Having cleared the first hurdle of becoming more customer centric at the strategy level, companies are still finding major obstacles internally to achieving true success in their CX programs.

A recent joint nFusion/Pegasystems study put the spotlight on two key shortcomings that are hindering companies’ CX programs:

1. A lack of internal domain expertise on the development and execution of CX enhancement programs.   Despite commitment of significant budget to the effort, by failing to bring in CX expertise, companies still fall short on successfully executing CX improvements.

2. Disjointed customer touch-points.  Highlighting the challenge of aligning multiple direct and channel touch points, the study pointed to a lack of transparency, consistency and integration within the CX side across different touchpoints.

In the end the challenge falls directly at door of the C-Suite, which needs to understand and recognize the tremendous competitive and ROI potential of CX enhancements.  If that is achieved, then leadership from the top level has the power to effect greater integration between different channels and bring in required talent to drive CX program execution.

ClickFox, the pioneering leader in experience analytics, today announced Version 6.4 of its ClickFox Customer Experience Analytics (CEA) platform. This updated version of the company's customer behavior recognition engine enables organizations to analyze data from all customer touch points and provides a roadmap of each customer's journey for increased customer satisfaction and improved revenue. The new visualization tool allows enterprise users to easily identify root causes of customer behavior -- without the need for data scientists -- in 25 percent of the time typically spent identifying similar trends across multiple departments.

The agency said it will still provide insight and analytical services “across all research disciplines” but the focus will now firmly be on customer experience management.

Change was hinted at last month when Nunwood acquired California-based customer experience training and change management agency Retention Specialists.

Global managing partner Andy Moore (pictured) said: “Over the last year we’ve seen 42% growth in our customer experience management practice.This is a natural space for insight professionals to evolve into: building on our established customer, brand and product expertise, but tying it together with a joined-up approach to creating outstanding experiences.”

Nunwood chief commercial officer Tim Knight added: “This is much more than a rebrand, but a coming together of two years of investments in new technology, consulting expertise, analytical tools and visualisation capabilities.

Aimia’s recently released study puts the spotlight firmly on what we would call the mechanical social media efforts of most companies.  Basing their findings upon a detailed segmentation of the users of social media, Aimia makes the strong assertion that the current emphasis on quantitative (likes, followers etc) measures of social media success is putting companies on the wrong track. 

Recognizing that there are distinct types of users on social media, Aimia suggests companies focus on understanding how those segments relate to their business and focus on achieving higher levels of customer engagement on social media.  Overall the big shift for companies will be away from the quantitative world of likes and followers to the more subjective (but higher business value) measures of engagement level and influence.

Customer satisfaction at the national level grew just 0.1% in the first quarter of 2012, after falling by 0.3% in Q4 of 2011, according to the National Customer Satisfaction Index (NCSI-UK) results released today. The index is currently 74.6 on a 0-100 scale. The slight increase is the result of gains for mobile phones and the lowest-scoring industries in the UK: airlines and energy utilities.

Customer satisfaction with Energy Utilities improves by 3% to an NCSI score of 69 -- still a very low score by NCSI standards, but a five-year high for the industry. By contrast, energy utilities in the United States have an average score of 76.7 on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), where there is much more competition in the industry.

Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) has the highest customer satisfaction, rising 1% to 73, well ahead of the rest of the "Big Six" energy companies. E.ON is the closest competitor (up 1%) at 69. npower shows the most improvement, surging 8% to 68. Scottish Power is unchanged at 68. British Gas advances by 3% to 67. Only EDF declines, dropping 4% to an NCSI score of 65.