The customer experience, a major concern for companies.
INIT carried out an innovative survey among 600 French customer relations companies and professionals on behalf of the 2020 Customer Strategy Show.
The study*, which was carried out in partnership with AMARC (Association for Management of Customer Complaints) and the Sens du client blog, aims to:
- take stock of customer relations in companies,
- identify companies’ customer relations practices
Here are its key findings
1- Encouraging planned investments in the customer experience over the medium term, despite the COVID crisis:
Only a very few companies are considering a reduction in the resources allocated to the customer experience (13%), and 30% of customer experience professionals state that their companies are going to increase the resources devoted to the customer experience.
2- In a context of increasingly stringent customer requirements:
98% of respondents stated that their customers were yet more demanding than during the previous year.
3- Companies that are aware that the Customer must be at the centre of their strategy and which, in the great majority of cases, acknowledge that the Customer Culture has made headway in their company (72%).
4- A COVID crisis that highlights the actions of “ethical” companies…
- Among the companies that are most inspiring for customer relations professionals, MAIF outpaces AMAZON as the most inspiring in terms of customer experience.
- Rankings have been switched: during the first wave of the study, in February, it was Amazon that came out top of the list.
- After the first wave of COVID, Décathlon also made progress, ending up in 3rd place.
5- Finally, the crisis enabled identification of three major challenges with regard to the customer experience, to which companies believe they will have to respond:
- Supporting and reinforcing proximity to their customers (34% of respondents)
- Rethinking customer journeys (32% of respondents)
- Further digitising relations (32% of respondents)
