Delivering great customer experience a win-win 

Companies that deliver great customer experiences are rewarded - by consumers and investors alike  

That's the conclusion from customer experience advisory firm Watermark Consulting, based on its analysis of stock market returns for companies that deliver very good customer experiences versus those that deliver very bad ones. 

"From 2007 to 2009, through the best and worst of times, customer experience leaders outperformed the broader market, generating total returns that were 41% better on average than the S&P 500 and 145% better than customer experience laggards," explained Jon Picoult, Founder of Watermark Consulting. 

The analysis, which focused on the ten highest and ten lowest ranked public companies in Forrester Research's 2007 Customer Experience Index study, provides a compelling testament to the power of great customer experiences. 

"Some business leaders are sceptical about the return on customer experience investments," said Picoult. "They're reticent to invest in improving and differentiating their customer touchpoints, because it can be difficult to quantify the resulting bottom line benefits." 

Picoult cautions that the study was not meant to preclude attempts to cost justify customer experience improvements on a case-by-case basis. However, the analysis does demonstrate that, at a macro level, businesses that deliver very positive, memorable customer experiences are rewarded handsomely, in the form of better financial performance and increased market value. 

As Picoult put it, "These companies' operational excellence and attention to detail, their simple and straightforward communications, their well-equipped and genuinely helpful customer service staff - the sum of these parts pays off in the end, even if the precise impact of individual components is uncertain."