Dive Brief:
- An IBM Institute for Business Value study found retailers and brands are falling short on customer experience but can make improvements via cognitive and cloud technologies, according to a press release. The report outlined three areas where improvements can be made: engaging with customers, providing a consistent experience across all touch points and leveraging value-add technologies.
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IBM's conclusion that customer experience is generally lackluster was based on a survey of 507 brands across 25 countries that found an average Customer Experience Index score of 33 on a 100-point scale. The survey covered seven categories: store experience, digital experience, physical/digital integration, mobile experience, omnichannel supply chain, personalization and social media
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In related news, a Leapfrog Marketing Institute study made available to Marketing Dive on the customer journey found only 38% of executives have a dedicated budget for customer experience even though 55% report building budgets with a primary focus on prospects or customers.
Dive Insight:
While cognitive technologies and their ilk are often spoken of in a big-picture, industry restructuring sense, IBM suggests they also provide a lot of value when it comes smaller, individual personalization efforts.
"The common thread, though, is that [brands] must use new tools and technologies [...] and then leverage that information at a hyperlocal level to provide a more expansive, personalized and effective experience wherever consumers want to shop," Laurence Haziot, IBM's global managing director and general manager for the Consumer Industry, said in a statement.
However, IBM also underscored how current personalization efforts are lacking. Seventy-one percent of those surveyed only provide generic marketing messages; 70% of respondents with a loyalty program don’t let the customer choose their preferred reward and 88% don’t provide online functionality for comparing products side-by-side. Surprisingly, 61% of brands don’t offer online chat options for customer service.
Leapfrog's study additionally emphasizes that marketers might be too focused on acquiring more new customers and not enough on ensuring that brand experiences keep existing ones happy and coming back. This might be especially acute in the struggling retail sector.
The in-store experience category was the lowest-scoring category for IBM, indexing at an average of 20. Other data points further illustrate that low figure, such as 88% of brands reporting they do not have the ability to acknowledge customers as they enter a physical location and 79% do not have mobile-enabled associates or otherwise don't provide associates with mobile access to customer information.