Despite improved CX, brands need to do more to differentiate themselves from their competitors

NEW DELHI, Sept. 23, 2019 — Forrester released the rankings from its India 2019 Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), which show that firms enhanced their CX quality with most brands improving their scores and not one realizing a decline.

Based on a survey of more than 10,000 customers in India in 2019, Forrester’s CX Index methodology was used to benchmark the CX quality of 39 brands in six industries. This year, four brands were excellent, which no brand managed to do so previously. Furthermore, 33 brands delivered good CX, up from 19, and only two brands continued to provide mediocre CX.

The industry average for banks went up over 5 points to retain pole position, while the multichannel retail industry rose more than 7 points to go from last to second. Despite increases in their average scores, auto and home insurers fell from third to fifth, and credit card issuers – last year’s second – was at the bottom of the rankings. The digital retailer and automotive manufacturer industries were third and fourth respectively.

Despite improved scores, most brands were unable to differentiate themselves and the quality of their CX remained on par with their competitors’. Only HDFC Bank managed to emerge as a true CX leader.

“We see that Indian firms are transforming their culture to become customer-centric and adopting design practices to improve customer experiences,” said Amit Bhatia, Forrester senior analyst. “However, only brands that can differentiate themselves will reap the benefits of better CX. Brands that want to break away from the pack should focus on emotion: How an experience makes customers feel has a bigger influence on their loyalty to a brand than effectiveness or ease in nearly every industry.”

Forrester’s CX Index helps brands identify the key drivers of a positive CX for their customers to prioritize efforts. Even a minor improvement to a brand’s CX quality can add crores of rupees of incremental revenue by reducing customer churn and increasing share of wallet. Additionally, superior CX leads to reduced service costs and lowers the cost of customer acquisition through word of mouth. CX leaders grow revenue faster, drive higher brand preference, and charge more for their products.

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About Forrester’s CX Index
Forrester’s CX Index is the most complete and powerful CX tool in the market today. The CX Index gives businesses a deep and actionable understanding of the quality of their customers’ experiences, competitive benchmark data so that business and technology leaders know how they stack up against their peers, and the ability to model the improvements that will have the biggest impact on revenue.