What is the Customer Experience (CX) sector?

The Customer Experience refers to the way in which customers relate to the company at each point of the purchase journey. In other words, it is the sum total of customer perceptions and feelings resulting from interactions with a brand's products and services.

 Asking yourself how your customers, current or potential, feel at every point of contact is key to maintaining a relationship with them, so these are important moments in which every decision taken in this regard influences the success of the business. Understanding the consumer, creating a map of each step of the customer's journey through the product and company, achieving an emotional connection, or being able to capture customer feedback can be good steps to follow to achieve a good User Experience.

Sector opportunities

The opportunities offered by the sector are numerous. The future looks set to see the entry of technologies such as artificial intelligence, among others. These can help to automate processes or personalise content, all of this to please and engage a customer who is increasingly bombarded by thousands of adds a day.

On the other hand, the pandemic had a minimal effect on branding, and even further defined the trend towards digitisation of the sector, with the user experience through digital media becoming much more relevant.

Sector segmentation

The sector segmentation described in the analysis contains six groups:

• Type of Touch-Point
• Component Anlaysis
• Implementation Analysis
• Company size analysis
• Type of end-consumer
• Uxer experience design

Funding received

As for the financing received by companies in the sector, it varies according to the type of company. If we focus on the most technological companies, those that will shape the future of the market, we can affirm that financing follows a more than upward trend, with financing rounds at much earlier stages predominating.

On the other hand, the more traditional companies in the sector, those dedicated to the purest customer service, such as call centres, are more mature companies, so the financing rounds carried out are in later stages and of a much larger amount than those mentioned above. The analysis shows a peak in 2018 that marks a before and after in the sector. After that year, both the number of rounds executed and funding raised is much lower.

Acquisitions

In terms of the number of acquisitions made in the sector, more companies in the sector acquire than are acquired. This is the case in both the more traditional and technological segments, although it is true that companies acquired in the latter have a much higher percentage of acquisitions.

The overall numbers support the idea that the number of companies in the sector acquiring other companies is much higher, and in recent years has shown a fairly steady trend, with a peak last year. On the other hand, the trend in the number of companies in the sector being acquired saw a growth of more than 100% last year, and with this year's prospects of at least matching the number in 2021. Many companies in other sectors are becoming interested in Customer Experience (CX) companies, because they see a reliable way to grow their sales and ultimately their business.

Public companies in the sector

There are 188 public companies in the Customer Experience categorisation by Baker Tilly analysts. These are, as usual, companies that are more on the traditional side of consolidation. The report shows the latest companies that have gone public. It shows companies such as SiteMindera platform that makes it easier for consumers to easily search for hotels, arguably the most traditional company. Sprinklr or Infobird, companies that provide software solutions to improve the user experience that is so desired, can also be observed. Seven companies have been listed on the stock exchange in 2021.