Focus on customer experience: companies train their employees
In the current year, 75% of respondents to the new CEX study by the HWZ Zurich School of Business and nexa Consulting consider the customer experience in their companies to be important or very important. In French-speaking Switzerland, the importance is particularly high, with 88% of respondents rating the topic as relevant.
The latest study on the development of the customer experience, conducted by the HWZ Hochschule der Wirtschaft Zürich in collaboration with nexa Consulting, sheds light on the changes and challenges in the area of customer experience (CEX) for 2023 in Switzerland. The survey, in which 132 companies from French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland took part, reveals clear trends and areas in which companies are planning improvements and investments to ensure a first-class customer experience.
Prof. Michael Grund, Director of Studies at the HWZ, identifies two major issues that have a significant influence on the customer experience:
"If a company does not know where it wants to be in terms of CEX or the people in the company - all of them - are not "on board", then customer experience is a difficult topic".
Importance of the customer experience
This year, 75% of the participants consider the topic of customer experience to be important or very important in their companies. The differences between the language regions remain considerable, with 88% in French-speaking Switzerland and 66% in German-speaking Switzerland emphasizing the importance. Over the next three years, both French and German-speaking companies expect the customer experience to become increasingly important both within their companies and in the industry.
The 2024 priorities underpin the challenges identified in the study with regard to the customer experience. Companies are therefore primarily investing in employee training, defining a CX strategy or vision for the company, optimizing online contact points and customer-centric processes.
"Since 2017, companies have been asking themselves whether they are able to offer their customers a seamless and homogeneous experience across all channels. It is therefore not surprising that the optimization of digital touchpoints and customer processes is one of the top 3 priorities for 2024," says Anne-Laure Vaudan of nexa Consulting, adding: "It is also interesting to observe how these challenges evolve over time. This also applies to the implementation of AI projects, which, according to the results of the study, are currently mainly at the planning stage".
Training and enhancing the customer experience
The main reasons for investing in the customer experience are customer loyalty, increasing customer satisfaction and brand differentiation or strengthening. The priorities for 2024 broadly reflect the challenges associated with customer experience identified in the study. As a result, companies are mainly considering investing in employee training, defining a CEX strategy or vision and improving digital channels and customer-centric processes. Budgets planned for customer experience are expected to remain stable in the coming year.
Source: www.fh-hwz.ch
