Customer experience plays a vital role in today’s business world, so much so that companies with the highest customer experience maturity are three times more likely to have improved financial results and customer retention, new research from MaritzCX has found.

The findings are a result assesments carried out, of more than 4300  customer experience professionals from countries including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

Locally, it was found that 54% of respondents believed their company has effective formal programs and processes in place to improve customer satisfaction. Of those firms in Australia and New Zealand, 99.6% reported that their programs had positively impacted their business results.
Among the key findings, it was found that companies who use data to predict customer behaviour, allowing them to proactively adapt to changing trends, are more than twice as likely to see a positive impact on business results than those who don’t.It was also established that companies with active support from leadership, from the CEO down, are more likely to see revenue gains.

Interestingly, airlines, consumer packaged goods, breweries, apparel and supermarkets are the front runners in higher customer experience maturity, making them three times more likely to see improved financial results and customer retention.