Why CX is the key to survival in 2020 and beyond

This post highlights the insightful Q&A from our recent webinar with UserTesting’s Chief Insights Officer, Janelle Estes, and VP of Market Strategy, Michael Mace: CX Survival Guide for 2020.

It doesn’t take the magic of a crystal ball to see that the future of customer experience (CX), and the industry as we know it today, will be vastly different. By now, you know how critically important CX is to your business—or you likely wouldn’t be reading this post—which means you’re probably trying to anticipate the trends emerging in CX.

With executives more focused than ever on empowering their teams to connect with and build empathy for their customers, our recent webinar explores the actionable tactics you need to better gather, analyze, and act on customer insights.

Whether you’re a team of one or part of a cross-functional, company-wide initiative, we unpack the trends you need to know to successfully build experiences the customers of tomorrow will expect.

Following the webinar, we had a great Q&A session and have included some of our favorite questions below. Enjoy!

1. Is there a credible resource that shows strong metrics and business outcomes that come from having a good customer experience?

Janelle: There are a couple that I usually refer to, but the one that I find to be most powerful is Forrester’s CX Index. They actually do this index every year, and they essentially score the experiences of different companies in order to come up with CX leaders and laggards in every industry, as well as across the board.

They’ve been compiling data for decades, and in their report, they tie revenue and financial performance to the groups that are considered to be leaders versus laggards. You’ll come to discover that they’ve found a direct correlation between companies that are providing great experiences and higher revenues and better financial performance.

2. How do I convince my execs to put more focus on CX?

Michael: Take the time to understand what their particular context is. If they’re not putting much emphasis on it, it’s your job to understand why. Are there metrics or key initiatives they’re trying to drive? If so, relate those things back to customer experience and how it will help solve those problems or drive initiatives forward.

Basically, there are two types of companies—this might be an oversimplification, but I think it’s important. There are some companies that on an intuitive basis, understand that customer experience is a good thing that will help the company, so they just automatically invest in it.

The rest, on the other hand, need to be shown how customer experience relates back to the things that they deeply care about. So if they can’t make that translation themselves, you need to help them understand how these things fit together.

Janelle: There are two things I want to drive home. The first is finding out what they care about and then speak their language. The single most impactful way for you to get them to pay attention is to show them how you can make them be more successful at the end of the day.

The second is that sometimes it’s helpful for you to go at it from a different angle. Instead of showing people struggling with your experience, oftentimes it’s beneficial to show a competitive experience. Rather than saying there’s something terrible with your experience, show how people might be having better experiences with a competitor. This way, you’re not targetting the work and accountability of someone else in your organization.

3. What’s the best way to start empathy hours in my company and get people to participate, as well?

We liked this question so much that we wrote an entire post on the topic.

4. What is the best way to measure and show the value of investing in a CX platform or technology?

Janelle: This one again ties back to understanding the business metrics that are important to your team or to your executives. I would focus first on those metrics that relate to things like revenue, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction.

On the same token, I would focus less on cost savings. That doesn’t mean you can’t focus on it, but it is important to paint that broader picture, to be able to build the case for this type of investment.