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“Experience” is one of the most overused terms in marketing and strategy conversations. Whether it’s customer experience, user experience, or employee experience, organizations often set bold goals without clear definitions, consistent metrics, or actionable roadmaps.
The challenge is not deciding if experience matters, but making it matter in ways that deliver measurable results.
Many CX, UX, and EX frameworks look powerful on paper, yet fail to create change in practice. Common roadblocks include:
Audrey Olzem, SVP of Marketing Solutions at CUSG, has seen these pitfalls up close. “Behavioral data only tells part of the story, like debit card usage or app interactions. But feelings and emotions, directly from the members’ mouths, have to be part of the experience equation.”
Seventy percent of buying experience are based on how the customer feels they are being treated. This aligns with findings from HBR’s “New Science of Customer Emotions,” which shows that companies who systematically link emotional motivators to behaviors see significantly higher growth. Fully emotionally connected customers are, on average, 52 percent more valuable than those who are simply satisfied. Yet most organizations still treat emotion as guesswork instead of a measurable driver of strategy.
In 2024, CUSG’s experience platforms analyzed more than 300,000 survey responses. Beyond scores, the team dug into comments, sentiment, and generational differences. Clear emotional patterns emerged:
“These differences are a wake-up call,” Olzem explains. “Each persona deserves its own journey. At first that seems more complex, but the sentiment analysis shows you where voices overlap and where friction points are universal. Sometimes it’s as simple as a logout button on online banking that half your members can’t find. Once you see it in their words, there’s no question about what needs to be fixed.”
Forrester’s Budget Planning Guide 2025: Customer Experience reinforces this point. The report highlights that CX investments are most effective when they are tied directly to clear operational triggers and measurable behaviors, not just high-level journey maps. In other words, focusing on a few friction-heavy moments delivers more ROI than spreading efforts thin across the entire lifecycle.
One of the biggest lessons from experience research is that emotions and behaviors are not the same. AI can track what people do, like over-drafting or skipping payments, but it can’t always explain why. Two members showing the same behavior might feel very differently: one may feel shame about being “bad with money,” another may be frustrated by fees, and another may be indifferent because they know a paycheck is coming tomorrow. Without the emotional context, the data alone leaves leaders guessing about what action will actually build trust or loyalty.
That is why asking directly matters. Surveys and conversations send a signal that says, “We care how you’re doing, not just what you’re doing.” This kind of listening fosters emotional loyalty, not just transactional loyalty, which is especially important in financial services where trust is the foundation of every relationship.
Through years of work with financial institutions, CUSG has seen that a simple, repeatable process creates the most impact:
Olzem points to one example: “We work with a credit union that responds to every survey response with genuine thought. If it’s negative, the CEO personally reaches out, sometimes with a phone call. That mix of real-time analytics and heartfelt follow-up doesn’t just resolve issues, it builds trust not only with members, but employees as well.”
Negative emotional sentiment is one of the strongest predictors of customer attrition. A study by brand intelligence business Motista, showed that customers that are emotionally connected to brands have a 306% higher lifetime value than customers that are merely satisfied.
HBR’s research backs this up. They found that customers who feel both seen and emotionally connected are far more likely to stay loyal, buy more, and recommend the brand—even when satisfaction scores alone would not have predicted it.
When organizations, particularly CUSG MemberXP clients, move from broad frameworks to focused action, the business impact is clear. One financial institution cut loan application abandonment by 28 percent in a single quarter by redesigning just five friction-heavy touchpoints. Another simplified its new member journey based on feedback, turning three years of survey insights into streamlined processes that led to 14 percent growth in membership.
“The leaders who win,” Olzem says, “are the ones who treat feedback as a living system. It’s not a report you file away. It’s something you act on daily, with accountability and speed.”
Forrester’s 2025 research echoes this lesson: CX teams should prioritize metrics tied to revenue outcomes, such as reducing account abandonment or increasing cross-sell, over vanity measures like survey volume. By connecting data and emotion to financial results, experience strategy becomes a growth engine instead of a marketing initiative.
A prime example of this principle in action is Service 1st Federal Credit Union, a CUSG MemberXP client that saw remarkable growth and improvement through focused experience strategies. Between 2023 and 2024, membership grew by more than 16 percent, over 14 points higher than peer averages. The credit union nearly doubled peer performance in net worth and loan growth, while assets increased at more than double the rate of competitors.
Experience scores backed up the financial impact: Service 1st earned top rankings in surveys across mobile app, online banking, new member onboarding, and overall satisfaction. Their success extended to “mystery shop” measures as well, with recognition for reliable service, advocacy, and appreciative staff. Together, these results show how aligning feedback-driven improvements with operational goals can accelerate both loyalty and growth.
If “experience” is on your 2026 roadmap, keep it focused and actionable. Define what each type of experience means for your organization. Tie it to specific goals. Review and refine your journey maps quarterly so they stay relevant.
Olzem sums it up simply: “Data on behavior gives you the activity, but emotional analysis gives you the why. Emotions drive decisions, and when you connect the two, you unlock loyalty that lasts.”
The research is clear: data without emotion is only half the picture. The competitive advantage comes when you connect both.
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“Experience” is one of the most overused terms in marketing and strategy conversations. Whether it’s customer experience, user experience, or employee experience, organizations often set bold goals without clear definitions, consistent metrics, or actionable roadmaps.
The challenge is not deciding if experience matters, but making it matter in ways that deliver measurable results.
Many CX, UX, and EX frameworks look powerful on paper, yet fail to create change in practice. Common roadblocks include:
Audrey Olzem, SVP of Marketing Solutions at CUSG, has seen these pitfalls up close. “Behavioral data only tells part of the story, like debit card usage or app interactions. But feelings and emotions, directly from the members’ mouths, have to be part of the experience equation.”
Seventy percent of buying experience are based on how the customer feels they are being treated. This aligns with findings from HBR’s “New Science of Customer Emotions,” which shows that companies who systematically link emotional motivators to behaviors see significantly higher growth. Fully emotionally connected customers are, on average, 52 percent more valuable than those who are simply satisfied. Yet most organizations still treat emotion as guesswork instead of a measurable driver of strategy.
In 2024, CUSG’s experience platforms analyzed more than 300,000 survey responses. Beyond scores, the team dug into comments, sentiment, and generational differences. Clear emotional patterns emerged:
“These differences are a wake-up call,” Olzem explains. “Each persona deserves its own journey. At first that seems more complex, but the sentiment analysis shows you where voices overlap and where friction points are universal. Sometimes it’s as simple as a logout button on online banking that half your members can’t find. Once you see it in their words, there’s no question about what needs to be fixed.”
Forrester’s Budget Planning Guide 2025: Customer Experience reinforces this point. The report highlights that CX investments are most effective when they are tied directly to clear operational triggers and measurable behaviors, not just high-level journey maps. In other words, focusing on a few friction-heavy moments delivers more ROI than spreading efforts thin across the entire lifecycle.
One of the biggest lessons from experience research is that emotions and behaviors are not the same. AI can track what people do, like over-drafting or skipping payments, but it can’t always explain why. Two members showing the same behavior might feel very differently: one may feel shame about being “bad with money,” another may be frustrated by fees, and another may be indifferent because they know a paycheck is coming tomorrow. Without the emotional context, the data alone leaves leaders guessing about what action will actually build trust or loyalty.
That is why asking directly matters. Surveys and conversations send a signal that says, “We care how you’re doing, not just what you’re doing.” This kind of listening fosters emotional loyalty, not just transactional loyalty, which is especially important in financial services where trust is the foundation of every relationship.
Through years of work with financial institutions, CUSG has seen that a simple, repeatable process creates the most impact:
Olzem points to one example: “We work with a credit union that responds to every survey response with genuine thought. If it’s negative, the CEO personally reaches out, sometimes with a phone call. That mix of real-time analytics and heartfelt follow-up doesn’t just resolve issues, it builds trust not only with members, but employees as well.”
Negative emotional sentiment is one of the strongest predictors of customer attrition. A study by brand intelligence business Motista, showed that customers that are emotionally connected to brands have a 306% higher lifetime value than customers that are merely satisfied.
HBR’s research backs this up. They found that customers who feel both seen and emotionally connected are far more likely to stay loyal, buy more, and recommend the brand—even when satisfaction scores alone would not have predicted it.
When organizations, particularly CUSG MemberXP clients, move from broad frameworks to focused action, the business impact is clear. One financial institution cut loan application abandonment by 28 percent in a single quarter by redesigning just five friction-heavy touchpoints. Another simplified its new member journey based on feedback, turning three years of survey insights into streamlined processes that led to 14 percent growth in membership.
“The leaders who win,” Olzem says, “are the ones who treat feedback as a living system. It’s not a report you file away. It’s something you act on daily, with accountability and speed.”
Forrester’s 2025 research echoes this lesson: CX teams should prioritize metrics tied to revenue outcomes, such as reducing account abandonment or increasing cross-sell, over vanity measures like survey volume. By connecting data and emotion to financial results, experience strategy becomes a growth engine instead of a marketing initiative.
A prime example of this principle in action is Service 1st Federal Credit Union, a CUSG MemberXP client that saw remarkable growth and improvement through focused experience strategies. Between 2023 and 2024, membership grew by more than 16 percent, over 14 points higher than peer averages. The credit union nearly doubled peer performance in net worth and loan growth, while assets increased at more than double the rate of competitors.
Experience scores backed up the financial impact: Service 1st earned top rankings in surveys across mobile app, online banking, new member onboarding, and overall satisfaction. Their success extended to “mystery shop” measures as well, with recognition for reliable service, advocacy, and appreciative staff. Together, these results show how aligning feedback-driven improvements with operational goals can accelerate both loyalty and growth.
If “experience” is on your 2026 roadmap, keep it focused and actionable. Define what each type of experience means for your organization. Tie it to specific goals. Review and refine your journey maps quarterly so they stay relevant.
Olzem sums it up simply: “Data on behavior gives you the activity, but emotional analysis gives you the why. Emotions drive decisions, and when you connect the two, you unlock loyalty that lasts.”
The research is clear: data without emotion is only half the picture. The competitive advantage comes when you connect both.
