The Digital Customer Experience Benchmark 2015 shows that most major European companies are still at the beginning of monitoring customer experience through digital channels such as websites and mobile apps. Almost half of the respondents in the survey believe they are doing pretty well in monitoring customer feedback. However, companies often do little for solid follow-up towards the customer.
Mopinion is specialised in the field of customer feedback via web and mobile platforms, and conducts an annual Benchmark study among professionals to the status quo of Digital Customer Experience in the Netherlands.
Nearly a thousand professionals were approached who are working in the field of digital marketing, e-commerce or marketing intelligence at at European enterprises. A brief questionnaire, on the level of activity within their organisation around digital customer experience, has been presented to the professionals. Several financials, telecom companies, energy suppliers, and automotives participated.
How successful are companies in monitoring the Digital Customer Experience?
“49% of the respondents believe they are fairly successful in monitoring (measuring and improving) Digital Customer Experience” says Toon Alleman, Director of Digital CEM at Mopinion. “21% still think it’s too early to determine. Many companies collect customer feedback via their websites or apps, and then extract quick-wins. However, often the feedback goes beyond the responsibilities of the team in which the measurement is equipped. From that moment on, valuable customer feedback remains untreated,” says Alleman. “Many professionals find it difficult to inform colleagues at all levels of the organisation structurally, but also to encourage action towards the internal customer is often a challenge.”
Stages of the the Digital Customer Experience
“There are roughly three stages when it comes to customer experience management. We baptised the stages into Measure, Manage, and Master. These stages are partly based on internationally recognised ‘stages of Customer Experience Maturity’ e.g. by Temkin Group (USA) and Nunwood (UK). Almost all companies that participated in the benchmark measure the digital customer experience. About half of them does so in substantially continuous manners. These figures are encouraging. The second phase, the Manage stage, is all about analysing and reporting customer feedback. From this stage the wheat is quickly separated from the chaff. According to most respondents, customer feedback from digital channels rarely reaches the executive level of an organisation. Meanwhile customer satisfaction within the call center, for quite some time, at many companies are fixed KPIs that are fully reported up to board level.
Rather strange, Alleman indicates: “The surveyed companies really have a higher rate of visitors leaving their digital channels than they have customers on the phone.” A missed opportunity? “Either a matter of time,” Alleman thinks even before the metrics around digital customer experience will be fully discussed in the highest echelons.
The real-time monitoring of customers (for example, who get stuck purchasing online) and actively reaching out to them, part of the Master stage, occurs only in dribs and drabs, but it’s clearly emerging.
Future prospects Digital Customer Experience
A major challenge for many companies is to break what Alleman describes as silo thinking. “Digital touchpoints are becoming more and more often the start-and-end point of the customer journey. This means that marketers have to think beyond their own team or department. Most (and in particular the very large) companies face difficulties. Employees often want to take action but feel constrained by the structure of the organization. Or, they are facing difficult challenges such as creating support among colleagues from other departments and business units.” Despite that, about half of the respondents states to invest more in measuring and managing the Digital Customer Experience during the next twelve months. Mopinion will take up another balance around this theme at fall 2016.
About this research
Digital Customer Experience Benchmark is an initiative by Mopinion, specialist in the field of monitoring and analysing customer feedback via web and mobile platforms. In 2023 we released a follow-up to the 2015 benchmark, you can download that version below.
