CX Leaders Trends & Insights
2021 Corporate Edition
An Execs In The Know Report Series
Key Insights
- 66% of CX leaders described the shift to work-from-home (WFH) as having a “Very Positive” or “Positive” impact on their ability to meet their customers’ needs and expectations.
- 71% of survey respondents indicated ongoing internal operational challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary residual challenge — workforce shortages.
- Year-over-year, outsourcing pay models remained most unchanged, with two exceptions: both “Per Full-Time Employee” and “Risk/Reward Basis” saw similar pullbacks of roughly one-third, likely an expression of a tight labor market and a stronger shift to an on-demand workforce.
- 84% of respondents in 2021 felt their brands were generally meeting needs and expectations. This result has trended up since 2019, possibly due to the perceived changes in consumer expectations resulting from the onset of the pandemic.
- Only 16% of CX leaders thought agents trained remotely performed worse than those trained in-center, down from 29% in 2020 (page 13)
- 45% of respondents have made a change to their outsourcing partner portfolio in the past 18 months, while 44% expect no geolocation shifts in the future.
- 69% of CX leaders expect “Support Technologies” to be among their top three areas of investment in 2022, with “Recruiting, Hiring, Onboarding, and Training/Coaching” a distant second, at 32%.
- While CX leaders think consumers mostly want more Self-Service solutions to make the process as easy as possible, most consumers actually want reduced wait times and better agents; at the same time, only 45% of respondents are measuring the abandonment rates of their self-service solutions.
- 19% of CX leaders don’t think their organizations are using program data in an appropriate and productive way.
