Happy Q3, or happy summer, for all those in the northern hemisphere! In this quarterly roundup, we’re sharing what’s hot in 2024 and what all of your Experience Management peers have been learning from XM Institute lately. In Q2, as in previous years, we focused our energy on publishing the most up-to-date heavy-hitting numbers and resources to help you prove the value of your organization’s Experience Management programs.

These resources join nearly 800 resources housed in the XM Library. To help you navigate through all this content, we’re here to spotlight some of the top resources from the last quarter. The list is split into three groups: our most popular new resources, our favorite new resources, and our all-time top-performing resources.

If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all XM Institute’s insights, we recommend signing up for daily or weekly email alerts, which will let you know whenever we publish new content.

The Rising Stars: Most Popular Content of Q2

Here are our four most popular pieces of content from Q2 2024:

• Template: Value Chain Framework (Tool). Few Experience Management professionals are currently able to connect their work to financial outcomes, which makes it quite difficult for them to secure the budget, resources, and support they need to continue driving change. This tool – our most popular resource from Q2 – shares a framework for aligning XM efforts with organizational values, securing budget, and assessing the impact of your programs and activities. Learn how to demonstrate the value of your work in the language your organization understands and avoid certain traps that may render your programs ineffective or unmeasurable.
  
• NPS Starts to Stabilize in the Wake of the Pandemic (Blog). According to our research, Net Promoter Score is the most frequently measured customer experience metric, so it is no surprise that our annual analysis of our NPS benchmark data was a popular resource this past quarter. We share the biggest NPS gains and losses across 22 industries and identify the average NPS ratings different generations of US consumers give brands. Three years after the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent dive in NPS, we’re beginning to see scores stabilize at a new normal, with a cross-industry average XMI Customer Ratings – NPS of 18.
• The State of Customer Experience Management, 2024 (Data Snapshot). Another always-popular annual resource examines the state of Customer Experience Management in 2024. Topics range from the top obstacles to CX success (other competing organizational priorities and poor integration across systems) to the momentum of AI-powered tools (prepare to see more of Gen AI and text analytics!). We find the results of our first broad XM-Centric Culture assessment to be particularly interesting – forty percent of practitioners evaluated their organizational culture as nurturing or very nurturing to XM practices.
• How Consumers Cut Spending Across 20 Industries After Poor Experiences, 2024 (Data Snippet). Poor customer experiences yields poor consumer loyalty. Obvious? Perhaps. But consumers react to bad experiences differently depending on the industry. For example poor fast food experiences are most likely to result in a spending reduction, while negative experiences with public utilities and colleges/universities are least likely to do so. This data offers an indication as to which organizations may benefit from greater investment in their CX programs.
  

The Unsung Heroes: XM Institute’s Favorite Content of Q2

Here are four of our favorite pieces of content we published in Q2: 

• Exploring Success, Effort, and Emotion for 23 Industries (2019-2023) (Blog). XM Institute has collected data on success, effort, and emotion for more than five years, which gives us a wealth of information and the ability to compare CX metric norms pre- and post-pandemic. Some trends have remained consistent – emotion still scores over 10 points below the other two metrics – but on average, scores are down across the board. There are a few outliers: CX scores increased for grocers, TV/ISP, and retailers, all of which enabled the most popular pandemic pastimes, while electronics and software brands’ CX fell the furthest since 2019.
• The Economics of Net Promoter Score, 2024 (Data Snapshot). This is one of our classic annual reports, which once again reinforces the point that converting detractors into promoters has significant positive effects on consumer loyalty behaviors. Check out the average NPS for 23 consumer-facing industries, including consumer payment, social media, and retail brands.
  
• The State of Customer Experience (CX) Maturity, 2024 (Data Snippet). The little sister to our annual State of CX Management, this data snippet stands strong on its own. From CX practitioners’ responses to our CX Competency and Maturity Assessment, we were able to gauge that the majority of organizations are still in the first or second stage of CX maturity. To those who are just getting their organization started with CX, this snippet lets you know: never fear, you’re in good company.
  
• Global Study: ROI of Customer Experience, 2024 (Data Snapshot). We published another of our heavy-hitter data reports at the close of the quarter, so while this report may not have had the time to become a crowd sensation yet, we expect it to pick up steam as we roll into Q3. Spanning 20 industries and 26 countries, this report shares the increased customer loyalty organizations enjoy when they deliver satisfying experiences to consumers – and the pitfalls of delivering poor customer experiences. Check out the full report to learn how the ROI of CX fluctuates from country to country and industry to industry.

The Heavyweights: All-Time Most Popular Content 

Since launching the website in the middle of 2020, a few of our resources – especially our more fundamental resources – have remained consistently popular quarter-to-quarter. Here are some of the most-read assets that we’ve ever published:

• How to Build a CX Program Roadmap (How-to Guide). Quickly rising to our most popular resources, this comprehensive how-to guide breaks down step-by-step how to create your customer experience (CX) program roadmap, an essential piece in aligning stakeholders and developing a set of actionable activities. We’ve created a guide for building an employee experience (EX) roadmap as well.
• What is Experience Management? (Multimedia). This short video breaks down the basics of Experience Management (XM) and the business case for its value. You can send this Launchpad to colleagues for a quick overview on XM, or give yourself a refresher. If you are interested in more details, check out our Introduction to Experience Management Launchpad as well.
• CX Maturity: Assessment (Tool). We created this free assessment to help you evaluate your performance across the six XM Competencies and 20 XM Skills, which will help you determine your organization’s stage of maturity. This tool can then help you develop action plans to progress towards your CX goals. In addition, we have Digital CX, EX, and XM maturity assessments available.
  
• The Five Essential Elements of CX Program Governance (Blog). This long-standing blog post breaks down the five elements of a strong CX governance model, which are essential to guide decision-making, alignment, accountability, and conflict resolution for your organization. Learn more about the five elements: CX Core Team, Executive Sponsor, Steering Committee, Working Group, and CX Ambassadors.
  

The bottom line: Take advantage of all these great resources to prepare for a strong second half of the year!