EBOOK

The 5 Habits
of Highly Successful
CX Professionals
Copyright © 2019 Confirmit

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Overview

This guide showcases the results of research that was carried out late 2018 by Confirmit
and Engage Business Media, gathering views from over 700 CX practitioners around the
world to get a clear picture of the environment in which CX is operating.

This research, one of the largest studies in the industry, led Confirmit to identify five habits of
highly effective CX professionals. You will find practical lessons you can put into action today
to help you be a more effective and successful CX practitioner, and understand how to identify
success in a CX programme.

In this research, we defined success in CX in terms of increased investment. Unlike other studies
which focus on CX scores, we believe the proof of any programme lies in the value it delivers for
the organisation and therefore secures increased budget. To be classed as a Leader, respondents
had to see significant increase in budget in the next 12 months (9 or 10 on 0-10 scale).

The five habits we have identified are those that really differentiate the Leaders from the
Laggards. We have also added a Top Tip for each one, to point you in the right direction. And look
out for our Confirmit Promise where you can see clearly how Confirmit solutions can help you
achieve success for all five habits.

Investing in CX Initiatives

67%
37%
27%

Leaders Followers Laggards

Figure 1: Investment in CX initiatives by category

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 57% 25%
Habit 1.
Define Goals Leaders Laggards
and Business Outcomes
(talk their language, not your own): Percentage agreeing strongly that stakeholders
are invested in the goals of the programme

CX metrics are all well and good, but to

be truly successful you need to talk to
Strongly agree -
stakeholders and executives in terms they care Have set achievable CX goals
about. In most cases, this means “show me the
money”! Even among Leaders, less than half 63%
of our audience feel they can confidently point
31% 32%
to Return on Investment (ROI) figures. This has
got to change. As part of this, you must set the
right goals for your company, and ensure the Leaders Followers Laggards
correct people have true ownership of those Figure 2: Setting achievable CX goals
goals, stated in terms they understand.

In the research, our analysis identifies clarity and

ownership of goals as the Number One Habit Strongly agree -
that will drive your success and that of your entire Demonstrated ROI
programme. We saw a stark contrast between
Leaders and Laggards in this area, with 57% of 44%
Leaders agreeing strongly that stakeholders are 21% 24%
invested in the goals of the programmes, versus just
25% of Laggards. The customer experience is the Leaders Followers Laggards
responsibility of all employees, from HR to Accounts
Figure 3: Ability to demonstrate ROI
Receivable. If you can successfully embed CX values
into every department, you will develop a truly
customer-centric culture. If you rely on a single team/
function to create a better customer experience you
will always struggle to improve the CX.

So how do you achieve this?

TOP THE
Step one: set clear goals. TIP CONFIRMIT
Identify a measure PROMISE
What does success look like?
of success that links Gives you the
Step two: get your key stakeholders on the hook. directly to your ability to link
organisation’s top change initiatives to
Step three: identify Return on Investment.
business challenge financial/operational
outcomes

Copyright © 2019 Confirmit

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 51% 16%
Habit 2.
Think Innovation Leaders Laggards
(and Action):
Percentage agreeing strongly
programme is driving innovation
Change, action, and innovation must be
tangible and communicated to the wider
business. If your CX activities are not
driving innovation across the company, your Programme Driving Innovation
programme is likely to remain a niche interest
51%
at best, and a footnote in your organisation’s
26%
history, at worst. 16%

51% of those we identified as Leaders agreed

Leaders Followers Laggards
strongly that their programme is driving
innovation, compared to only 16% of Laggards. Figure 4: Percentage agreeing strongly
This makes sense. If your programme is programme is driving innovation

not resulting in innovation and action, it’s

fundamentally pointless. So it’s no surprise that
additional funding is not forthcoming!

You also need to consider how you can drive

action based on insight, at scale, across the
enterprise. Technology is critical here, whether it’s TOP THE
supporting action for an individual customer or at TIP CONFIRMIT
a more strategic level to inform, support decisions Assign key PROMISE
and track the impact. This is clearly understood stakeholders Provides easily
by our audience too. When asked about areas ownership around accessible real-
in which they would like to see investment, how they can drive time, role-based
change through the dashboards with
more than half cited technology – many of these
programme clear prioritisation
specifying more advanced CX platforms to for change
support action management and analytics.

Copyright © 2019 Confirmit

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 56% 25%
Habit 3.
Listen to More Voices, Leaders Laggards
Combine More Sources
(and destroy the silos): Percentage agreeing strongly programme
is combining many sources of insights

Collecting customer feedback is a given, but

what about employees? What about partners?
Number of Voices Captured
Suppliers? Financial and operational data?
- By Category
And social media feedback? All these different
voices and sources have something to say. If 60

50
you want the full picture, with richer insights
40
than ever before, it’s important to not only
30
capture these different perspectives, but to 20
integrate them to truly understand the reality. 10

0%
The most commonly collected two voices are 1 2 3 4
of course customer and employee. This is very Leaders Laggards
good news, but does raise the inevitable question
of whether companies are able to integrate the Figure 5: Number of voices by Leaders/Laggards
analysis. In our experience, organisations that
do capture feedback from both customers and
employees struggle with integration. This is
particularly true with more mature programmes
where entirely different methodologies have been
used by the HR and CX teams. This will continue
to be one of the biggest challenges for companies
to address. It does not mean however, that all
forms of feedback collection must be owned by
the same team. It means that these teams must
work together to ensure goals are aligned.
Great CX can only delivered when ownership
is shared across the business and is not seen
as the responsibility of a single CX team. Even
though the role of that team is absolutely critical
to driving coordinated efforts to improve customer
experience across the organisation.

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 How Investment and ROI Correlate Another key concern where you should focus
with Number of Sources your success and that of your programme resides
around building comprehensive coverage for the
entire customer journey. Can you truly say you
7.5
have a comprehensive picture of the customer
7 experience if you are only capturing feedback
6.5
once a year? The short answer is “no”. Only 41%
of respondents strongly agreed that they had
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the customer or employee journey fully covered.
1 2 or 3 4+
This increased to 58% for the Leaders. Notably,
ROI Investment
though, many people stated that they plan to run
some customer journey mapping to enable them
Figure 6: Ability to demonstrate ROI and increase to better understand what they don’t know. This is
investments in the next 12 months, correlated
promising as it suggests a move towards a more
to the number of voices captured
comprehensive approach to CX.

TOP THE
TIP CONFIRMIT
Identify moments PROMISE
that matter and Integrates all
the stakeholders channels at all
whose perspective touchpoints, as well
really counts (hint: as external data, for
not always the a holistic view that
customer!) supports change

Copyright © 2019 Confirmit

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 57% 36%
Habit 4.
Focus on Customer-Centric Leaders Laggards
Culture (team members first):
Percentage agreeing strongly programme 
has a communication strategy in place
Driving a more customer-centric culture, with
a high level of employee engagement, is a key
area that our audience say they’re focused on.
Communication Strategy in Place
For the more mature programmes, with full
executive support, culture is cited as a source
57%
of pride and growth. For the others, the lack
36% 33%
of a single vision and fragmented silos create
frustration and confusion. But in all cases,
CX professionals view culture as core to a Leaders Followers Laggards
successful programme.
Figure 7: Proportion of respondents
When it comes to considering where CX who have an internal communication strategy
in place by category
professionals see the next 12 months’ investment
being best used, answers linked to culture comes
second on our list, after technology. They were also
the second reason that Leaders cited as to why
they were expecting more investments. We believe
that this shows that companies that foster a great
customer-centric culture tend to be on the right
path. One where executive support and employee
engagement combine to fuel the right behaviours,
drive the right initiatives, and link to positive
business outcomes.

TOP THE
TIP CONFIRMIT
Communicate your PROMISE
vision across the Empowers
organisation and individuals at
find opportunities to all levels of the
celebrate successes organisation to drive
change within their
sphere of control

Copyright © 2019 Confirmit

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 67% 27%
Habit 5.
Continuously Re-think Leaders Laggards
(what’s next?):
Percentage agreeing strongly programme h  as
resulted in significant investment in change
It was fascinating to see that people with the
most experience don’t always drive the most
successful programmes. Your ability to look for
What key innovations will impact your
something new, something innovative, is vital
programme in the next five years
to your long-term success in CX. The question
“what’s next?” should never be far from the
70
minds of a CX pro! 60

50
Obviously you need to ensure that the programme 40
is delivering the right insights, listening to the right 30

voices and asking the right questions. But is there 20

10
anything else you should think about that might
0%
provide the “shot in the arm” a stale programme AI/ Social Text Predictive
Robotics Analytics Analytics Analytics
might need? The use of innovative techniques to
improve programmes has been a key question in Leaders 2018 Laggards 2018 All 2017

this research. We asked professionals to rate which

technological advances they considered were likely Figure 8: Percentage who strongly
to have an impact on their programme in the next believe innovation type will impact their
programme in the next 5 years
five years.

This graph focuses on the split between Leaders

and Laggards in 2018, and what they deemed
critical in 2017. We can see a very similar pattern for
our Leaders with Predictive Analytics continuing
to be the most important. For Laggards, text
analytics, not surprisingly, is more of a priority -
something that perhaps the Leaders have already
TOP THE
got sussed. It’s also interesting to see AI/Robotics TIP CONFIRMIT
still languishing in last place despite all the hype. Challenge yourself! PROMISE
There’s clearly still room for it to mature. Ask yourself if your Provides the
programme truly most current and
Interestingly for a question around innovation, the drives change and comprehensive end-
human factor was quoted a few times as there delivers to your to-end technology
are clearly concerns among our audience that an goals? and use cases in
increased focus on technology might get in the way the industry
of human interactions.

Copyright © 2019 Confirmit

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Conclusion

There are lessons to be learned from Leaders and notes of caution from Laggards. Across
it all, though, we have been able to get an exceptionally in-depth view of the issues that
face CX teams today as well as many tips that can help you drive your career forward.
Both the statistics and comments from our audience clearly point towards the five habits
we have identified as being core to your CX success. That is, core to securing future
investment in your programme and furthering your career.

Performance showing gap between Leaders and Laggards

Leaders

Laggards Average

Driving Stakeholders Achievable Driving Comms Strategy Driving Demonstrate

Investment in CX Invested in Prog CX/EE Goals Investment in EE in Place Innovation ROI
Initiatives Goals Initiatives

Figure 9: Leaders vs Laggards

Download
the full report

For the full scope and demographics

behind the research, download the
in-depth report here.

Copyright © 2019 Confirmit

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 If I had a
CX Magic Wand

If you’re looking to refresh your programme,

perhaps a good place to start is looking
at what CX professionals said they would
do if they had a CX Magic Wand.

Programme Technology
Success
■ Better integration (CRM, VoE, CJM…)
■ Easier / quicker to implement
■ Link to business outcomes
■ More real-time
■ More budget
■ More automation
■ More resources
■ More innovative feedback
■ Actionable
■ Better analytics, including predictive
■ Better / more data
■ Safer
■ Greater scale
■ Better visualisation
■ More visibility
■ Holistic customer view
■ Higher response rate
■ Less silos
■ More accountability
■ More personalisation
■ More agile

Copyright © 2019 Confirmit

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 If you’d like
to learn more
about Confirmit’s
solutions, check
out our website.

www.confirmit.com
info@confirmit.com

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About Confirmit

Confirmit is the world’s leading SaaS vendor for multi-channel Customer

Experience, Employee Engagement, and Market Research solutions.
The company has offices in Oslo (headquarters), Grimstad, London, Moscow,
New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Vancouver, and Yaroslavl. Confirmit’s software
is also distributed through partner resellers in Madrid, Milan, Salvador, and Tokyo.

Confirmit powers Global 5000 companies and Market Research agencies

worldwide with a wide range of software products for feedback / data collection,
panel management, data processing, analysis, and reporting. Customers
include Aurora, British Standards Institution, Cross-Tab, Dow Chemical, GfK,
GlaxoSmithKline, GMO Research, KeepFactor, Nielsen, Research Now,
RS Components, QRS, SSI, and Swisscom. Visit www.confirmit.com
for more information.

* Based on the State of Customer Experience Report, Research by Confirmit and Engage Business Media, published November 2018. Global study with over 700 responses.
© 2019 Confirmit. All rights reserved. Other marks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. 190312