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The value of experience:
How the C-suite values customer
experience in the digitalage
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Europe

2. 1© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
Contents
Executive summary 2
1. Room for improvement 4
How to improve customer experience 5
2. Leading customer experience 6
3. Measuring success 8
4. Preferred channels 9
No time for complacency 11

3. 2 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
Executive
summary
“There is only one boss—the customer,” Sam
Walton once said. “And he can fire everybody in
the company from the chairman on down, simply
by spending his money somewhere else.”
The fundamentals of business have remained
unaltered in the half-century since Mr Walton
delivered this blunt assessment after founding
retail corporation, Walmart, in 1962. What has
changed is the way in which companies interact
with their customers. The rise of company
websites, email, SMS and social media has
firmly shifted the interaction between customer
and company towards remote communication,
although research by the Economist Intelligence
Unit (EIU) shows that in-person communication
remains important.
Companies who fail to respond to these changing
modes of communication are vulnerable to
large-scale customer flight. The proliferation of
customer contact points has led to an increase
in potential sources of dissatisfaction. Without
the personal touch of direct communications
to smooth things over, a single bad experience
can lead a customer to defect. To make matters
worse, that same customer can instantly
contact many thousands of others to share their
dissatisfaction.
However, if properly managed, the customer
experience (CX) can in fact drive loyalty and
satisfaction.
To learn how companies manage their CX
programmes, the EIU conducted a global survey
of 516 senior-level executives in April 2015,
including 187 respondents from the Europe
region. The vast majority of these (174) were
C-suite executives—of whom 62 were CEOs—while
the remaining 13 respondents were heads of a
business unit.
The European respondents were from five
countries: France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and
the United Kingdom.
The research focused on four key questions:
l What importance is attached to CX within
companies?
l Who leads CX initiatives?
l How is the success of CX measured?
l Which CX channels are most favoured?
This executive summary presents the highlights
of the findings from the European subset of
respondents.

4. 3© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
(%)
Respondents by country
Italy
South-east Asia
Australia,
New Zealand
Canada
Japan
Sweden
UK
China, Hong Kong
Mexico
US
Colombia
France
Germany
Brazil
7%
8%
7%
6%
6%
7%
11%
6%
6%
6%7%
10%
6%
7%
(%)
Respondents by industry
Manufacturing
Agriculture, chemicals energy
Consumer
goods retail
Commercial
banking
Professional
services
Telecoms
media
Transport
logistics
Other
Fund wealth
management
Insurance
Retail banking
IT technology
16%
6%
7%
9%
5%
7%
11%
7%
11%
10%
7%
5%
(%)
Respondents by job title
CIO
CEO
COO
CXO
Chief Digital
Officer
Other C-level executive
Line of business leader
CFO
CMO
10%
3%
3%
32%
13%
10%
17%
10%
3%

5. 4 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
l European companies are growing their
investment in customer experience but
don’t think their customers rate them
highly yet
Two thirds of European companies (66%) say
that customer experience has been a “very
important” priority over the last three years, and
just as many believe it will continue to be so in
the next three. Financial investment reflects this
commitment, with 42% revealing that investment
in customer experience has increased by more
than 10% over the last three years, and 48%
believing that it will increase by the same amount
in the coming three years.
Of the five European countries included in the
survey, companies in the United Kingdom are
most likely to be increasing their investment by a
substantial margin. More than one in four (26%)
say they have increased investment by more than
25% over the last three years, compared to just
14% across the other four countries. And this
investment growth is set to continue: almost
the same proportion (24%) in the UK expects a
similar increase in the next three years, compared
to 16% in the other four countries.
Despite the emphasis on investment, European
respondents are less likely than their counterparts
in all other regions (20% versus 26%) to say that
their customers would rate their overall customer
experience very positively (i.e. an industry-
leading, differentiated experience), and are most
likely to say (24% versus 15%) that they would
view it neither positively nor negatively.
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Italy
Sweden
In your opinion, how do you think your customers would rate their overall customer experience
with your organisation?
(% of respondents)
Figure 1
26 41 31 3
23 50 27
21 55 24
19 56 19 6
13 65 19 2
Very positively (ie, an industry leading differentiated experience) Positively (ie, slightly differentiated)
Neither positively nor negatively (ie, not uniquely differentiated) Negatively (ie, sub-optimal)
Very negatively (ie, highly sub-optimal) Don’t know
Room for improvement1

6. 5© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
Make CX a priority
Across the board, companies that prioritise
future investment in CX believe they are reaping
the benefits of better revenue growth and
improved profitability more than companies that
consider CX less important.
Place the CEO in charge
As in other regions, CEOs in Europe are more likely
than any other senior executive to be in charge of
customer experience transformation initiatives.
The survey indicates that companies where the
CEO is in charge of CX initiatives are more likely to
believe in them, and invest in them.
Find the evidence
More than a third of companies in Europe (37%)
don’t measure the success of CX initiatives. This
endangers the effectiveness of CX investment
as companies that do not measure success will
not be able to identify what works and what
does not.The principal reason given for not
measuring CX is that companies find it difficult
to differentiate between the impact of CX and
other factors that may improve performance.
Look at your industry peers
Our global survey reveals wide disparities in the
CX channel preferences between industries. In
some face-to-face communication still thrives;
othersfocus more on newer channels like web
self-service. Look to industry peers to infer what
works well for your target market.
How to improve customer experience

7. 6 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
l CEOs are most likely to lead customer
experience initiatives but CMOs are more
prominent in Europe than elsewhere
Just as in other regions, CEOs in Europe are more
likely than any other senior executive to be in
charge of customer experience transformation
initiatives, reflecting the strategic importance
attached to this area. A significant minority of
respondents (40%) say that the CEO leads these
initiatives.
However, when other executives are in charge,
they are less likely than anywhere else in the
world to report to the CEO. In Europe, CEOs have
the final say on customer experience initiatives in
62% of companies, compared to 70% in the rest
of the world. The CMO (chief marketing officer)
is a more popular choice in Europe as leader of
these initiatives than in any other region. One
in five companies (20%) say that the CMO takes
the helm, with 15% favouring the CIO (chief
information officer).
Figure 2
CEO/President/
Managing director
CFO/Treasurer/
Comptroller
CXO (Customer
Experience Officer)
Others
CIO/Technology director
COO
CMO/Head of marketing
24
12
21
15
26
23
12
15
12
6
9
9
5
9
10
6
3
3
2
5
13
10
28
13
0
0
17
3
1
0
2
37
43
50
43
France Germany Italy Sweden United Kingdom
Who is leading CX transformation initiatives within your organisation?
(% of respondents)
Leading customer experience2

8. 7© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
Some individual countries in Europe are
particularly keen to award responsibility to
the CMO for these initiatives. In Italy, 26%
of CMOs are in charge, while in Sweden, the
proportion is 23%. In Germany, meanwhile, 28%
of respondents report that the CIO is in charge,
more than anywhere else in Europe.
No respondents in Sweden said the same. There,
the CEO is more likely to be leading initiatives
than in any of the other four countries, presiding
over customer experience in exactly half of
Swedish companies. Companies in France,
meanwhile, appear much more reluctant to
place the CEO in charge. Indeed, the locus
of responsibility is most variable in France,
with the CEO at the helm in 24% of companies
(substantially less than the European and
global average), and other responses quite
evenly dispersed among the rest of the C-suite.
Furthermore, the CEO only has the final say on
customer experience initiatives in 42% of French
companies.
On a global level, our survey indicates a level of
confusion within companies about who is leading
the customer experience drive. Although 72% of
CEOs surveyed believe they own the CX initiative,
only 27% of other executives believe the CEO
leads it.

9. 8 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
l A significant minority of European
companies do not measure the
success of their customer experience
transformation initiatives
Despite the fact that so many companies in
Europe maintain that customer experience is a
very important investment priority, a significant
proportion (37%) do not measure the success of
customer experience transformation initiatives.
When those companies that do not measure are
asked why, the most frequent response (41%)
is the “lack of access to the correlated customer
experience outcome to activity data”. In other
words, performance might improve at any given
point but it is too difficult to isolate the impact of
customer experience initiatives from many other
factors which might influence success.
Frenchcompaniesarethemostlikelytomeasure
success.ThreeinfourcompaniesinFrance(76%)do
so,significantlymorethanthe55%acrosstheother
fourEuropeancountries.SwedenandGermany
aretheleastlikelytomeasuresuccessamongthe
Europeancountries.Closetohalf(47%inSweden
and44%inGermany)saytheydon’tmeasure.
It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that a
particularly high number of companies in these
countries bemoan a lack of direction. Much larger
proportions in Sweden (47%) and Germany (41%)
say that “lack of clear objectives” is one of the
biggest barriers to successful implementation of
new initiatives than anywhere else in the world.
France Italy United Kingdom
Sweden Germany
Figure 3
Yes No Don’t know
Does your organisation measure the success or return on investment (ROI) of CX transformation initiatives?
(% of respondents)
76
21
3
58 38 38
4
54
8
53 5347 44
3
Measuring success3

10. 9© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
l European companies value web self-
service especially highly, while social
media is on the rise
Web self-service (such as web transactions
without human assistance) is more important as
a customer experience channel in Europe than
in other regions. More than a third of European
companies (34%) say that web self-service is
an important channel, compared to 29% in the
rest of the world. Face-to-face communication is
nonetheless still viewed as the most important
channel (42%), albeit not as important as in the
other global regions.
Social media
(eg, Facebook, LinkedIn)
Web self-service
(eg, providing FAQ pages,
web transactions without human assistance)
Online assistance support
(eg, chat assistance, video collaboration,
video chat, call back)
Customer insight
(eg, use of data, speech or text analytics to
better understand the customer)
Face-to-face communications
(eg, physical in-person meetings)
Telephone operations
(eg, support lines or sales calls)
Automation of processes
(eg, establishing operational procedures)
Proactive communications to customers
(eg, SMS notifications, surveys, etc)
Email based communications
Which CX channels will be most important to your organisation three years from now?
(% of respondents)
Figure 4
Others
France Germany Italy Sweden United Kingdom
21 28 32 37 38 39 25 36 20
38 42 38 55 33 23
33 38 30 27 18 21
41 36 50 38
15 9 9
27 23
21 9
36 27 15
6
13 21 27 18 12
25 21 27 23
6 6 10
3
Preferred channels4

11. 10 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
Respondents were asked what they think will
be the most important channel three years
from now. Social media is expected to become
more popular, going up from 24% who think it
is important now to 32% who expect it will be
at the end of the three-year period, as is online
assistance support (such as chat support), rising
from 31% to 40%. Meanwhile, face-to-face
communication predictably faces a decline in
importance, although not as steep as in other
three global regions, falling from 42% to 37%.
Italian companies are particularly likely to
value web self-service, with 47% stressing its
importance as a customer experience channel,
comfortably more than anywhere else in the
world. Meanwhile, they are currently less
likely to believe in the importance of face-to-
face communication than companies in other
surveyed countries. However, Italy bucks the
apparent worldwide decline of face-to-face
communication, with its importance actually
expected to increase substantially over the next
three years (going up from 23% to 36%).
France, meanwhile, appears to have much less
interest in social media than the global average,
with still only 21% believing it will be important
in three years’ time. Telephone operations are
expected to plummet in importance in both
France and Germany, going down from 30% to
15%, and 31% to 9%, respectively.
In the United Kingdom, the three channels set to
increase in importance substantially are social
media, web self-service and online assistance
support. We can deduce therefore that a
substantial part of the sharp rise in customer
experience investment within a significant
number of companies in the UK will be allocated
to these areas.

12. 11© The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2015
The value of experience: How the C-suite values customer experience in the digital age
No time for complacency
Companies who prioritise future investment in
CX initiatives believe they are more profitable
and have better revenue growth than their peers,
according to the EIU’s global survey of C-level
executives. Recognising this, almost one in two
companies in the Europe region are boosting
investment in CX by more than 10% over the next
three years, a clear indication of the perceived
contribution CX makes to financial performance.
However, if this focus is to be maintained over
the long term, lines of responsibility need to be
clarified and more effort needs to be made to
isolate and measure the impact of CX initiatives.
The global EIU survey indicates a level of
confusion within companies about who is leading
the CX drive. This can only be to the detriment
of a robust decision-making process. Similarly,
more than one third of companies in Europe
shy away from measuring the success of CX
initiatives, potentially giving succour to those
internal cynics who doubt their effectiveness
and obscuring the pathway to performance
improvement. Companies in Sweden and Germany
are particularly reluctant to measure, and the
reported lack of clarity in their ambitions for
customer experience is surely no coincidence.
The survey also delivers a more fundamental
wake-up call for European companies. Although
three quarters of companies currently believe
their customers have a positive view of their
experience, it is nevertheless surely concerning
that this represents a lower percentage than in
other regions. As Sam Walton suggested, there is
little sentiment in a world of intense competition
for customers. Unless currently lacklustre
companies can provide customers with what they
want, in the way they want it, they will inevitably
pay the price.

13. While every effort has been taken to verify the
accuracy of this information, The Economist
Intelligence Unit Ltd. cannot accept any
responsibility or liability for reliance by any person
on this report or any of the information, opinions
or conclusions set out in this report.

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