More Evidence that Delivering a High-Quality Customer Experience Results in Higher Stock Returns

Forrester Research consistently surveys U.S. consumers on the quality of their customer experience. This year, Forrester received responses from over 7,600 U.S. consumers based on interactions with 160 brands across 13 industries. The results are then accumulated and ranked in the annual Forrester Customer Experience Index. Earlier this year, Watermark Consulting, a customer experience consultancy and think tank, released its latest findings of its analysis of the five year performance of the Top 10 Leaders and Top 10 Laggards in the Forrester Customer Experience Index versus the broader S&P 500 Index from 2007 to 2011:

• The return of the Customer Experience Leaders portfolio was 128% higher than the Laggards.
• The return of the Customer Experience Leaders portfolio was 27% higher than the S&P 500.
• The return of the Customer Experience Leaders portfolio was higher than the S&P 500 in four out of the five years measured.

As you can see, the research shows that companies investing in improving their overall customer experience are being rewarded by not just their customers, but also their shareholders. Moreover, these results are similar to the findings of the CFI Group and the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which were also highlighted in a recent post on the Customer Effective blog. In both cases, companies with more satisfied customers tend to outperform the stock market, while companies with disloyal and frustrated customers typically underperform the S&P 500.

The first step to enhancing customer experience quality is to better understand the needs of one’s customers. It is safe to assume that the companies with high customer experience scores currently leverage a leading flexible and scalable CRM platform, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, to track customer preferences, patterns, and purchasing history in order to deliver more targeted messaging, respond quicker to customer requests, streamline customer interaction touchpoints, improve client satisfaction levels, and consistently provide a better and unique customer experience. As Watermark points out, the customer experience leaders have happier, trusting clients that are less sensitive to price and far easier to service. Their greater loyalty leads to more referrals, higher retention rates, and expansion of client wallet share. All of these benefits result in higher revenues, lower acquisition costs, increased earnings, and ultimately a boost in company stock prices.

To hear more about how Microsoft Dynamics CRM can lay the foundation for your firm’s transformation from a product-centric to a client-centric culture in route to elevating your customer service and outperforming not only your competition, but also the stock market overall, please contact info@customereffective.com. The CRM platform is available on-premises or in the cloud and we can work with you to determine the appropriate solution for your organization.

Comments

[Eptica.wordpress.com]

Poor customer service delivers a double blow to the bottom line. Obviously if people don’t receive the service they want they either leave or simply don’t buy from you in the first place. An additional, unnecessary cost is when they don’t get the answer they want first time on the channel of their choice and call back/email, adding to the workload of your contact centre. More in the Eptica blog at http://eptica.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/getting-it-right-first-time/