Customer centricity sector study: how companies focus on their customers
Customer centricity is a key success factor for companies, and the CI Score measures how customers perceive this aspect.
Customer centricity is a crucial success factor for companies, but do you know where your organization stands? The Customer Impact Score (CI Score) offers a solution. Developed by Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, this Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is an empirical tool that aims to measure and improve customer centricity within companies. It uses a standardized survey to evaluate the level of customer centricity as perceived by customers themselves.
At Apple, the customer is and will always be at the center of everything we do.
The CI Score is based on more than 100 criteria, and it has been validated in a wide variety of sectors in order to guarantee that it is relevant, meaningful, and applicable to everyday practice. We’ll now take a closer look at the CI Score and how it’s used in the world of business.
CI Score Market Study (2022)
A market study in 2022 used the CI Score to evaluate 19 Swiss companies. Proceeding from 15 criteria which can be assigned to three dimensions (namely emotionality, individuality and functionality), the survey shows how customer-centered the respective organization is in the eyes of its customers.
The CI Score not only measures what customers experience, but in general those factors that influence the customer experience. The sector comparison reveals that criteria relating to emotionality are rated worst when compared to those linked to functionality and individuality.
Industry-wide comparison
If one looks at the seven sectors that were analyzed, one can see differences in the individual companies’ levels of customer centricity. These differences are less pronounced when it comes to retailers and health insurance providers, which suggests that customers are consistent in how they perceive these particular sectors. On the other hand, when it comes to banks and state-owned enterprises there are major discrepancies between the CI scores of the individual providers.
It’s striking that the mean values in the market study are all negative. This result is in stark contrast to the CC-Score sector study which measures how a company’s employees perceive its level of customer centricity (LUASA, 2017): all the mean values are positive here. An obvious discrepancy therefore becomes apparent: employees’ assessments are based on measures that companies have already taken, yet it’s clear that customers haven’t yet seen any evidence of them.
The CC-Score is the counterpart to the CI Score
The Customer Centricity Score (CC-Score) complements the CI-Score and reflects the internal perspective of a company’s employees. Taken together, these two scores form the basis to holistically evaluate an organization’s customer centricity and derive sustainable solutions.
Interested?
If you’d like to learn more about the Customer Impact Score, you can download a summary of the Swiss Market Study (2022) and gain an insight into measuring customer centricity from the customers’ perspective.
