Is your company a gangly, fast growing teenager? In its prime? Or struggling to stay alive in a declining marketplace? This week’s stat reveals an interesting relationship between a company’s life-cycle phase and its focus on customer experience.
67 percent of organizations in the growth stage of their life cycle say customer experience is well understood across the company.
The likelhood that a company demonstrates an experience-driven culture is lower in in the start-up phase, peaks in the growth phase, and is lowest in mature and declining organizations.
This “arch” pattern over company life cycle stages is not extreme, but it is instructive. Have you noticed how common it is for start-up stage organizations to “push” to market? Some are pushing because they’re educating customers about a new product or service. Others simply take money from anyone with an open wallet as they learn who their target customers really are. In growth and mature stages, organizations develop the kind of interdependence with customers that we see in the customer and organization definitions of “customer experience.” In decline, an organization’s focus often moves to harvesting financial return from the business (and less concern for sustainable demand).
What life-cycle stage best describes your comapny? Does your understanding of customer experience match up with the leaders in our study?
