Forrester has a blog post that highlights the high-level results from the latest U.S. Customer Experience Index Report. First the results because they are interesting:
This year’s Customer Experience Index report for US brands revealed a CX leadership gap — not a single brand has risen to the top of our rankings and continue to move upward. The report is based on Forrester’s CX Index™ methodology, which measures how well a brand’s CX strengthens the loyalty of its customers.
The devil is in the details, of course, so here’s a graph:
It’s interesting to see that there are no companies who scored excellent this year.
But Why?
The first question you may ask isn’t something the blog post or the entire index report (Paid Research Report). Which makes sense. This is the index, the end result. But it’s still a question you need to answer. Forrester does hint at some possibilities when they refer to company types:
- Languishers: Rose to the top and then started to skate
- Locksteppers: Moving with the other companies in their industry
My theory, though, has everything to do with rising customer expectations. Customers expect more and an experience can become dated as a company in an entirely different industry offers a better experience. Under that model, failing to make continual investment in your customer experience will result in a languishing or decreased score, even if you had the same experience or a slightly better experience as last year.
It’s almost as if Customer Experience Expectations need to be linked to inflation…
