MONTVALE, NJ—KPMG’s research from its report, “Tomorrow’s experience, today,” finds that the leading firms in each country have made progress in how they make sense of—and utilize—the technologies and approaches of the future in order to create distinctive experiences for their customer today. In fact, the leaders in its research tend to share four common signs of success:
- A deep understanding of the mind of the customer and their evolving needs
- First-mover knowledge and experience of new technologies and approaches
- Mastery of The Six Pillars of customer experience
- Orchestration and connectedness across their ecosystem of partners
For nearly a decade, its member firm professionals have been asking customers in the U.K. and the U.S. about their individual customer experiences (CX). Over that time, more than 170,000 consumers have been interviewed and 2,300 brands measured to collect more than two million individual evaluations. This year, it has expanded its research around the globe, taking in the views of more than 54,000 consumers across 14 different markets.
KPMG measures the Six Pillars:
- Personalization: Using individualized attention to drive emotional connection
- Integrity: Being trustworthy and engendering trust
- Expectations: Managing, meeting and exceeding customer expectations
- Time and Effort: Minimizing customer effort and creating frictionless processes
- Resolution: Turning a poor experience into a great one
- Empathy: Achieving an understanding of the customer’s circumstances to drive deep rapport
To measure CX at hotels, KPMG asked more than 7,500 Americans. Here are the 2018 and 2019 rankings, respectively:
- Hampton by Hilton: 54, 16
- Marriott Hotels & Resorts: 34, 21
- Hilton Hotels & Resorts: 52, 27
- Courtyard by Marriott: 33, 42
- DoubleTree by Hilton: 42, 56
- Best Western: 160, 92
- Comfort Inn: 109, 101
- Airbnb: 170, 102
- Holiday Inn: 77, 108
Hampton was 16 out of 224 U.S. companies in customer experience (up from 54 last year). Airbnb is 102, and tied for first with improvements (68 slots) with Best Western. KPMG concludes that hotels rank reasonably high on CX, taking online competition seriously, and working to improve CX.