2011 has been a turbulent year across the globe with raft of historically significant events unfolding before our eyes. From the birth of the Arab Spring and eurozone financial crisis to the London riots and Japanese earthquake, there have been dramatic events across world. Many of these have resulted in huge transformation and the implications of others are still to be felt to their fullest extent. What is evident is that events happening across the globe directly affect our daily lives. As the economic storm battering confidence across the globe looks set to continue into 2012, business leaders who focused primarily in the last year on short-term exigencies can no longer afford to be disengaged from longer-term strategic issues.

 

While there are unknown elements in the future, many of which will be challenging, there are also exciting opportunities from factors such as: ‘the Cloud’; new enabling technologies; new working patterns; and new contact channels.

 

Our task is to work out how best to harness these opportunities for the simultaneous benefit of customers and our organisations. In order to do this effectively we need to understand our customers’ preferences and to up-skill our employees to become ‘knowledge workers’ who can meet the needs of customers who want increasingly complex issues resolved fast.

 

In 2012 our work at CCA will capitalise on the wealth of knowledge possessed by our member organisations and expert advisers and on the ground-breaking work already under way through Customer Experience Council, Research Council and Supplier Council. We are committed to delivering robust and up-to-the-minute research to support your sustainability and growth, especially during the context of rapid technological change and within a transforming macro-economic environment.  It is during this time of instability that we believe research has most value in helping organisations make critical and difficult decisions.

 

We wish all of our members a very Happy New Year and look forward to working with them again in 2012!