EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For the eighth straight year, Temkin Group has evaluated the state of Customer Experience (CX) management at large companies. When we analyzed their efforts and their progress this year, we found that:

• While only 8% of companies view themselves as industry leaders in CX today, 55% aspire to be leaders within three years.
• A majority of companies have a CX executive in charge of their efforts and a central team who coordinates significant CX activities. The median number of CX staff members falls between 11 and 15 full-time professionals.
• Companies find significant value in working with voice of the customer vendors, and the percentage of companies who get value out of this relationship has been steadily increasing.
• We used Temkin Group’s CX Competency and Maturity Assessment, which evaluates four CX competencies­ (Purposeful Leadership, Compelling Brand Values, Employee Engagement, and Customer Connectedness) to benchmark the maturity of companies’ CX efforts and found that only 10% of companies have reached the highest two levels of customer experience, while 59% still find themselves in the lowest two stages.
• When we compared CX leaders with CX laggards, we discovered that the leaders enjoy stronger financial results, are more likely to have senior executives leading company-wide CX efforts, employ more full-time CX employees, use more experience design agencies, and feel more supported by senior leaders.
• This report also includes an assessment that companies can use to benchmark their CX efforts and capabilities.

This report was originally published by Temkin Group prior to its acquisition by Qualtrics in October 2018. It has been reformatted, but no substantive changes have been made to the content.