TAKEAWAY:

Businesses are failing to meet evolving customer expectations and are seeing their margins suffer - yet don't have comprehensive CEM programs in place

A holistic personalised view?

What are organisations currently able to actually achieve in terms of enhancing the experience of their customers and prospects? The good news is that 91% of organisations claim to be able to personalise at least some element of the customer experience automatically and in real time using the technology systems they have in place.

However, 83% are only able to deliver on certain elements of what customers are now expecting and cannot deliver a completely blended customer experience. Indeed, for the sample as a whole, most percentages are close to 40%, suggesting some 60% cannot deliver against each element.

Uniqueness:

Nevertheless, the most commonly adopted element of real-time personalisation is to treat each customer as 'unique' where a company can automatically deliver communications tailored to an individual's preferences (46%). Furthermore, 42% of companies claim to be able to automatically inform customers of products / services of potential interest based on their past purchase history.

But the research also shows that 69% of consumers now expect to be treated as 'unique' by organisations, where they are contacted in a way they want, and offered products and services tailored to their preferences and previous shopping habits. Indeed, consumers are willing to put their money where their mouth is, with 66% saying they would rather spend money with companies that treat them in this way and as an individual.

Single customer view:

In addition, 44% of companies are able to provide customer-facing staff with a single customer view in real time when a customer contacts the company. 38% say they can link together in real time all threads of communication across different channels (e.g. web, phone, social media etc).

However, consumer expectations are high on this front, with 70% wanting organisations to offer them a wide variety of contact methods and for customer-facing staff to be fully up to speed on past conversations, emails and tweets etc.

Customer Effort:

Understanding:

While most of these business managers who say they deal with customers have heard of the term 'Customer Effort', only 28% think the impact on their customers is significant with respect to their spending, retention and satisfaction.

Perhaps surprisingly, more MDs, CEOs & owners (96%), those in R&D (95%), finance (94%) and supply chain management (100%) believe low Customer Effort has an impact on their customers, compared to fewer in sales (90%), marketing (87%) and customer services (92%). But MDs, CEOs & owners (41%) and business managers in customer services roles (37%) lead the way in believing the impact to be significant.

Tackling Customer Effort:

As with CEM programmes discussed above, more companies think Customer Effort is important than are actually doing anything to lower it for their customers. Indeed, among those who have heard of Customer Effort, just 46% have put in place any initiatives to try and reduce it during the last 3 years. However, another 34% say they have plans to do so, whereas just 12% say they do not have any plans of this nature.

This is despite the fact that 88% of global consumers would rather spend their money with companies that make it easy for them to buy products and services

Importance of CEM in 2014:

95% of business managers in large organizations around the world say CEM will be important to their organization in 2014 and this includes 49% who think it will be extremely important. The more senior a respondent, the more importance they place on CEM, with 69% of MDs, CEOs & owners and 69% of C-level / VP level respondents thinking it will be extremely important, as well as 60% of directors and 50% of senior managers.

CEM programmes in place:

Are companies following through on this sentiment with solid and decisive action? The research shows that 59% of organisations have a comprehensive CEM programme in place - but this means 2 in every 5 companies do not.

However, such programmes are especially common among companies selling through mobile technologies (apps - 80% or mobile-enabled websites -74%).

Pervasive CEM:

Whether organisations have a formal CEM programme or not, the research shows that companies have been very busy trying to improve the way they deal with their customers. Indeed, during the last 12 months, 81% of business managers saw at least some of their department projects and initiatives aimed specifically at improving the customer experience and on average, 48% of a department's projects and initiatives were targeted on the customer experience.