Monday, December 10, 2018

Report: 49 percent say brands don’t meet customer experience expectations

If you’re one of the many PR and marketing pros fixated on measurement, don’t forget to also focus on your consumers.

A recent report by Xaxis titled, “Measuring Success: The Outcome Media Report” revealed that the majority of marketers (81 percent) say it’s crucial that the results of their digital campaigns correlate with business results such as sales, and nearly the same amount (80 percent) say that meeting business objectives can secure or increase their marketing budgets.

Customer experience is a huge way to drive business results through digital marketing. Seventy-eight percent of consumers said they’re more apt to be loyal to organizations that understand them and what they seek.

Customer experience can go hand-in-hand with delivering positive digital marketing results that boost business goals, but it’s also an area where marketers’ perceptions don’t match consumers’ desires.

The majority of marketers (87 percent) say they’re meeting consumer expectations when it comes to online interactions and customer experiences, revealed Acquia’s Closing the CX Gap: Customer Experience Trends Report 2019. However, many consumers tell a different story.

More than half of consumers (55 percent) think that brand managers are “behind the times” for online and offline interactions, and nearly half (49 percent) say the brands they interact with don’t meet their experience expectations.

Consumer data collection is on the rise, with more marketers using data to tell stories, tailor messages to meet consumers’ behaviors, and better understand consumers to improve interactions and build lasting relationships.

Yet, many marketers aren’t using collected consumer data to the full extent, falling short of consumers’ expectations.

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More than 60 percent of consumers said brand managers don’t do a good job of predicting their needs based on consumers’ personal preferences. Nearly the same amount (61 percent) said brand managers don’t know them, even when they should (using information such as purchase history).

Marketers are even more dissatisfied with online brand experiences when they put themselves in consumers’ shoes.

Sixty-eight percent of consumers said they feel like a generic customer when interacting with brands online, and 63 percent said they’ll ditch a brand if the online experience is poor. In comparison, 79 percent of marketers feel like generic customers through online interactions, and 77 percent will abandon a brand after a poor online experience.

The reports’ findings serve to remind PR and marketing pros that measurement is important, but numbers shouldn’t only support the story you want to tell.

Acquia says:

Marketers today live in a world of analytics and funnels, and measuring performance is a critical part of every marketer’s job. It’s important that the drive to hit quarterly performance metrics doesn’t distract them away from understanding what they’re doing well and what needs work. It’s essential to know how and where customers connect, and to have insight into their motivations. While technology and data are key elements to measuring success, they’re also tools to help better engage customers – but only if used effectively.

Take care to understand your consumer and be sensitive to what your evaluation metrics are actually showing.

The desire to prove ROI to executives is high, but that shouldn’t take away from your ultimate goal of connecting with consumers who could become your next brand ambassadors.

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