The XM Institute published a new report, The Global State of Experience Management (“XM”). The research is based on a survey of more than 1,200 senior executives from across six countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the U.S.

Before I share some of the findings, I just want to say that this report is free to download. As I’ve mentioned in the past, one of the cool things about moving to Qualtrics is that we get to share more of our research like this. Now on to my commentary…

First of all, we found that executives around the world regard XM as important – which is not surprising given its correlation with sales growth and profitability. However, the degree to which they focus on XM varies between countries.

Canadian executives are most likely to consider improving XM a top organizational priority, while German executives are least likely. Additionally, which experience areas executives are most concerned with improving also differs from country to country. Respondents from Germany and the U.S. are most focused on customer experience (CX), respondents from Australia and Canada are most focused employee experience (EX), respondents from Japan are most focused on product experience (PX), and respondents from the UK are equally focused on EX and brand experience (BX).

This report also examines how executives expect to use customer and employee feedback in the coming year as well as what obstacles are impeding their path to XM success. Organizations that are leading the way with XM most often describe technology limitations as an obstacle, while firms that are lagging in XM point to a lack of a clear strategy as a key obstacle.