Key Takeaways

We surveyed executives around the world about the state of experience management at their organizations. We detail their experience management capabilities, momentum, and more in our upcoming publication, Global Executive Study: The State of XM, 2021. In this snapshot, we examine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on companies’ changes to customer and employee experiences according to their executives. Some key takeaways include:

‘Back to normal’ is still several months away. Even prior to Omicron’s dispersion*, just one-third of executives believed that their business environments already had or would return to normal within the next 6 months. On average, they say to expect normalization in 11 months.
Customer needs have changed significantly. Over half of executives said their customers’ needs have changed ”significantly” or “very significantly.” Japanese executives reported such a shift least frequently, while Brazilian executives reported the most dramatic change.
Employee attrition is up almost everywhere. Executives in all countries surveyed reported that attrition was up. The exception was Brazil, where executives reported attrition 23-percentage points lower than prior to the pandemic. More than half of executives in the US, UK, Singapore, and Germany report higher attrition rates.
It’s more important than ever to use employee and customer feedback. More than three-quarters of executives believe it’s more important to collect and act on both customer and employee feedback now compared to before COVID-19. Just four percent said using feedback is less important.

*The data used for these findings was collected prior to the emergence of the Omicron variant in November 2021.