To assess the state of customer experience in 2011, Forrester surveyed 118 customer experience professionals around the globe. More than two-thirds said that their firms aim to differentiate based on customer experience. But most companies are ill-prepared to compete on that basis. Not even half have a companywide program to improve customer experience across channels, and only 30% have a dedicated budget to fund those efforts. However, there is hope. We found that having a centralized customer experience team and appointing a single executive to be in charge of customer experience helps knock down barriers to success.