Today’s consumers are harder to win over than ever, despite the myriad avenues and tactics brands can leverage to engage their audiences. A recent survey of Merkle’s revealed that consumers’ needs, overall, are actually quite simple: They want cost-effectiveness, convenience and consistency from their brand experiences.
Mature customer experience (CX) organizations orient their primary focus away from competitor activity and product promotions to zero in on the consumer. “CX leaders,” or organizations that embody the characteristics of mature CX practices, stand out in their commitment to a customer-centric culture that transcends departments. Merkle’s latest report on the state of CX, Winning in Today’s Experience Economy: What CX Leaders Do Differently, looks at reported behaviors of 820 business leaders across 16 countries in North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. The leaders surveyed represent organizations across eight industries, including retail/CPG, automotive and manufacturing, tech and telecom.
To organize segments of CX maturity, our researchers weighed the following inputs:
- Maturity of CX strategy (e.g., how long CX strategies have been in place at a respondent’s organization)
- Commitment and alignment to customer centricity
- Current usage of CX technologies and their business value
- Implementation of AI-driven CX technology
- Customer retention and loyalty change over the past 12 months
- New customer acquisition change in the past 12 months
These inputs revealed five segments, from most to least mature: leaders, embracers, adopters, novices and laggards. Only 19% of respondents’ organizations fell into the leader category, highlighting the need and opportunity for brands to evolve their CX programs.
Leaders share attributes of customer-centricity, correlating to above average client retention and acquisition. These attributes include prioritization of customer feedback over competitor activity; well-integrated marketing technology; and the highest adoption of AI-driven CX solutions.
The research uncovered an encouraging statistic, especially for organizations who aren’t yet CX leaders: Adopters, or organizations that are committed to becoming more customer-centric, see above average client retention and loyalty, as well as increased client acquisition. This finding indicates that even small changes to an organization’s CX strategy can pay big dividends.
Some of these shifts may be easier to execute than others, such as measuring the success of CX programs against long-term success metrics such as customer lifetime value versus touchpoint-specific KPIs such as clicks, downloads or leads. Defining success through the lens of the consumer will force examination of current marketing output in its ability to produce meaningful results. If current work prioritizes leads, but those leads aren’t translating to sales conversions, one can tweak strategy accordingly. Customer-centric success metrics are more likely to gain buy-in across an organization, helping to dissolve some of the internal silos that inhibit customer data sharing and technology integration.
An earlier report of Merkle’s focused on consumer behaviors and attitudes through the lens of customer experience. The study found that while consumers are generally comfortable sharing their data with brands, they are less confident that brands are using this data to better their experiences. We surmised that this finding could have to do with brands’ shortcomings in using customer data to deliver seamless, cross-channel experiences — activations that are only possible with a singular view of the customer.
Our brand leader research found respondents across the board are unlikely to have implemented some of the underlying technology that enables a singular view of the customer across channels. This technology includes data clean rooms (21%) and identity resolution platforms (17%). Disparate views of the same customer are all but guaranteed to produce disjointed experiences.
Finally, it’s important to recognize that successful implementation of AI-driven technology and other innovations is made possible by getting CX fundamentals — including the protection and ethical use of AI — in place first. We often see clients attempt to integrate emerging technologies into their tech stacks, only to be disappointed when they fail to see results. Innovation must be in the customer's service. Even the most exciting new technology will fall short of its promises if it’s leveraging bad data or failing to benefit a brand’s audience.
For more insights into the attributes organizations need to achieve CX excellence, you can view the data here.
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