Developing a

business case
for customer
experience insights
DEVELOPING A BUSINESS CASE FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE INSIGHTS

Intro For one, many executives are reluctant to invest

For companies that want to remain competitive in
the modern ecosystem, customer experience is a
growing concern.
According to Gartner, starting in 2016, companies
will compete primarily on a basis of CX rather than
product offerings.1
But as much as organizations talk about CX, there’s
a gap between the vision and the actual experience
delivery. In fact, while 73% of companies consider
CX a top priority, only 1% of companies deliver an
excellent experience.2
So what’s stopping companies from improving
their customer experience?
because they find it difficult to project the ROI of CX
improvements. However, years of trends indicate that CX
has a tangible return on revenue, customer loyalty, and
even stock performance. Over an 8-year period, the top
10 companies in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index
generated a significantly higher return than the S&P 500,
while the bottom 10 companies trailed behind
dramatically due to customer churn.3
Secondly, improving a company’s CX requires a cultural
shift. Each employee must empathize and feel a sense
of ownership for the customer experience, and this
requires company-wide commitment. Many businesses
have no department dedicated to CX, and no established
process or budget for CX improvements.

In this whitepaper, we’ll lay out a plan for you to spark a change in the
way your company views CX insights. You’ll learn how to determine
where your organization stands today, develop support for CX initiatives,
and report on your progress.

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DEVELOPING A BUSINESS CASE FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE INSIGHTS
Identifying Your
Current CX Maturity
Level and Mapping
a Plan
The first step in making real change in your company’s
approach to CX is to establish where you currently are. Start by
listing out the CX insights that are available to various teams.
These could include customer satisfaction survey responses,
Net Promoter Score, insights from user testing videos, support
desk emails, on-site surveys, help chat transcripts, or any other
source of customer feedback your organization collects.
NOW, CONSIDER THESE QUESTIONS:
How often does Voice of Customer factor into the
decisions your company makes?
How many people in your organization are
dedicated to listening to customers and acting on
their feedback?
CX MATURITY OF AN ORGANIZATION
Your answers to the previous two questions will give you
an indication of where your business currently stands in its
CX maturity level. Use this graph to help you compare your
current state with where you aspire to be.
STAGE ONE: Research is conducted on ad-hoc
1
projects, usually by one person with few resources.
STAGE TWO: One small team conducts research
2
and improvements, but budget and support are scarce.
STAGE THREE: CX factors into some company
3
decisions. Insights are gathered by multiple teams.
STAGE FOUR: Company leaders believe in investing in
4
CX, and Voice of Customer influences many processes.
STAGE FIVE: CX plays a critical role in impacting
5
decisions across all departments, and on all channels.
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DEVELOPING A BUSINESS CASE FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE INSIGHTS

The next step is to map out your customer touchpoints: everything from
your website to your automated emails to your phone support. How much do you YOUR KEY TO SUCCESS LIES IN GETTING THE
already know about the experience at those points? Identify the insights you’ll need RIGHT PEOPLE IN THE ROOM TO DISCUSS CX
to collect to fill in the blanks. What type of research will you need to do? How much AT THE RIGHT TIME.
will it cost?
Talk with your stakeholders about where you want to be in 6
months, 12 months, and 18 months, referring back to the CX
maturity chart. Which improvements will help you get there,
DISCOVERY RESEARCH CONVERSION ENAGEMENT
Search Watch promo Look up Compare Purchase Add Give Sign up as
and when will they need to be completed in order to achieve
for flights videos prices rates ticket upgrades feedback frequent flyer
your goal?

WEBSITE
(Desktop)
SAMPLE QUARTERLY CX INITIATIVES
WEBSITE
Q1 Q2
(Mobile)
IMPLEMENT CUSTOMER INTRODUCE CUSTOMER
ONBOARDING TUTORIAL SUPPORT EMAIL TEMPLATES

Mobile App

26% Increase
Social Media
Increase 65
Phone
Monthly active users Tickets/day resolved

Persona Key: Persona 1 Persona 2 Persona 3

Q3 Q4
Experience Key: Positive Negative CREATE MORE USABLE MAKE SIGNUP PROCESS
CHECKOUT PROCESS MOBILE-FRIENDLY

Finally, make a roadmap for CX improvements based on your touchpoint chart. Which
touchpoints currently provide a poor experience and need attention immediately? For
33% 19%
Decrease Increase
each desired improvement, estimate on a scale of 1-10 the impact it will make on the
company and the resources it will require. Identify opportunities to achieve easy wins:
Cart abandonment rate Conversion rate
improvements that will make a big impact while requiring fewer resources.

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DEVELOPING A BUSINESS CASE FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE INSIGHTS

Getting Organizational
Alignment
In order to turn your roadmap of CX improvements into reality, you’ll
need to get buy-in from stakeholders in your company. To do so, it’s
critical to relate CX to organizational goals. In most cases, you’ll be Once you gain support for the first improvement, you can get
much more successful in convincing executives by making a case for to work on implementing the solution and tracking your first
improvements that will boost revenue, increase customer retention, or success, which will open the gates for getting buy-in for future
some other tangible metric related to the bottom line, rather than simply improvements. Keep a scorecard of CX insights, initiatives, and
customer happiness. impact to demonstrate your success over time.

Start by identifying a common problem across departments, perhaps
picking an easy win from your roadmap. Put together an actionable outline
that suggests how this problem can be addressed. Then, meet with
individuals to discuss, focusing on projected outcomes and successes
as well as potential blockers.
“It starts with a champion, and that can be you. Unite with
like-minded, passionate people to start a grassroots effort
in your organization. Create better experiences for customers
as you work to gain executive sponsorship—and ultimately
change the way decisions are made.”
Your key to success lies in getting the right people in the room to
discuss CX at the right time. As you work on issues, you’ll be able
to identify who in your organization is open to discussing CX and
making progress on improvements. These individuals are your CX
champions, and they may be able to help with future initiatives.
Stakeholders should come from diverse parts of the organization,
including (but not limited to) Sales, Customer Support, Marketing,
and Product.

Laurie Kuhn, Senior Director, Strategic Solutions at UserTesting;

Former Head of Digital Planning & Analytics at Samsung

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DEVELOPING A BUSINESS CASE FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE INSIGHTS

Tackling Unique
Issues Within Your
Organization
MEASURING YOUR CX AND REPORTING
ON YOUR PROGRESS

One of the best ways to get the insights you will need to make

What works for one company may not work for another. Depending on improvements—and then prove their effectiveness—is to

how your organization is structured, here are some tips for handling select the right tools and resources. Choose a platform that

issues that may arise. will help you understand the complete picture of your CX,
including why customers form opinions, make choices, and
take actions. Benchmark your customer experience
MAINTAIN OVERSIGHT WHEN NO ONE IS DIRECTLY to illustrate your progress and report to the company on
RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL CX INITIATIVES. a monthly or quarterly basis. You may find it valuable to
In many companies, there aren’t any individuals with “CX” in benchmark your organization’s CX against your competitors to
their title. If that’s the case for you, you’ll need to organize help prioritize competitive initiatives.current state with where
your fellow CX champions. Invite them to participate in a CX you aspire to be.
committee that meets on an ongoing basis to prioritize projects
and communicate them to the company. This team will share
accountability, reporting to each other and the company as a “Any VP of eCommerce who is serious about increasing
whole on a consistent basis. market share needs to be benchmarking their entire customer
experience against their competitors. It’s a no-brainer.”
GET BUY-IN FROM EXECUTIVES WHEN BUDGETS ARE
- Simon Rodrigue, SVP of eCommerce at Walmart Canada
LIMITED.
Once you’ve achieved an easy CX win from your roadmap, share
the results with your executive team. Explain the problem, the
solution that was implemented, and the KPIs that were improved.
It’s crucial to tie it back to organizational goals, but it’s also
valuable to humanize the data and bring customer stories to life.
Executives rarely watch and listen to everyday customers doing
everyday activities, so you can make a big impact by including
quotes or video clips from customers

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About UserTesting

UserTesting enables every organization to deliver the best customer experience powered
by human insight. With UserTesting’s on-demand Human Insight Platform, companies
across industries make accurate customer-first decisions at every level, at the speed
business demands. With UserTesting, product teams, marketers, digital and customer
experience executives confidently and quickly create the right experiences for all target
audiences, increasing brand loyalty and revenue. UserTesting has over 1,200 subscription
customers including half of the world’s top 100 brands, and has delivered human insights
to over 35,000 companies to-date. Backed by Accel and OpenView, UserTesting is
headquartered in San Francisco, CA. To learn more, visit www.usertesting.com.

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