Columbia, MD – June 11, 2024

New Report from Merkle Highlights Importance of Customer-First Cultures and Explores Key Characteristics of Organizations that Achieve CX Excellence

Second installment of the 2024 Customer Experience Imperatives examines leaders’ priorities and behaviors through the lens of customer centricity

Merkle, dentsu's leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, today released the second installment of its 2024 Customer Experience Imperatives Report research series, titled Winning in Today’s Experience Economy: What CX Leaders Do Differently. The findings explore the attitudes and priorities of 820 global business leaders across eight industries through the lens of customer centricity.

"With the second installment of this year’s Imperatives series, we wanted to explore the characteristics of CX leadership that seem to hold true across regions and industries,” said Pete Stein, global president of Merkle. “Success in customer centricity requires effort and excellence across a range of related disciplines, including strategy, data management, and technology-powered innovation.”

The research explores four common attributes of CX leadership, across industry verticals and geographies:

1. Leading CX organizations have codified CX strategies and customer-first cultures.
2. CX leaders’ investments are more focused on customer feedback than competitor activity.
3. Leading CX organizations have well integrated technology.
4. CX leaders implement AI-driven CX solutions at a much faster rate than other groups.

This report also reveals which global regions and industries are most likely to embody these attributes.

"I hope this report helps CX-minded business leaders understand where they are in their journeys and where they may need additional focus to achieve their vision,” Stein adds. “We’ve seen over and over that small tweaks to strategy and internal alignment can help put laggards on the path to becoming leaders.”

Merkle has released its CX Imperatives report for the past 12 years, and this is the first year its forward-looking, agenda-setting publication is supported by comprehensive research across both global consumer and CX practitioner populations. The survey, conducted in late 2023, included 2,100 consumers and 820 business leaders across 18 countries.

Visit here to download the report, Winning in Today’s Experience Economy: What CX Leaders Do Differently.

About Merkle

Merkle, a dentsu company, powers the experience economy. For more than 35 years, the company has put people at the heart of its approach to digital business transformation. As the only integrated experience consultancy in the world with a heritage in data science and business performance, Merkle delivers holistic, end-to-end experiences that drive growth, engagement, and loyalty. Merkle’s expertise has earned recognition as a “Leader” by top industry analyst firms, in categories such as digital transformation and commerce, experience design, engineering and technology integration, digital marketing, data science, CRM and loyalty, and customer data management. With more than 16,000 employees, Merkle operates in 30+ countries throughout the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. For more information, visit www.merkle.com