Tuesday, October 1, 2024, is Customer Experience (CX) Day, a global celebration of customers and creating exceptional experiences. This initiative, led by the Customer Experience Professional Association and joined by leading customer-centric organizations and advocates around the world, marks the importance of customer experience as not just a business strategy, but a means of building lasting relationships and consumer trust.

This year’s theme, “Good CX delivers better outcomes for customers, employees and organizations,” provides an organizing principle to tackle what matters most—developing credible proof that prioritizing CX strategy creates stronger customer loyalty, organic customer growth and better returns for the organization.

Busey will extend this year’s celebration throughout the week, starting Monday, September 30 and concluding on Friday, October 4. Each day, we will highlight the service excellence consistently provided by Busey’s teams, sharing customer survey verbatims to showcase examples of how Busey’s values make a difference in the lives of our relationships with our customers.

Valuing CX

In the financial services and banking industries, where competition, regulation and commoditization of products and services level the playing field, customers are most often attracted to companies that value them and offer a superior experience. Not surprisingly, this leads to greater customer loyalty and satisfaction—crucial components of success for all businesses.

At Busey Bank, we remain focused on creating valued relationships, just as we have for more than 155 years. As an organization, we place extraordinary pride on delivering service excellence in all of our business segments by continually listening to customer feedback and applying that feedback. We leverage insights to help inform our service standards and the products/services that support customers’ growing needs.

In 2023, Busey created and launched the Client Experience & Survey Playbook, a guide for all associates to understand the interconnected nature of customer satisfaction, delivering personalized service excellence to customers and fellow associates in creating sustainable organic growth. The playbook provides associates with tools to fully understand how their daily interactions with customers contribute to Busey’s overall success and to the personal success of each customer.

Measuring CX

But how do companies, like Busey Bank, measure their success in offering an industry leading customer experience? This is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS^®) comes into play. NPS is a customer experience metric and the global standard used across industries and organizations to gauge customers’ satisfaction and loyalty.

The score is based on customers’ indication of how likely they are to recommend the company’s products or services to others, typically on a scale from 0 to 10. Final overall scores for the company range from -100 to 100.

A high NPS indicates stronger customer relationships, more referrals and oftentimes greater growth. Using the feedback, companies can get to the heart of why customers would or would not recommend their organization to others and can use that information to make improvements to current operations or guide decision-making on new products and services.

In conjunction with launching a campaign to educate associates about the direct correlation between the Net Promoter Score and customer experience, Busey integrated the playbook into onboarding and training for all associates, regardless of role or tenure. As a result, the company set a record-high corporate Net Promoter Score of 56.5 in 2023, a 14.4-point improvement from 2022 and well above the banking average of 23.5.

Along with record high NPS scores, Busey has another customer experience milestone to celebrate: On August 8, 2024, the organization logged survey ticket number 100,000, meaning associates have followed up with 100,000 survey responses in the six years since launching our survey platform.

Following up with customers is one of the primary ways that we set ourselves apart from other financial institutions, actively demonstrating our promise of service excellence. At Busey, celebrating customer experience doesn’t happen just on the first of October. We are committed to service excellence every day of the year, now and for generations to come.

To learn more about our full range of products and services, visit busey.com.