What Marketers Want From IT for Customer Engagement Success

A significant share of senior marketers believe their job security depends upon the effectiveness of their organization’s technology investments and innovation, according to a recent survey from the CMO Council and customer engagement technology company RedPoint Global. Why? Because the stakes are high when it comes to creating a customer experience (CX) that meets the expectations of today’s digitally connected consumers. Unfortunately, most marketers describe their company’s current CX as either “terrible” or “not very good.” To improve, they’re looking to boost data analytics and engagement capabilities. More than 210 senior marketing executives took part in the research. This slideshow presents survey highlights, with charts provided courtesy of the CMO Council and RedPoint Global.

More than one-half of survey respondents said their job either “possibly” or definitely is placed at risk if technology investments fail to meet expectations. Three-quarters said their job either “possibly” or definitely is placed at risk if their customer experience (CX) strategy fails to meet expectations.

Nearly three of five respondents said the need to create personalized experiences to provide “deep relevance and context that is meaningful and valued by the individual customer” is driving tech advancements and innovation for today’s CX strategy. More than one-half said the need to meet customers wherever/whenever they initiate engagement is driving these advancements/innovation.

Nearly four of five organizations have implemented new marketing, data, analytics or customer engagement tech platforms and solutions over the past 12 months. Among those organizations, 52 percent have installed at least five of these platforms or solutions.

More than one-half of respondents describe their organization’s customer experience as either “terrible” or “not very good.” Only 14 percent describe their customer experience efforts as “very good” or “exceptional.”

To improve customer experience and engagement, 35 percent of respondents said their company has focused on accelerating data and IT initiatives to better close skills and capabilities gaps. The same percentage has addressed increased demands for individualized experiences from today’s digitally connected customers.

Among other customer experience-engagement efforts, 23 percent of respondents said their company has reinvested in analytics tech to do more with available data organization-wide. Meanwhile 16 percent said new data and intelligence about real-time actions and behaviors have inspired them to re-think “everything we thought we knew” about customer journeys.

As for immediate future plans, 55 percent of respondents said their company is seeking to improve analytics capabilities to gain a better contextual understanding of the customer. There’s also much interest in connecting engagement systems across all company touchpoints (as opposed to just marketing), as cited by 45 percent of respondents.

When asked to describe what’s keeping them from achieving their data-driven CX strategies, 41 percent of respondents cited “fragmented” engagement systems that fail to connect or deliver a unified view of CX across touchpoints. Nearly three of ten cited silos of customer data that remain inaccessible.

To ensure the consistent delivery of the CX strategy, 42 percent of respondents said they want systems that leverage real-time data to deliver relevant, contextual experiences. An organization-wide, single view of the customer to ensure uniform and consistent engagement was cited by 37 percent of respondents.

To achieve the single view of the customer, 65 percent of respondents said they’d like a single record of a customer that the entire organization contributes to and continuously updates. In addition, 53 percent said they’d benefit from technologies that help organize all data about a customer under one identifier.