97% of executives agree that delivering a great customer experience is critical to business advantage and results, and respondents estimate that the average potential revenue loss for not offering a positive, consistent and brand-relevant customer experience is 20% of annual revenue, according to Oracle's “Global Insights on Succeeding in the Customer Experience Era report.

Other key results:

- 93% of executives say that improving the customer experience is one of their organization’s top three priorities in the next two years, and 91% wish to be considered a customer experience leader in their industry.

- 37% are just getting started with a formal customer experience initiative, and only 20% consider the state of their customer experience initiative to be advanced.

- The study revealed that business executives underestimate the impact of customer experience on behavior. 49% of executives surveyed indicated that customers will switch brands due to a poor customer experience, but a full 89% of customers say that they actually have switched brands due to a bad customer experience.

- Social media amplifies the customer voice, and businesses are scrambling to answer. 81% of executives believe that delivering a great customer experience today requires leveraging social media effectively. But, 35% do not have social media for sales channels, and 35% do not have social media for customer service.

- Executives cite limitations from inflexible technology, siloed organizations and systems, and insufficient investment as the biggest obstacles to delivering the best possible customer experience.

- On average, businesses estimate that they will increase spending on customer experience technology by 18% in the next two years. Improving the cross-channel experience and customer analytics are top priorities.

- A good customer experience strategy requires fundamental organizational changes. Successful initiatives that have improved the customer experience span people, process and technology. Executives at organizations that consider their customer experience initiatives as “advanced” appear to have been most successful in engaging their employees by: building training programs and incentives for employees to offer a great experience; updating company core values to include customer experience; implementing a specific technology to improve customer service.

“By empowering customers and employees, breaking down organizational silos, and implementing flexible processes and technology tools, organizations can deliver personalized, seamless customer service through the entire experience lifecycle,” said David Vap, group vice president, Oracle.

Oracle surveyed 1,342 senior-level executives from 18 countries in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.