Creating a Competitive Gap Customer experience is the gap that industry leaders are exploiting to distance themselves from their competition. For "The Customer Experience Index, 2008," Forrester asked 4,564 U.S. consumers about the usefulness, ease of use and enjoyment of their experiences with 113 companies across 12 industries. Only 11 percent of the companies received an "excellent" rating among the 4,564 consumers surveyed; 38 percent were rated "poor" or "very poor." In a March 2008 report, "The Business Impact Of Customer Experience," Bruce D. Temkin wrote, .".. Our analysis shows that good customer experience correlates highly to loyalty—especially when it comes to consumers' plans for making additional purchases. When we examined how this might affect the annual revenue of individual companies, we found that customer experience quality could cause a swing of $242 million for a large bank and $184 million for a large retailer ..." |