Customer Experience Benchmarking

Are you a CX or EX leader / practitioner in Banking? Here's what to look out for in 2024: Customer Experience Trends... Digital-First Banking: The shift towards digital channels continues to accelerate. Customers will expect seamless online and mobile banking experiences with 24/7 accessibility, personalized services, and robust security. Personalization and AI: Banks are increasingly looking to use AI to offer personalized financial advice and product recommendations based on customers' spending habits, life events, and financial goals. Omnichannel Integration: A unified customer experience across all channels (online, mobile, in-branch) is crucial. Banks are working to ensure consistency and ease of transition from one channel to another. Enhanced Security and Privacy: As digital banking grows, so does the risk of cyber threats. Banks are investing in advanced security measures to protect customer data and build trust. More AI here. Sustainable Banking Practices: Growing awareness of environmental issues is leading customers to prefer banks that focus on social responsibility and sustainability. The "Zero Customer" emerges. Employee Experience Trends... Remote & Hybrid Work Models: Banks are still adapting but are investing in remote work technologies and rethinking office spaces. Employee Well-being and Mental Health: Recognizing the link between employee well-being and productivity, banks will offer more support for mental health, including access to wellness programs and counseling services. Upskilling and Reskilling: As technology evolves, there is a greater need for continuous learning. Banks will focus on upskilling and reskilling employees to keep pace with new technologies and regulatory changes. It's AI's time. Data-Driven Employee Insights: Using data analytics to understand employee needs and behaviors is becoming more common. This data helps in making informed decisions about work models, benefits, and employee engagement strategies. Also look for the connection between CX and EX. Trends Cutting Across CX & EX... Integration of AI and Automation: Both in CX and EX, AI and automation are playing a key role in streamlining processes, providing insights, and enhancing experiences. Focus on Data Security and Compliance: With the increased use of technology, complying with data protection regulations and ensuring privacy is a priority in both customer and employee interactions. Evolving Role of Physical Branches: The role of physical bank branches continues to evolve, focusing more on providing complex advisory services rather than routine transactions. What else are you seeing coming this year? #customerexperience #employeeexperience #banking #financialservices #ceo #coo #cmo

The Hardest Truth in Go-To-Market? 💥🔥 Let’s stop pretending the friction between Sales and Customer Success is “healthy tension.” It’s not. It’s expensive. It’s inefficient. And it’s costing us growth. Here’s the truth 👇 Customers aren’t creating the friction. We are. We build silos, not systems. We measure functions, not outcomes. We celebrate individual wins while the customer experience breaks in between them. Sales blames CS for poor adoption and low impact. CS blames Sales for bad-fit deals. Product blames everyone for unclear feedback. And the customer? They just want one thing: a seamless experience that gets them value... fast. 💡 The real enemy isn’t another department. It's misalignment. We keep optimizing inside our swim lanes while the customer is drowning in the gaps between them. Here’s what needs to change 👇 1️⃣ Shared ownership of the customer journey. Sales doesn’t “hand off” to CS. CS doesn’t “inherit” the customer. We co-own the outcome from first conversation to lasting impact. 2️⃣ Shared metrics. No more “my quota” vs. “my renewal target.” One scoreboard: growth, retention, expansion, and time to value. (and yes, I know we need individual clarity and accountability) 3️⃣ Shared accountability. When things go right, celebrate together. When things go wrong, fix them together. At DISQO, we’re learning that cross-functional dependency isn’t a liability; it’s a competitive advantage if you embrace it with clarity, trust, and urgency. Because when Sales and CS stop pointing fingers and start pulling in the same direction, everything changes: 🧭 The customer moves faster. 📈 Revenue grows faster. 💪 Teams get stronger. So here’s my challenge as we wrap the week 👇 🔥 Where are you defending a function instead of driving an outcome? 🔥 What wall can you tear down between Sales, CS, or Product before Monday? 🔥 How can you turn dependency into velocity? Because the future of growth isn’t Sales-led or CS-led. It’s alignment-led. #Leadership #CustomerSuccess #Sales #Alignment #Revenue #CreateTheFuture #DISQO

Most GTM teams bleed revenue in the handoffs. Marketing drives leads → sales closes deals → CS handles the fallout. But what if all of that worked as one system? At AppFolio, CRO Marcy Campbell owns the entire customer journey – from first touch to long-term retention. She built “stream teams” that pull in marketing, sales, onboarding, CS, and support to run big initiatives together, end to end. The result: fewer silos, faster execution, and better outcomes for the business and the customer. Marcy (ex-PayPal, Boomi) came on the podcast to share how to build a truly unified GTM motion. Key takeaways any operator or founder can swipe: 1️⃣ Map the customer journey before you touch the org chart. Every CRO’s first job is to understand how customers discover, evaluate, buy, and use the product. Without this map, your GTM motions will misfire and misalign. 2️⃣ You can’t scale revenue with siloed execution. AppFolio built “stream teams” to run cross-functional initiatives end-to-end. Marketing, sales, onboarding, CS, and product move as one unit across the full journey. 3️⃣ Campaign performance = revenue + retention + LTV. Don’t stop at pipeline metrics. Track onboarding velocity, CS touch requirements, and downstream churn to understand the true ROI of your GTM motions. 4️⃣ Great CROs speak in customer verbs, not sales stages. Your process should mirror how the customer thinks – evaluating, comparing, adopting – not how your CRM is set up. Messaging and journey design should reflect their language. 5️⃣ Show your customer a single company, not your org chart. Buyers don’t care about internal handoffs. A unified experience means marketing ops, sales ops, and CS ops must operate from the same data and workflow foundation. 6️⃣ CRO success depends on the CMO relationship. AppFolio’s unified customer experience initiative started because of trust between CRO and CMO. Without mutual respect and shared metrics, sales and marketing stay misaligned. 7️⃣ Your best GTM asset might be your sales engineer. In one early startup, it was an engineer (not a seller) who gave the sharpest ICP filters based on what the product could actually deliver. Bring your builders into discovery. 8️⃣ Founders are de facto PMs until a repeatable motion exists. Early GTM is product management disguised as selling. Your job is to surface sharp use cases, value thresholds, and repeatable customer needs. 9️⃣ High-performing teams win because of process, not heroics. Individuals can brute-force short-term results. But consistent revenue growth comes from teams that operate with shared rituals, clear priorities, and metrics that matter. You'll also learn invaluable leadership lessons. More from Marcy in the full episode, available on the GTMnow website or wherever you get your podcasts by searching "The GTM Podcast" 🎧

Great to the join the team at Qualtrics this week to discuss the latest CX trends from the 2026 Customer Experience Trends report (a global study of over 20,000 people across 14 countries). Thanks to hosts Anthony Flevaras Ivana Papanicolaou Vicky Katsabaris. 4 main trends: 1) AI-powered customer service is failing, so far Many people who experience AI in customer service saw no benefit at all. The worst rating across a variety of tasks. A huge opportunity to leverage and get right as customers become more comfortable with AI. That said only 29% of people trust organisations to use AI responsibly. Interestingly around 30% of people in Australia have not used AI for any task, compare that to 9% in Singapore! 2) Survey fatigue leaves businesses guessing about customer churn 30% of people stay silent about a bad experience, an all time high since the survey started. Those relying on surveys alone will struggle with the "why", those leveraging a variety of operational data sets and then proactively intervening in moments that matter will lead the way. 3) Value won’t be enough to secure customer loyalty in 2026 "It’s not enough to provide a great product, because a great product’s gonna fail at times. You need to have invested in that ecosystem of moments, so when you have an issue, we can handle it quickly, delightfully, and create a wow for you. We want to wow at each moment that matters. How do you provide that holistic 360 experience versus just focusing on one aspect? That’s what drives customer experience. "- Emma Sopadjieva (she/her) 4) Consumers demand transparency over personalisation tactics " Companies have the privacy equation backward. They stockpile data about who customers are while missing what customers actually need at any given moment. Successful companies will focus on customer context over customer profiles, making personalisation feel helpful rather than invasive. But this shift requires transparency. Show customers what you collect, give them control and deletion rights, and, critically, demonstrate how their data improved their specific experience. " Isabelle Zdatny, CCXP, XMP Loved the interactive exercises we did to bring these trends to life and great to connect with industry peers across the industry. Full report here: https://lnkd.in/gVQcBnE3 #cx #customer #trends #data

Your customers do not care about your org chart. They experience your company as one brand, not a collection of departments. I often hear, “Doesn’t CX belong to the customer service team?” It's time to debunk that myth. Customer service may answer the call or chat. But they are not the only team accountable for WHY the customer had to reach out in the first place. That contact may have started because the: ✔️product was confusing. ✔️invoice was wrong. ✔️delivery was late. ✔️app did not work. ✔️policy made no sense. ✔️onboarding missed a key step. ✔️marketing created expectations that the actual experience did not meet. ✔️website made the answer too hard to find. By the time the customer reaches the support team, their opinion of your company has already been determined. Here are 3 tactics leaders need to do now: ① Create one unified CX goal. Every team needs to know the outcome that the business is creating for customers. Not one goal for sales. Another for service. Another for operations. Another for product. I'm talking about shared objectives, so everyone prioritized the customer experience above everything else. When departments have separate priorities, customers feel the disconnect. ② Break Internal Barriers Map the customer journey with cross-teams. Bring product, marketing, sales, service, HR, operations, billing, and IT together. Look at where people get confused, delayed, or frustrated. Then ask: What is our role in creating this issue? What can we fix within our area? Where do we need better coordination with another team? What information does the customer need sooner? This is not about blame. It is about understanding the full journey rather than just one department’s piece of the puzzle. ③ Set Clear Accountability and Communication Rules When a customer problem crosses departments, your teams need to know three things: Who communicates internally? Who updates the customer? Who owns follow-through until the issue is resolved? Without that clarity, problems rarely get resolved, and customers lose confidence. What would you add to my list? 👇Comment below. Remember: Companies improve CX when people stop hiding behind job titles and start owning the impact they create. That is Doing CX Right®‬ Got questions? Message me.

Almost 10 years ago, I stepped away from my Head of Marketing role. Not because I didn’t love marketing, I did. A lot in fact. But because I wanted to solve the problem that I, and lots of my marketing peers were being tripped up by ↓ The disconnect between campaign and core. Companies often prioritise the performance customers see, but overlook the experience they feel. Brands craft powerful marketing messages promising simplicity, customer-centricity, or innovation, only for customers to experience the exact opposite once they interact with the business. 👎 A “customer-first” company with an impossible-to-reach support team. 👎 A “seamless” experience riddled with friction. 👎 A personalised campaign that leads to a generic, frustrating journey. And it's why I became a service designer; to bridge the gap between the customer experience and how teams show up, interact and deliver it every day. It’s not enough to talk about customer-centricity, because your customers are gonna see right through that. It has to be seen, actioned and felt in how teams work, make decisions, and design experiences - with your customers need at the core. Because this is the production behind your performance. At The Marketing Meetup last night, I shared my journey of building customer-centric cultures, and the three key steps that make it happen (OK, caveat here, this is a massively over-simplified version): ✅ Understand Customer insight isn’t just a marketing function. Every team should be plugged into real customer conversations. Dive into the data then push it further; spend time in their shoes, immerse yourselves in their worlds and bring those experiences into your daily team interactions. ✅ Embed Align your values and ways of working with your brand promises; map the experience gap by comparing brand messaging with real customer experiences. Train teams to think customer-first, ensuring CX is part of daily decision-making, and recognise and reward employees who bridge the gap, turning customer-centricity into action. ✅ Operate Customer-centricity must be a business-wide way of working, we're talking about moving from slogans to systems; Design cross-functional engagement strategies that span the 5Es: entice, enter, engage, exit and extend and develop customer journey ownership models - set up squads that are clear on who is responsible for each stage, and how teams work together to improve the end-to-end experience. Great brands don’t just tell great stories. They live them, from campaign to core. What companies do you think are doing this well? I would love to crowd-source a list of these examples, let me know in the comments below 👇 #CustomerCentricity #BrandExperience #ServiceDesign 

Over the years, I've discovered the truth: Game-changing products won't succeed unless they have a unified vision across sales, marketing, and product teams. When these key functions pull in different directions, it's a death knell for go-to-market execution. Without alignment on positioning and buyer messaging, we fail to communicate value and create disjointed experiences. So, how do I foster collaboration across these functions? 1) Set shared goals and incentivize unity towards that North Star metric, be it revenue, activations, or retention. 2) Encourage team members to work closely together, building empathy rather than skepticism of other groups' intentions and contributions. 3) Regularly conduct cross-functional roadmapping sessions to cascade priorities across departments and highlight dependencies. 4) Create an environment where teams can constructively debate assumptions and strategies without politics or blame. 5) Provide clarity for sales on target personas and value propositions to equip them for deal conversations. 6) Involve all functions early in establishing positioning and messaging frameworks. Co-create when possible. By rallying together around customers’ needs, we block and tackle as one team towards product-market fit. The magic truly happens when teams unite towards a shared mission to delight users!

Your support team hits every SLA, yet churn keeps climbing. A Customer Experience Manager is hired to close that exact gap. I keep having this conversation with founders. Tickets close, CSAT is fine, and customers still quietly leave at month 4. Every touchpoint is fine on its own. Strung together, the journey feels like getting handed between strangers. What they own: 🗺️ The whole journey end-to-end, not just the moments something breaks. 📊 The metrics that spot churn early, health scores, retention, and NPS trends. 🤝 The cross-team work. Product, Sales, and Support telling the same story. 🎯 The small "wow" moments that turn customers into promoters. You probably need one when: ❇️ Support is great, but churn keeps climbing. ❇️ Onboarding and sales feel disconnected from customers. ❇️ Your product looks like five competitors, and experience is your only real difference. ❇️ "Not my team's problem" has become a sentence in your meetings. If you've been on the fence about this hire👇

It’s been almost a year since we started our experience management journey at Lloyds Banking Group; it’s becoming our design system for CX. We’re about to scale it, so I thought I would reflect on what we’ve learnt over these last 12 months. 1. Your experience hierarchy and journey framework are the backbone of your system. It is the shell that structures experiences at different levels across customer types, products, and channels. You won’t see results until everyone can embrace it. 2. Your hierarchy and framework must work on paper, on a digital whiteboard, and in sophisticated software. There cannot be barriers to entry. 3. This system turns journeys into data products that require structured inputs (like OKRs, analytics, quant and qual research), and structured outputs (like opportunities, propositional bets, and solutions). 4. This, in turn, invites your whole company to align on how you structure and classify metrics, research, opportunities, and solutions cohesively. This is a hard task at enterprise level. 5. This system isn’t a design thing or a CX thing; it’s a real-time outside-in view of how your business is serving customers. It only sticks if product, design, engineering, marketing, operations, etc., all embrace it. This takes a hell of a lot of storytelling and pitching. 6. You can see and feel results such as reduction of siloes and duplication, more efficient delegation of backlog items, and faster design-to-delivery cycles after (approx) 10 end-to-end journeys go live. The language and way of working becomes a domino effect across the organisation, at all levels. 7. This opens the door to conversations about journey-centric operating models— what would that look like, and what would it take? 8. Like a design system, it needs a governance model (and a core team) to create, maintain, and remove components.

CX Success Demands a Unified Front: People, Process, Tech Many companies create a "CX department," thinking the job is done. This is a common pitfall. Customer Experience (CX) is not a siloed effort; it is the entire organization's responsibility. It touches every single interaction. I learned this years ago when a siloed approach led to inconsistent customer messages. It hurt the brand. True CX excellence begins with our people. It is a mindset, a cultural shift. We must break down internal barriers. Our teams need to work across functions, not just within them. Incentives must align with customer satisfaction. This means moving past departmental targets. We need to measure how well we serve the customer at every touchpoint. This creates a collective drive. Then there is the crucial link between employee experience (EX) and CX. Happy employees create happy customers. A frustrated internal team cannot deliver exceptional service. It is a simple truth. We invest in our employees. We give them the tools and support they need. Their positive experience directly fuels a better customer journey. The lines blur here because one cannot thrive without the other. Customers today expect a seamless journey. They do not care which department owns the website, the app, or the call center. They just want a consistent, easy experience across all channels. This "omnichannel" approach is no longer optional. It is essential for survival. Our job is to coordinate these experiences. They must feel integrated, not disjointed. Finally, process and technology are our enablers. We must strip out complexity. We must remove friction points. Tools like CRM systems, AI analytics, and unified platforms track interactions. They help us understand the full customer story. They allow us to deliver that seamless experience. CX cannot be an isolated effort. It requires everyone, everything, working together. What is the biggest hurdle your organization faces in achieving a truly integrated CX? Let Digital Transformation Strategist discuss it with you.