NEW CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX) INDUSTRY REPORT FINDS CX GOES MAINSTREAM: ALL INDUSTRIES & ROLES EMPOWERED BY HUMAN INSIGHTS

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif – February 21, 2018 – Organizations around the world are in the midst of a sea change in customer experience (CX) that spans all industries, roles, and company sizes. Understanding every customer touchpoint, reaction, and expectation has transitioned from being a cutting-edge advantage to a necessary part of every business decision. In fact, “Improving CX improves profitability: the revenue growth of CX leaders is 5.1 times that of laggards” (Forrester’s The US Customer Experience Index, 2017).

In the fifth annual Customer Experience (CX) Industry Report, UserTesting, the leading on-demand human insight platform, asked 3,900 professionals in Product, Marketing, Design and Research across a wide variety of industries how their organizations approach CX and conduct CX research.

The respondents expressed six key ideas:

• Great CX is critical to business success: 90% say that great customer experience is critical to success, and nearly 90% say their companies compete on the basis of CX

• Strong support for democratizing CX research: 90% want to empower other employees throughout the company to conduct their own CX research, enabling everyone to add fast human insight to every business decision

• CX research grows far beyond usability: The number-one driver for CX research is “understanding customers and their needs”

• CX research frequency and budgets continue to increase: For the fifth year in a row, customer experience research is increasing; and about half reported that CX research budgets increased––only 5% said it declined

• Too much emphasis on quantitative data: More than three-fourths said surveys and analytics often fail to explain customer behavior; and more than half of A/B tests fail to produce a statistically significant result

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) most likely to impact CX: Over 60% reported AI will be the most important trend impacting customer experience over the next five years

“In prior years, great customer experience was an aspiration, with only a handful of companies leading the charge,” said Michael Mace, VP of Product Insights at UserTesting. “In 2018, CX is front and center at most companies, which has led to a dramatic increase in the number of people who gather quick human insights, a.k.a. the ‘democratization of CX research’. Today a rising tide of employees across disciplines and titles are being empowered to conduct their own CX studies—to uncover the why of customer behavior—and to make customer-first decisions that increase brand loyalty and profitability.”

A copy of the full report, including charts and graphics, is available for download at https://info.usertesting.com/industry-survey_the-customer-experience-industry-report-2018_registration.html.