How does your CX compare to your competitors?

Are you delivering great customer experience in comparison to your competitors? Mary-Anne Baldwin outlines a definitive benchmarking test to find out where your customer experience strategy rates versus your peers

What would you say is good customer experience?

Your answer to this may be completely different to your competitors. Without understanding what everyone else in the industry is doing, it’s hard to tell if your CX stands up to the rest of the market. It could be that you believe you’re offering great customer experience when in reality you’re underdeveloped compared to others. Or it could even be that you’re a perfectionist that feels you need to improve customer experience, when in fact you could be leading the race!

Take this free test to find out how you compare to your B2B marketing peers on the five essential elements of CX, as shown in our CX Essentials model.


How to take the test:


Select the answers that you relate most closely to, keeping a note of the letter beside it. Once you’ve answered all five sections, tally up those letters. Whichever you receive most of determines your place on the competency grid below.

Internal alignment


A.

 There is a strong, but siloed and often conflicted, view on who ‘owns’ CX.


B.

 A CX strategy and responsibilities have been agreed but we haven’t implemented it.


C. 

All stakeholders are working collaboratively to an agreed CX plan.


D

. We are fine-tuning our active CX strategy through measurement, engagement surveys and KPIs.


E.

Staff are highly informed, engaged and collaborative in their efforts to improve CX. Staff cite pride and customer satisfaction as reasons for working for us.

 

Insight driven


A.

 We agree the value of understanding the customer across the customer journey, but don’t have that insight yet.


B. 

We’re starting to understand customers across their journey, including by personas and segments.


C. 

We’re at the early stages of acting on the customer journey intelligence we’ve collated.


D.

 We’re continuously delivering, measuring and improving our CX based on reliable customer data.


E.

 Our CX is fully defined, tracked, measured and constantly improved. These insights deliver improvements across the business.

 

Seamless


A. 

Our customer experience is good in areas but on a holistic level it’s confused, disjointed and cumbersome.


B.

 We’re evaluating the seamlessness of our CX, including pain points and churn.


C.

 We are taking targeted, collaborative and decisive actions to improve seamlessness across the business.


D.

 Customer satisfaction and risk data are being measured and acted on, improving CX and reducing churn.


E. 

Our customer experience is seamless, unified and positive.

 

Responsive


A.

 Our interpretation of customer feedback across the business is confused or too political to action.


B. 

We understand our customer pains and where we need to make improvements.


C. 

We’re making limited improvements, communicating on those changes. Where we can’t change things, we say why.


D. 

Improvements are being actioned and measured. Risk data is prioritised to reduce churn.  We’re testing and improving as we go.


E. 

Improvements based on customer feedback are enshrined in our culture.

 

Different  

A. Our CX has little or no distinction from our competitors.

B. We have benchmarked our CX against our competitors and seen where we can excel.

C. We’re delivering distinctive improvements to our CX.

D. We’re measuring the impact of recent improvements and A/B testing our developments.

E. Customers are won and retained because we excel at delivering unique CX. Our competitors learn from us.

SCROLL DOWN TO FIND OUT HOW YOU DID AGAINST YOUR PEERS

Mostly As:

Understanding: You match 26% of your peers

Like most of your peers you’re at the early stages of planning, improving and fully understanding your CX. There may be a long way to go, but you’re certainly not in it alone.

 

Mostly Bs:

Preparing: You match 25% of your peers 

Like a quarter of your peers, you’re in the planning stages of your CX journey and about to start testing and learning. The greater your efforts here, the smoother the ride ahead.

 

Mostly Cs:

Delivering: You match 24% of your peers 

Good news, you’re delivering your CX strategy, which means you’re ahead of most.

 

Mostly Ds:

Measuring: You match 15% of your peers 

You’re doing great, just 15% of B2B marketers are measuring the results of their CX strategy. You’re just one step away from industry excellence.

 

Mostly Es

Perfecting: You match 10% of your peers 

Congratulations, you’re at the top of your game.


Become a CXpert: The marketer’s guide to customer experience

Most B2B organisations suffer from diffused responsibility when it comes to CX. This guide will tell you why – and how – you can lead the charge.


Find out how to take charge of CX

Related content

Access full article

B2B strategies. B2B skills.
B2B growth.

Propolis helps B2B marketers confidently build the right strategies and skills to drive growth and prove their impact.