91% to 50% - where is the disconnect?

In a post from yesterday on destinationcrm.com there is some great information and insight into Customer Experience and Customer Experience Management. The author is a VP from Chordiant software who are an emerging leader in Customer Experience Management software tools and programs.

The article has a couple of interesting stats, most notably that 91% of companies agree that Customer Experience is critical or very important, but only 50% of customers are satisfied with their telecommunications companies. Where is the disconnect?

A lot of lip service is sometimes provided for Customer Experience within organizations - particularly large ones - but the fact of the matter is that developing, implementing and managing an effective Customer Experience program is incredibly difficult, particularly in the telecommunications industry.

Telecommunications companies are typically organized in product silos / categories and there interactions with customers are managed within individual channels within those silos (i.e. call centre for Satellite and a separate call centre for Wireless). Working through / across these organizations and implementing a consistent and effective Customer Experience for all channels is a growing challenge, and I suspect the reason why customer satisfaction is low compared to companies recognition of it's importance.

Companies should have dedicated staffing and budget to manage the Customer Experience - even through a Chief Customer Experience Officer in some cases - across the entire organization. Executive leadership in this type of program (and any other program that goes across a company) is crucial to its success.

Companies should also recognize that in the business case for a Customer Experience program they should not only look at churn reduction(as noted in the article), but also at the significant cross sell and up sell opportunities that a multi-service organization can offer a satisfied customer.