Social purpose: Oxygen for your brand health vitals
If trust is the new currency, then we’re in deep trouble. Here's why.
Many organisations are still relying on data analytics for customer acquisition rather than looking at the customer journey, says new report
Customer analytics remain a relatively immature play for many organisations in Australia and Asia-Pacific even as data becomes the cornerstone of differentiation and engagement, a new report claims.
According to Forrester’s latest Asia-Pacific Companies Embrace Customer Analytics report, siloed operational structures within organisations, coupled with a narrow focus on existing services and capabilities in digital marketing strategies and immature customer journey mapping techniques, are preventing many organisations from improving their customer engagement approach.
The research firm pointed out customer insight professionals and competencies typically focus on customer segmentation and campaign performance measurement and more recently, have been extended into digital marketing strategies. However, these are mostly about customer acquisition and on-boarding, and fail to recognise the importance of looking at the whole customer lifecycle.
“It’s not enough to have a world-class digital capability for acquiring new customers,” the report authors stated. “Empowered customers expect the same type of seamless experience, improved efficiency and heightened responsiveness in all subsequent interactions with your brand – not just within the same channel across multiple sessions, but across multiple channels and multiple sessions.”
One of the core reasons cited by Forrester is that Web analytics initiatives are centred on optimising conversion rates and interactions through digital channels, yet aren’t reconciled to existing business intelligence capabilities, campaign management and advanced analytics tools extending across front-end and back-end platforms.
In addition, few regional firms have developed a strong internal link between improved customer experience and data-driven customer insights, Forrester stated. Existing organisational silos separating marketing from sales, service and production have kept many focused on product-based initiatives rather than a business-oriented customer strategy, as have siloed digital strategies, the research firm said.
More on this topic: Measuring up to expectations with customer analytics at Medibank
Why the marketing/technology disconnect is hindering customer analytics success
Using big data analytics to power customer lifetime value at HotelClub
In a survey of Asia-Pacific marketers earlier in 2014, Forrester also found less than half completely trusted the data quality and analysis results of their company’s business intelligence applications, while 17 per cent had little or no trust in these capabilities.
While there are specific reasons for the lack of advancement in growth markets across the Asia-Pacific, Forrester offered a range of advice relevant to all organisations including Australia, on how to overcome core challenges and help mature a customer analytics approach:
Primary report author and Forrester Australia research director for Customer Insights, Michael Barnes told CMO that Australian organisations are typically advanced in terms of customer analytics understanding and capabilities, but challenges remain.
“For example, many Australian organisations still lack alignment between IT and the business on customer analytics-related goals and objectives,” he said.
“While Australian companies typically have some experience and capabilities identifying and extracting customer insights from both internal and external data sources, most also still struggle to actually apply those customer insights to business, and in particular digital strategies.”
In the report, Forrester said effective customer analytics initiatives will typically be part of a broader, CEO-led digital transformation that embraces an outside-in approach to customer understanding.
“But customer insights professionals must help their organisations expand current customer analytics initiatives into a true digital intelligence capability that effectively served empowered customers who demand improved experiences,” the report stated.
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO Australia conversation on LinkedIn: CMO Australia, or join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia
If trust is the new currency, then we’re in deep trouble. Here's why.
Over the past decade, disruptors such as Amazon, Apple and Australia’s Atlassian have delivered technology enhanced customer experiences, which for the most part, have improved customers’ lives and delivered unparalleled growth. Can they do the same for healthcare?
Some commentators estimate that by 2020, 85 per cent of buyer-seller interactions will happen online through social media and video*. That’s only two years away, and pertinent for any marketer.
In this bonus last episode of this new podcast series, BrandHook MD, Pip Stocks, talks with former ANZ group general manager of marketing, Louise Eyres, talks about the importance of thinking like a customer and using intuition to solve customer painpoints.
https://bit.ly/2qLgzmR Transform your life a proven digital blueprint
Okitoi Steven
How this banking group tackled a digital marketing transformation
Its great to hear that companies including JCDecaux, oOh!media, Omnicom and Posterscope Australia have all partnered with Seedooh inorder...
Blue Mushroom Infozone Pvt Ltd
Out of home advertising companies strive for greater metrics and transparency
Much ado about nothingAnother fluff piece around what it could possibly do rather than what it is doing
gve
How AMP is using AI to create effortless ‘experiences’
is it true that Consumer expectations are also changing as a result. If we trust someone with our data there is also an expectation that ...
Sunita Madan
Society will decide where digital marketing takes us next: Oracle
This Blog is Very interesting to read and thank you for sharing the valuable information about Machine Learning. The information you prov...
johny blaze
What machine learning has done for the Virgin Velocity program