Temkin Group released a new report, State of Customer Experience Management, 2015, based on a study of 199 large organizations. This is the sixth year that Temkin Group has published this benchmark report.

The research shows that customer experience maturity correlates to financial results. Seventy-seven percent of companies with above average customer experience maturity levels reported that their financial results in 2014 were better than their competitors, compared with only 55% of those with below average customer experience maturity.

Temkin Group's Customer Experience Competency & Maturity Assessment classifies companies into six stages of maturity: 1) Ignore, 2) Explore, 3) Mobilize, 4) Operationalize, 5) Align, and 6) Embed.  The percentage of large organizations that have reached the three highest levels of maturity has grown from 23% in 2014 to 32% this year.

The research also revealed significant ambitions for improvement. While only 7% of companies believe that their organization currently delivers industry-leading customer experience, 55% have a goal to be an industry-leader within three years.

"Customer experience is a reflection of a company's culture and operating processes. Companies that understand this and gain customer experience maturity reap the benefits of more loyal customers," states Bruce Temkin, Customer Experience Transformist & Managing Partner of Temkin Group.

Temkin Group's Customer Experience Maturity Model is based on four customer experience core competencies:

• Purposeful Leadership: Operate consistently with a clear set of values. 
• Employee Engagement: Align employees with the goals of the organization. 
• Compelling Brand Values: Deliver on your brand promises to customers. 
• Customer Connectedness: Infuse customer insight across the organization.

Here are some additional findings:

• Senior executives in companies with higher customer experience maturity levels are more likely to focus on the company's culture and less likely to focus on cutting costs. 
• Sixty-three percent of large organizations have a senior executive in charge of their customer experience efforts. 
• Thirty-seven percent of large organizations have more than 10 full-time customer experience professionals 
• Only 7% of large companies rate their mobile phone experiences as being very good and only 3% of those firms feel that way about experiences that cut across multiple channels 
• Companies identified "other competing priorities" as the top obstacle to improving customer experience.

This research report can be accessed from the blog, Customer Experience Matters, at ExperienceMatters.wordpress.com or at the Temkin Group's website, www.TemkinGroup.com. 

For more information about Temkin Group, visit www.TemkinGroup.com.