Better customer experience = faster growth. Want to beat your competitors? Have better experience than they do.

Most CEOs believe that their company yields good experience for their customers. They think that their brand promises are aligned with their experiences. Unfortunately, the facts don’t support these views. According to Forrester’s survey of 90,000 consumers, only 20% of brand experiences are rated “good” — with the wide majority ranked as “OK,” “poor,” or “very poor.”

Don’t believe me? Take the challenge. Forrester has designated Tuesday, July 13 as CX Reality Day, a time for CEOs and their executive teams to go undercover and personally test the quality of their companies’ experiences. It won’t take you long — and I promise that you will learn a lot about what is really going on with your customers and your brand.

Prepare to be humbled. That’s what happened to me last year when my executives and I tested a broad array of experiences. We uncovered many areas where we were falling short, particularly with our digital experience. And we found some outright fails in the systems that our customers depended on. Most importantly, the day prompted us to stop BS’ing each other about how good we actually are.

Big things can result. Our findings from CX Reality Day and feedback from our clients guided us in developing a new research portfolio, Forrester Decisions, that we are launching in August. So yes, you will beat yourself up on CX Reality Day. But your strategy may also get supercharged.

Invest the time — or keep fooling yourself about how your brand and experience are “aligned.”

Check out my video on specific ways to test your CX.