In our last monthly poll to the thirty two leading brands who make up our Industry Council, 80% of respondents agreed that their organisation understood the link between customer experience and organisational performance.  This indicates a positive sea change in how customer experience is being viewed by the wider organisation. Nonetheless, there is clear consensus around the challenges of making the business case of investment in customer experience to the board. 
 
This week at our Industry Council Leadership Forum and Supplier and Research Council Meetings, these issues were very much on the agenda. The main difficulty articulated by members related to finding robust measurements which draw direct links between an improvement in customer satisfaction and an improvement in organisational performance and profit. Despite a common effort to utilise more recent composite, scientific metrics like NPS, there remains a difficulty in proving causal attribution between the linkages of satisfaction, loyalty and profit. 
 
There were, however, some good news stories from some members who had fruitfully used innovative approaches to make the business case for investment. There were also success stories around drilling down to several core metrics which can be understood clearly enterprise-wide and an emphasis on plain English to avoid the common ‘lost translation’ issues associated with customer experience measurement.  
 
This issue is firmly on the agenda for CCA during 2012 and to this end we have been collating expert industry views as well as research council papers and desk research. We are keen to get your insights on this theme and would encourage you to get in touch if you are facing challenges in this area or if you have had experience of successfully making this business case.