In Part 1 of our Customer Experience Analysis blog series, we explained the basics of Customer Experience (CX). What does this mean for everyday life and how exactly can I analyze my CX? These questions will be addressed in the following sections.

First, we’d like to ask you the following: Do you think you know your customers?

The answers we get from our customers are very different. They range from “our customers are satisfied” to “we know what our customers need” to “our customers are different”. However, this is often a subjective feeling and not verified knowledge. The latter statement is particularly common in the B2B environment. If you want to talk to B2B companies about their User Experience (UX) in order to improve it afterwards, the discussion is often nipped in the bud with this statement. But the experience shows that B2B customers are becoming more and more demanding and attach importance to a good CX.

The CX perception gap

How many customers would recommend your company or products? Surveys have shown that approximately 80% of respondents believe they can deliver a great customer experience to their customers. But what do customers think? Customer surveys show a clear perception gap between what companies “believe” and how their customers perceive it. Only 8% of companies agree with the excellent customer experience. It is important to reduce this CX perception gap, a higher and equal value on both sides would be desirable.

One size doesn’t fit all

An Oracle study found out that 82% of consumers are disappointed by brands. This is partly due to the fact that today’s consumers have quite high expectations and companies do not always meet them. But brands today are no longer responsible for customer journeys, as it has been the case in the early days of the Internet and eCommerce. Today, customers are responsible for their own journeys. The marketing, commerce, sales and service departments must combine their efforts to meet or exceed the different expectations of their customers.

Would you turn away from a company after just one bad experience?

43% of consumers responded to this question by saying they blacklisted companies or retail locations that failed to meet their expectations. Imagine what a persistently poor CX could mean for your business if even a single disruptive experience can affect a company’s bottom line. This is where the generations of your buyer base play a critical role. Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Boomer all behave differently. Thus the group of Gen Z is more forgiving than the rest of the generations.

Conclusion

This article wanted to show you how important it is to understand your own customers exactly and not just to believe you understand them. In the next part of our series we want to talk about the influence of a high customer satisfaction, which levers are important and which methods there are for analysis.