An article on Forbes, by Adrian Swinscoe, starts with, “Many Customer Experience (CX) initiatives and projects are currently failing to meet the expectations of both customers and businesses.”. That is, as acknowledged by Adrian, not news. Indeed, according to an article on CustomerThink, published in 2018, “93% of Customer Experience Initiatives are Failing”.
You might ask: If CX-initiatives fail so bluntly in generating real business results, what justifies the continuation of these practices?
We agree and it is hard to counter the 2020-prediction made by Harley Manning, Research Director at Forrester, representing a diverse group of Forrester analysts and CX Council advisers, that one in four CX Professionals will lose their job. Manning: “CX leaders who can’t prove their value to the business will find themselves on the street. Those who do keep their jobs will do so by ensuring that their metrics and measurements relate to what matters most: KPIs with a dollar sign in front of them.”
Paradoxically, the number of CX executives will also grow by at least 25%: “At companies that do have a firm grasp of the economic benefits of customer experience, the surge in newly created positions for chief customer officers (and equivalent titles) will continue.”
Manning also sends out a warning: “CX Professionals shouldn’t turn to ‘dark patterns’. Dark patterns are designs that trick customers into doing things. CX and design professionals who feel increased pressure to optimize conversion rates will try to copy the success that dark patterns have had in areas like mobile gaming. This will cause a surge in the adoption rate for dark patterns across commerce sites, as well as social media platforms that are fighting for fragmented consumer attention.”
P.s. CROSS-SILO refrains from CX practices, instead, we practice integrated customer lifecycle management, as part of the ROUNDMAP™ Commercial Excellence Framework.
