Exclusive: Havas CX Releases X Index on Important Factors for Customer Experience Success

Havas customer experience agency Havas CX has published the results of its first X Index survey, conducted in partnership with research institute OpinionWay, gauging customer experience efficiency. "Havas found there was no way to assess how well brands and industries are performing from a CX [customer experience] perspective across a customer journey. Other companies are doing a general assessment of CX, but no one is analyzing CX across the entire customer journey. So, we developed a proprietary study to help bridge the gap between brands and consumers," Havas Creative North America CEO Stephanie Nerlich, who took on the chief executive role after Paul Marobella's departure from Havas last year, told Adweek. Since the survey launched in early 2020, it tracked shifts in consumer focus during the pandemic. "The research really showed that globally, we have reached a tipping point this year at which customers are expressing two distinct but equally important needs. They want the efficiency—and, during this pandemic, safety—of simple and seamless shopping experiences while also craving the human and emotional connections that come through personalization and signature moments," Havas CX executive director, digital transformation Jesse Poe explained. The X Index surveyed 28,000 people across the U.S., the U.K., China, France and India on 250 brands across 40 criteria. "Across the globe, we found that CX is driven by a unique combination of factors in each market. However, with the massive shift online, the reality is there are many convergences. And the X Index allowed us to identify two main clusters: purchase-driven journeys and relationship-driven journeys," Havas CX executive director, digital transformation Jesse Poe explained. In France, the U.K. and the U.S., customer experience was driven primarily by the purchase journey and brand items, with the importance of brand-customer relationships actually declining from 2019, something Poe said was likely due to a reduction in in-person shopping because of the pandemic. By contrast, consumers in China and India put the most emphasis on the customer-brand relationship, with respondents in these countries also significantly weighing brands' responses to the pandemic. "Beyond this clustering of countries, we can see that all parts of the journey matter when it comes to CX, even if they carry different weights in each market," Poe told Adweek. "This is why CX cannot be the concern only of the communication department, CRM or ecommerce. It must be at the heart of the company—a focus and responsibility across departments and functions." A closer look at brands The study highlighted a divide in consumer expectations between traditional brick-and-mortar brands—which recently adopted digital, or "bricks-and-clicks" brands—and digital native brands, which could have implications for how such companies can pursue further growth. "We uncovered a divide in consumer expectations of 'bricks-and-clicks' brands versus digital pure players—with emotional needs ranking higher for the former, functionality for the latter," Poe explained. "This underlines a clear opportunity for pure players—with functionality very much a given, the emotional can represent a clear differentiating factor for improving their core business and platforms." For "bricks and clicks" brands, the pleasantness of the customer experience ranked as either the number one or two factor in all five markets surveyed. For digital native brands, meanwhile, simplicity was the most important factor in three of the five markets (the UK, France and China). In the U.S., the survey measured 56 brands across 11 verticals. E-retail was the top vertical in 2020, followed closely by hospitality, while automotive and hospitality earned top marks in 2019. QSR restaurants and traditional retail were the poorest performing categories, but the X Index noted that scores varied widely within verticals. E-retail petcare brand Chewy earned the top score of 92.3, well ahead of runners-up Toyota (84.2) and Costco (82.3). Retail giant Walmart had the poorest performance among brands tracked, at 19.2. Key takeaways for brands and agency partners According to Havas CX, the study provides several important takeaways for brands and their agency partners seeking to improve customer experience satisfaction. Havas CX noted four areas of focus for brands seeking to optimize customer experience: Putting efficiency at the core: rapid consumer shifts to ecommerce have made customers more sensitive to the efficiency of digital customer experiences, with seamless purchasing an important part of brands' CX scores in each country surveyed. "The collective experience of 2020 has brought parity across all segments in customer experience expectations and customers no longer tolerate inefficiency and friction in areas where experience leaders have eliminated friction entirely," Poe said. Aligning purpose and action: There were two factors that were the most important among three out of five countries surveyed: A brand’s followthrough on commitments and brand trust. Poe noted that standout brands in 2020 quickly implemented Covid-19 digital touch points, which were clearly communicated to consumers at all touch points. Reinventing relationships: Personalization was an important factor for brands' X Index scores in each market studied, and Havas CX noted the importance of brands expanding their definition of personalization to take different forms. Poe noted that brands with high customer experience satisfaction provided flexible customer service to meet consumer demands during the pandemic and customized offers into personal channels. Fighting against "digital sameness": Havas CX also underscored the importance of standing out on digital platforms where mere effectiveness is now expected by consumers. The "pleasantness" of the purchase experience was a major factor across all five markets and the most important criteria in three, with Poe noting the importance of brands creating "signature moments" that address the needs of their specific customers and create emotional connection. For agencies, helping brands stand out with more meaningful connections to consumers will require bringing a more integrated, holistic approach to customer experience. Poe explained that agencies work helping clients with digital transformation has created a demand for services meeting the needs of clients who are working toward uniting approaches to improve experiences across the customer journey. "If agencies are to evolve their own offerings to meet their clients’ changing CX needs, they need to focus on delivering an integrated solution to their clients who are now no longer thinking or functioning in silos. Agencies need to treat every part of their engagement as a customer experience opportunity, in how they work with their client and how they help them connect to their customers," he added.