help your organization deliver superior customer experiences, please reach out. We would love to learn more about our brand, goals, and customer needs.
The US Customer Experience Index, 2019: Some Small Gains, Widespread Stagnation, No Real Leaders
Rick Parrish, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester.com
Small Gains To CX Quality Emerged Amidst Broad Stagnation
Forrester’s 2019 US Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) reveals that the overall quality of the US customer experience rose by an anemic 0.4 points, to 70.2. The report is based on Forrester’s CX Index methodology, which measures how well a brand’s CX strengthens the loyalty of its customers. In this year’s report, we reveal the complete numerical scores of all 260 brands across 16 industries, based on a survey of 101,341 US adult customers.
- Some scores at the brand level inched upward. Although 14% of brand scores rose, 5% of scores declined and a whopping 81% stagnated. Of the brands that posted statistically significant score changes, the size of the gains and losses were about the same — a modest 3 points.
- The number of good scores rose slightly; the number of OK and very poor scores fell. The percentage of scores in the good category increased from 15% to 17%. The percentage of OK scores declined from 66% to 65%, just as the number of very poor scores fell from 3% to 2%.
Stagnation Among Top Brands Means There’s No Real CX Leadership
Not a single brand has managed to rise to the top of our rankings and continue to move upward — the mark of a true CX leader. Instead:
- Elite brands’ scores remained stuck. We refer to the top 5% of brands across all industries in the CX Index as the “elite brands.” Of this year’s 13 elite brands, 11 showed no statistically significant score change, one lost points, and one gained points.
- Most industry front-runners were repeats; nearly all their scores stagnated or decayed. Eleven of 16 industry front-runners were repeats from 2018. No repeat industry front-runner improved in 2019. In three industries, the front-runners’ scores fell. In three of the four industries with new top brands, neither the old nor the new front-runners show statistically significant score changes. The new top brands in these industries earned their spots due only to tiny score variations, not any real change in CX quality.
Read the entire article here >
by Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
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