Shaping the Customer Experience: Insights from the 2016 Digital Trends Report

2016 has proven to be an excit­ing year for com­pa­nies whose mar­ket­ing teams have ral­lied around the pri­ma­ry focus of enhanc­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. It’s no sur­prise, giv­en the data col­lect­ed from the Econ­sul­tan­cy 2016 Dig­i­tal Trends report, that many mar­keters have changed their approach to dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, with an increased empha­sis on meet­ing cus­tomers where they are and deliv­er­ing an expe­ri­ence they won’t find any­where else.

This renewed focus on the cus­tomer jour­ney, how­ev­er, hasn’t been with­out chal­lenges. Accord­ing to the report, 46% of respon­dents found that cre­at­ing a com­pa­ny cul­ture of cross teams work­ing togeth­er with the cus­tomer jour­ney as the pri­ma­ry focus to be a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge. With mar­ket­ing teams being pressed to get cre­ative adver­tis­ing in front of cus­tomers at light­ning speed, any break­down in work­flow or stunt­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion can have a neg­a­tive impact on not only a company’s mar­ket­ing team, but also the company’s rep­u­ta­tion as a whole.

With these chal­lenges in mind, it’s no won­der that there is an increased need for a company’s teams to work togeth­er and work from the same page. In fact, 94% of respon­dents list­ed cre­ative work­flow opti­mi­sa­tion as one of the most impor­tant inter­nal fac­tors for cre­at­ing a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Fur­ther­more, 91% of respon­dents believe that max­imis­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between teams is vital.

Anoth­er chal­lenge con­cerns the depen­den­cy on data to dri­ve the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Along with cre­ativ­i­ty, busi­ness­es are increas­ing­ly real­is­ing the impor­tance of data in bet­ter under­stand­ing the cus­tomer and get­ting the jour­ney right at every touch­point. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, only 35% of respon­dents work in com­pa­nies that have ana­lysts skilled in mak­ing sense of the data. With­out the abil­i­ty to draw insights from the data, com­pa­nies sim­ply can’t pro­vide the kinds of expe­ri­ences to their cus­tomers that they hope for.

For brands that can get a han­dle on their data, the poten­tial for cre­at­ing a more con­nect­ed expe­ri­ence increas­es expo­nen­tial­ly. This was the sen­ti­ment of Wunderman’s CEO, Seth Solomons, who told CMO.com ear­li­er this year, “A brand that under­stands its con­sumer data can lever­age it to meet the needs of their con­sumers in new and inter­est­ing ways, deliv­er­ing bet­ter over­all expe­ri­ences that dri­ve results.”

With more than 7,000 mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als par­tic­i­pat­ing in the 2016 sur­vey on dig­i­tal trends, a clear pic­ture of the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges await­ing mar­keters emerges. As mar­ket­ing con­tin­ues to move toward an increased empha­sis on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, com­pa­nies need to get their teams on the same page and work­ing toward the same goal. At the same time, mar­ket­ing teams need to gain insights from their data to find out how to best shape their cus­tomer experience.

Get the full 2016 Dig­i­tal Trends report here.