There are a lot of ways to explain "Customer Experience." You can use analogies, comparisons, an elevator pitch...you get the idea. Regardless of your approach, the best way to draw attention is to "show me the money." (Yes, that is a Jerry Maguire reference. I couldn't resist.)

When you talk to business leaders about customer experience as a strategy, you can expect to see heads nodding in agreement. It is logical. Focusing on customers makes sense. But, why do some "customer-focused" companies reap the benefits and others don't.

It's about execution.

One of the top challenges sited among customer experience professionals is driving action. We've all encountered what I call the "interesting phenomena"; a moment when you think action is inevitable, but later find that people go back to their regular jobs and it becomes business as usual.

To help B-to-B companies overcome the challenge of creating action, Walker sought to "show the money."

We asked several companies to describe the impact they receive from their customer experience initiatives. They could describe the impact as: Substantial, Moderate, Slight, No Impact, or Negative (not surprising, no one selected "Negative").

We then looked at a one-year change in stock performance for the companies that described the impact as Moderate and Substantial and compared their performance to the S&P 500 and the companies that described the impact as "Slight" or "No impact."