FEATURE11 April 2019

Customer surround sound: Is your company listening?

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David Conway

B2B Features Finance Impact Trends

There has been little improvement in customer experience from a customer perspective, according to KPMG Nunwood research. As David Conway explains, insight professionals must understand their stakeholders, and the challenges they face, as much as they seek to understand consumers. 

Customer-surround-sound

For market research professionals, the facts make difficult reading. According to a Harvard Business Review article, only 11% of decisions affecting customers are backed by customer insight. So if the remaining 89% of decisions that affect the customer are made intuitively, it would explain why consumers are finding little real improvement in their overall experiences with UK companies.

KPMG Nunwood’s latest report, Ignite growth: connecting insight to action, shows that – despite many businesses focusing intensely on customer experience – there has been little improvement in customers’ perceptions of their experiences.

The report includes the UK’s overall Customer Experience Excellence (CEE) score, a weighted average metric, mapped against six pillars – personalisation, time and effort, resolution, integrity, expectations and empathy – that drive brand advocacy and loyalty. This rose from 7.08 (out of 10 ) in 2017 to 7.13 in the latest analysis.

Closer inspection of companies leading the way in this year’s rankings reveals one common characteristic improving successful customer ...