By Scott Cairney, Digital lead, Avanade Canada
Customer Experience is the single most important investment companies can make to drive competitive advantage. Up until now this has been widely considered common knowledge but quantifying the benefits were next to impossible. At Avanade, we know that investing in a customer experience strategy has a significant financial impact on businesses, and now, through research we’ve found what the investment is worth in hard dollars.
A new study released by Avanade and Sitecore found customer experience can have a profound impact on business. We discovered that for every dollar invested in improving the customer experience, businesses generated three dollars in return. In addition, respondents expect to see an 11 percent increase in revenue in the next 12 months. These are impressive results!
What does this mean for Canadian business? Business leaders have high expectations of their customer experience strategy with 73 per cent of Canadian respondents noting they expect further opportunities to improve profitability when they focus on improving the overall lifetime value of customers. Interestingly enough, an overwhelming 98 per cent of those surveyed have or are developing a customer experience strategy and 90 per cent of those with a strategy in place report that the customer experience strategy is one of their top three priorities.
In terms of the business drivers behind the investment, the research revealed that competition and customer feedback were the main reasons behind prioritizing a customer experience strategy. Sixty-six per cent of Canadian respondents said competition made their organization realize the need to prioritize customer experience, while 38 percent reported customer feedback as the main driver.
However, there are still several obstacles preventing businesses from delivering an effective customer experience. Eighty-six per cent of Canadian respondents listed three important obstacles including outdated services and systems (45 per cent), a lack of internal skills (23 per cent), and an inability to provide a seamless experience across different channels (27 per cent).
At Avanade, we continue to see customer experience emerge as a primary competitive differentiator for the enterprise. Our research with Sitecore shows that while a strong majority of Canadian respondents list customer experience as one of their top three priorities, most of them (75%) believe their company needs to improve building the strategy for delivering a connected experience.
With more options than ever before and more ways to be reached, customers are now in control and carry high expectations. To succeed in today’s ever-changing digital landscape, organizations must transform their customer interactions into personally relevant, digitally-empowered experiences that span across multiple channels or risk possible extinction.
Our vision at Avanade for understanding customers is to serve them in ways they expect and in ways they’ve never imagined. Knowing your customers is the critical point of execution for organizations in delivering an unmatched experience. By knowing and understanding customer behavior and personalizing the experience you can build loyalty, out-maneuver the competition and win in your market.
So how can Canadian businesses take advantage of the customer experience and make it work for them? Below are five key steps that we believe will help you build and maintain a quality digital customer experience:
- Generate and connect all the data about your customers across every channel
- Personalize experiences at every opportunity and measure effectiveness
- Treat customers based on potential lifetime value rather than a transaction oriented mentality.
- Leverage industrialized technology platforms and services to accelerate innovation and enable you to focus on what matters – your customers.
- Last by not least, ensure your experience investment is realized by leveraging an integrated end to end team.
About the research: The study is based on a survey of 880 decision makers across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Singapore and conducted by Vanson Bourne in February and March 2016. Brand data reflects country, sector and size across 14 industries including financial services, retail, automotive, healthcare, media and communications and CPG.
Guest Post: Quantifying Your Customer Experience
Posted in Commentary with tags Avanade on July 26, 2016 by itnerdBy Scott Cairney, Digital lead, Avanade Canada
Customer Experience is the single most important investment companies can make to drive competitive advantage. Up until now this has been widely considered common knowledge but quantifying the benefits were next to impossible. At Avanade, we know that investing in a customer experience strategy has a significant financial impact on businesses, and now, through research we’ve found what the investment is worth in hard dollars.
A new study released by Avanade and Sitecore found customer experience can have a profound impact on business. We discovered that for every dollar invested in improving the customer experience, businesses generated three dollars in return. In addition, respondents expect to see an 11 percent increase in revenue in the next 12 months. These are impressive results!
What does this mean for Canadian business? Business leaders have high expectations of their customer experience strategy with 73 per cent of Canadian respondents noting they expect further opportunities to improve profitability when they focus on improving the overall lifetime value of customers. Interestingly enough, an overwhelming 98 per cent of those surveyed have or are developing a customer experience strategy and 90 per cent of those with a strategy in place report that the customer experience strategy is one of their top three priorities.
In terms of the business drivers behind the investment, the research revealed that competition and customer feedback were the main reasons behind prioritizing a customer experience strategy. Sixty-six per cent of Canadian respondents said competition made their organization realize the need to prioritize customer experience, while 38 percent reported customer feedback as the main driver.
However, there are still several obstacles preventing businesses from delivering an effective customer experience. Eighty-six per cent of Canadian respondents listed three important obstacles including outdated services and systems (45 per cent), a lack of internal skills (23 per cent), and an inability to provide a seamless experience across different channels (27 per cent).
At Avanade, we continue to see customer experience emerge as a primary competitive differentiator for the enterprise. Our research with Sitecore shows that while a strong majority of Canadian respondents list customer experience as one of their top three priorities, most of them (75%) believe their company needs to improve building the strategy for delivering a connected experience.
With more options than ever before and more ways to be reached, customers are now in control and carry high expectations. To succeed in today’s ever-changing digital landscape, organizations must transform their customer interactions into personally relevant, digitally-empowered experiences that span across multiple channels or risk possible extinction.
Our vision at Avanade for understanding customers is to serve them in ways they expect and in ways they’ve never imagined. Knowing your customers is the critical point of execution for organizations in delivering an unmatched experience. By knowing and understanding customer behavior and personalizing the experience you can build loyalty, out-maneuver the competition and win in your market.
So how can Canadian businesses take advantage of the customer experience and make it work for them? Below are five key steps that we believe will help you build and maintain a quality digital customer experience:
About the research: The study is based on a survey of 880 decision makers across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Singapore and conducted by Vanson Bourne in February and March 2016. Brand data reflects country, sector and size across 14 industries including financial services, retail, automotive, healthcare, media and communications and CPG.
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