Operationalizing the Customer Experience: Challenges and Opportunities

Many companies have decided that focusing on the customer experience is now a competitive business advantage in a world where commoditization of products and services has become commonplace and increased consumer transparency and competition has eroded other sources of differentiation (such as a unique product/service offering). Competing on price alone will only end in a race to the bottom.

While that strategic focus appears to be embedded in corporate boardrooms across the globe, the difficulty is in translating the strategy into real business operations. How can you both improve and operationalize the customer experience? What are the key challenges? How can those key challenges be overcome?

This report is based on a survey conducted with 114 process, customer experience and business professionals in June 2014 in an attempt to answer those questions. Additionally, telephone and in person interviews were conducted with several survey respondents and industry experts. Specific recommendations for action have been made at the end of this report.

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