Five business problems that will constrain your CX efforts

Customers no longer want to just transact with your brand, they want to experience it.

The capability, knowledge and technology underpinning innovative customer experiences continue to progress at a breakneck pace, offering brands new opportunities to build valuable customer relationships.

For some, it’s a daunting challenge, for others - an exciting possibility. Wherever you land, business and marketing leaders must engage in the evolving customer experience space if they want to ensure the longevity of the brands they captain. 

From personalisation to campaigns that span physical and digital channels - there isn't a shortage of business problems for leaders to overcome. But without addressing the most important problems, your brand will be stifled from delivering the exceptional experiences your customers expect.

Now is the time to tackle these problems head-on. If evolving your brand’s customer experience is your mandate, we’ve prioritised the issues you need to address first so that you can build real momentum in this increasingly important space. 

Omnichannel marketing is here to stay, embrace it

Now is the time to get really serious about bridging the gap across physical and digital channels. When it comes to omnichannel marketing, the bar has well and truly been set. 

And consumers are starting to notice.

Brands can no longer afford to win customers with a single-message campaign hastily splattered across all channels. Particularly when their competitors are pampering customers with a personalised omnichannel experience that is built with their personal convenience in mind. 

According to one study by the marketing platform Omnisend, omnichannel campaigns (three or more channels) when compared to single-channel campaigns, saw an increase of 250% in engagement and purchases, 13% increase in basket size and 90% higher customer retention rate¹.

Compelling right? 

Achieving omnichannel excellence is a worthy pursuit. Leaders inspired by these possibilities need to motivate teams to overcome the temptation to deliver diffused campaigns and do the hard work of delivering exciting and personal customer experiences at scale.  

The continued rise of Gen Z and Millenials

Consumer behaviour and demographics are always in flux, an inevitability of business. But the last few years have really expanded our imaginations when it comes to the kind of change that’s possible. 

COVID-19 has left a lasting impact on all aspects of the world and will no doubt continue to over the coming year. Two years of forced savings, generous government assistance and reduced spending in between lockdowns have left Australians with $260 billion in savings². Soon retailers will inevitably move from thinking about chasing ‘share of wallet’ to ‘share of savings’.  

Meanwhile, pandemic pandemonium has somewhat disguised the growing Gen Z and Millennial market that now makeup 35% of the total retail spend in Australia. According to the latest NextGen report from Afterpay, by 2030 their spend is predicted to rise to 48%. Along with more buying power, these new consumers bring with them new channels (TikTok) and new shopping habits (ethical and sustainable)³. If creating engaging customer experiences is a priority, marketers and customer custodians need to constantly assess how their products, services, brands and resources are evolving to meet these changes in customer behaviour and demographics.

If not, you stand to miss out on almost half of the future consumer retail spend.

Get accountable

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”

We’ve probably all lost count of the number of times we’ve sat in a meeting and heard the famous John Wanamaker quote trotted out to justify a lack of reporting on marketing spend. For better (or for worse) marketers are increasingly expected to be able to account for their budget and improve on it. But an often frenetic pace and underlying data and reporting issues can make it difficult. 

Attribution, ROI and test and learn are all increasingly sophisticated ways of achieving this accountability amongst marketers. We’ve bundled a few terms together here, and they all have their own nuances but at their core, they’re about two things:

1. Tracing the effect an input variable has on an output variable
2. How this correlates to a predetermined business objective

As an industry, we’ve moved past the simple A/B testing, and acquisition attribution models, to look at how test and learn frameworks can be used to track how strategic and creative decisions can impact business objectives.  

Establishing a rigorous form of accountability is essential to building momentum in your CX efforts this year. If you’re falling behind your competition, take the time to invest in these processes now. When you catch up, you’ll be able to maintain your pace over the long term.    

The third-party cookie jar is empty

2021 was a big year for data and privacy. Google flagged the phase-out of third-party cookies and Apple pushed to put users back in control of their own data⁴. This point will likely make the list of marketers' business challenges for years to come.

We can expect consumers to want greater control over their own data and privacy. This will take numerous forms including:

• Consumers share less of their data with companies if the perceived value exchange isn’t there.
• Product and service offerings specifically targeting consumers focused on these issues, e.g. Signal messenger app, Brave web browser and every VPN provider out there.
• Tech companies following Apple and Google’s lead in protecting customer data.
• Consumers taking matters into their own hands with class actions and complaints to regulators, and
• Regulators and Law Makers further tightening data and privacy requirements as has occurred in the EU with their General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law (2016).

But finding new ways of gathering zero-party and first-party information might be a blessing in disguise.

Customers that truly find value in your brand will still be willing to share their data with you through other mediums. And naturally, brands will be forced to pursue more intimate relationships with their high-value customers. 

What happens next though is crucial in maintaining this deep valuable customer relationship.

Integration and democratisation of data

Every business is inundated with demographic, behavioural and commercial data. How this data is stored, integrated and presented allows marketers (and other customer experience professionals) to access, integrate and improve their marketing efforts is vital.

All too often data is siloed within business functions, not integrated across technology solutions, or not entrusted to those who could use it to provide a better customer experience. The concern is always that the data will be misunderstood, shared or used inappropriately.

Those businesses that are able to collaborate across business functions, extract meaningful insights from their data and centralise them in a way that benefits all aspects of the business will ultimately create holistic customer experiences that will delight customers over the long term.

Get in touch today

What are the business problems holding your brand back from creating customer experiences that engage your most valuable customers? 

We’re committed to helping our clients, and business and marketing leaders like yourself, solve these issues and keep the customer experience front of mind. 

We can help you build valuable relationships with your customers and keep your business on track toward its strategic plans for FY23 and beyond. 

References

1. Bernard Meyer, What we can learn from omnichannel statistics for 2022, (5 April 2022), omnisend.
2. Colin Brinsden, Unemployment rate lowest since August 2008, (20 January 2022), Canberra Times.
3. Atharva Karandikar, Millennials and Gen Z in Australia: Next Gen Index, (August 2021), Afterpay & Accenture.
4. Olga Andrienko, SERPs, Traffic and Trends: Mobile vs. Desktop in 2021 (10 March 2021), Semrush.