It’s been 2 years since we at Usersnap started developing a tool for Customer Experience. We must say – it’s been such an exhilarating journey so far!
For research purposes, we talked to many experts, interviewed a large number of potential customers, and even built a community! We learned a lot and shared our findings on our blog through stories and ebooks.
However, what we have for you today is very special. We reached out to 100+ digital companies and compiled the statistics to provide insights into the State of Customer Experience in 2020.
TL;DR scroll to the bottom for the summary infographics!
Why you should watch out for these CX trends
The goal of this survey is to find out how much digital companies value customer experience and how the operations for CX are laid out within today’s companies.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably someone who’s keen on moving up a notch with CX. If that‘s the case, you can use the data presented in this report as a benchmark.
We pivoted the data to compare trends of B2B companies versus B2C, highlighting the companies with established CX practices and strategies.
The ownership of CX differs in B2B and B2C business models
The responsibility of customer experience is never up to just one department. The whole company needs to be involved.
If you’re struggling with getting your team or other teams onboard to take actions on CX.
This graph should help you exhibit how the team dynamics of companies working on CX are.
In B2B, 60% of respondents say the support team works on CX activities, followed by 50% saying Marketing and another 50% pointing at Product.
Coming in fourth place is Management with 45%. Another 19% of companies reported having a CX or VOC (Voice of Customer) team.
In B2C, the highest contender is still support at 67%, but the following teams are rather different. Operation teams have an important role to play with a 61% vote.
As one can imagine, the order tracking to delivery and potential return process for consumer goods is an essential part, if not the most important attribute of CX.
56% of B2C companies stated they have a CX or VOC team, which is substantially higher compared to B2B companies. Then there’s Management again with 50%.
Takeaways ✨
B2B and B2C companies function differently; hence the teams contributing to CX efforts are not the same either.
However, B2C companies are significantly more advanced in working with CX when it comes to forming a dedicated team to take ownership of CX, as well as involving more departments to improve the customer experience.
It is also highly preferred to have the Management level handling CX activities. This corresponds to what many experts advised at our virtual summit, Journey to Customer-Centric Growth, to start by building a customer-centric culture that leads the company.
Bigger companies are 2x likely to have a CX team
We saw with the previous chart that only 19% of B2B companies have a CX team while 56% of B2C companies claim to have one. Now with this chart, we are looking at the timing of CX teams creation as well as the size of the organization.
For companies with less than 200 employees, 22% reported having a CX/VOC team, and it was formed on average 1-2 years ago. In comparison, 43% of the companies with more than 200 employees have a team dedicated to customer experience. The timing of when the team was founded is also on average 1-2 years back.
Takeaways ✨
If you’re a company of more than 200 employees and have not established a CX or VOC team yet, you should definately consider it! Especially if you’re B2C.
Still not sure what the benefits of a CX team are? Continue reading. There’s stats below to show the revenue impact by investing in customer experience.
Support teams are proportional to company size, but CX teams aren’t
If you’re interested in building a CX team, you may want to reference how many team members other companies have recruited. The average for most companies that have 1-50, 51-200, and to 201-500 employees, is 1-5 people in customer experience.
Companies above 500 employees reported having 5-10 people on the CX team.
While cross-referencing the sizes of customer support teams, the number of team members has a linear relationship with the total number of employees.
Takeaways ✨
CX teams have a more high-level and strategic approach while CS teams need to be hands-on in helping customers with each request. Therefore, they are fundamentally different. Despite some tend to put customer experience related tasks and KPIs on the shoulders of CS teams when lacking a formal CX authority.
A competent customer experience team of just 1-5 people can serve companies from small to medium in size. Their performance should not waver as the company grows and other teams grow.
A feedback system is key to developing high quality CX
Now we’re moving on from team dynamics and going deep into CX activities. The next question in our survey was to understand how companies achieve listening to the voice of their customers.
To our utmost delight, the top tool is customer feedback software, with 60% of B2B companies and 56% B2C companies using it. Interviews are the next popular choice to get feedback, 55% of B2B companies reported doing so, along with 44% of B2C companies.
Chat services and bots come in third place, with 50% of B2B and 44% of B2C companies using them.
B2B companies get customer feedback through questionnaires (38%) and product review platforms (19%), as well. B2C companies, on the other hand, work slightly differently, with 39% reporting that they use product review platforms, while 28% utilize questionnaires.
We are seeing some diversity with companies that identify as both B2B and B2C. The number one option are still feedback tools, but questionnaires and interviews follow very closely behind, tying at 57%. Support chat is used by 40%, while 31% reported taking product reviews into account.
Takeaways ✨
Feedback tools are the best choice to collect customer feedback – it’s not just our own claim anymore but actually what the market is saying!
The basic premise of a customer feedback tool is that it allows you to easily set up questions and implement them on your website and app. It also enables customers to send feedback effortlessly. Then you and your team just need to go into the tool’s dashboard to view, analyze and take actions.
Check out Usersnap and try it for free if you like.
Measuring CX takes 2.7 methods on average
There are many CX metrics that can help you quantify and evaluate your efforts towards improving the customer experience. Each approach has its own evangelists, but let’s see what the real situation is when it comes to the actual stats.
For B2B companies, the survey comes out on top, with 64% of companies using it. Note that many feedback tools offer surveys as well as other types of feedback collection. User interviews, again, are greatly utilized, with 60% of companies using them.
Finally, 50% of B2B respondents claim to use NPS.
When it comes to B2C companies, they favor user interviews, with 56% of companies using them. The second and third most popular methods for B2C include CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) and product analytics, both with 44% of respondents using them.
Another interesting observation here is the recognition of Customer Journey Maps (CJM). 43% of B2B companies are mapping out the customer journey and measuring specific KPIs against each touchpoint.
Finally, we calculated that each company would use 2.7 methods on average to measure customer experience.
Takeaways ✨
The qualitative data from user interviews is highly appreciated in the field of CX. However, it’s also necessary to equip another more interactive and scalable measurement, such as NPS for B2B companies and CSAT for B2C companies.
Companies see retention as the ultimate goal of CX optimization
We’ve asked companies “how” they collect customer sentiments and “what” they measure. Now it’s time to uncover the big “why”.
The motivations of B2B companies putting efforts into customer experience are prioritized as follows: retention (57%), customer lifetime value (CLV)(43%), user activation (40%), and referral (40%).
The highest-ranked four motivations for B2C companies include retention (61%), customer lifetime value (CLV)(56%), personalization (44%), and purchase (39%).
Takeaways ✨
Businesses see CX as a robust strategy for improving retention and increasing customer lifetime value.
To generate meaningful and long-lasting customer relationships, quick dirty tricks won’t do, you need to take a magnifying glass to look at the details that lay in daily and particular experiences.
76% of companies have CX initiatives in the pipeline
When asked if there are CX related initiatives planned for the future, 48% of B2B companies said they have envisioned CX works up to 1 year, 24% said up to 2 years, and 10% said arrangements are in place but unclear of the timeframe.
This leaves only 7% without any plans, and 12% unknown.
B2C companies are very similar in their CX vision: 50% of respondents have plans for up to 1 year, 22% for up to 2 years, and 11% don’t have a specific timeframe. Then there’s 6% with no plans, and another 11% that were unable to answer.
Takeaways ✨
Because good customer experiences need holistic planning and well-integrated campaigns, a CX vision is required to drive the transformation.
CX is well worth the investment
The last two and most difficult questions of the survey were about revenue. However, when we dared to ask, the companies also dared to share their figures.
The average growth rate for all companies in 2019 was around 35-45%. But, for the companies that have previously stated that they had CX teams working on their CX vision, the YOY (year-over-year) growth rate for revenue in 2020 was expected to be 9%.
While those without CX teams nor any CX initiatives up the pipeline reported a YOY growth rate of 3% on average.
Takeaways ✨
CX is not just a function that’s nice to have in your business, it’s proven to be monetizable and a powerful growth driver!
Here’s more proof:
The Temkin Group found out in a 2018 research that companies earning $1 billion annually can expect to earn an additional $700 million within 3 years of investing in CX on average. For SaaS companies, they can expect to increase revenue by $1 billion.
A Walker study revealed that by the end of 2020, customer experience will surpass price and product as the #1 brand differentiator. 86% of customers said they will pay more for better CX.
Becoming of a CX leader
After reading the industry statistics for CX, don’t you feel ecstatic? Whether you’re in support marketing, product, or you run the business, now is the time when genuine care for the customers is most valued and your investment in a positive CX will be rewarded.
Ready to start measuring CX and map out your CX roadmap? Get a free trial of Usersnap and talk to us if you need it!
TL;DR CX statistics in one glance
Too many numbers and words? Here’s a visual highlight of what we learned.
Hope it’s a better experience for your eyes!
