Companies that have seen a positive revenue growth collect more customer experience (CX) data than non-growth companies, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc.
The survey found that nearly 80% of growth organisations use customer surveys to collect CX data, compared with just 58% of non-growth organisations.
“There is a clear trend among growing companies to actively collect CX data using a wide variety of tools such as surveys, usability testing, focus groups and real-time analytics,” says Jessica Ekholm, research vice president at Gartner. “This is what we call the outside-in approach — the idea that customer value creation, customer orientation and CX will drive long-term business success.”
A growth organisation is defined as one that had positive revenue growth from 2018 to 2019 and is expected to have positive revenue growth from 2019 to 2020. A non-growth organisation had reportedly unchanged or declining revenue from 2018 to 2019, with the same expected for 2019 to 2020.
Customer surveys remain the most popular medium among both growth and nongrowth organizations for collecting CX data, according to the Gartner survey. While surveys can provide product managers with a baseline understanding of customer experiences and sentiment, they do have some limitations.
Consumers are increasingly experiencing “survey fatigue,” with research showing declining response rates for each subsequent survey that a customer receives. Further, survey responses are often written in haste or provide ambiguous information, lowering the quality of the data collected. Surveys are also unable to surface real-time information.
“Despite their widespread use, customer surveys have some flaws that limit their ability to collect quality CX data,” adds Ekholm. “Recognising this, growth companies are beginning to use near- or real-time analytics, to complement or build upon the data collected from surveys.”
The use of near- and real-time analytics to collect CX data is a rising trend among growth companies, with 43% of product managers at growth companies using analytics to collect and analyze customer perception and sentiment data. This is compared with just 22% of product managers at non-growth companies.
