Customer experience absent at board level, say 70% of Dimension Data’s CX Report respondents

Dimension Data, the USD 8 billion global technology integrator and managed services provider for hybrid IT, revealed the findings of its annual CX Benchmarking Report. It urges organisations to address a “customer experience disconnect” that could lose them business or even jeopardise their chances of survival in competitive markets where consumer loyalty can no longer be taken for granted.

Research from Dimension Data shows that 70% of respondents said customer experience is not represented at board level, with lower-level management or multiple managers often assuming responsibility. Furthermore, only 17% said their organisation takes a fully integrated, centralised approach to customer experience.

In Middle East and Africa (MEA), 25% of organisations say business functions collaborate to define and design consistent user experiences compared to the 33% globally. An additional 41% go beyond that and have either centralised decision-making or integrated their approach to CX across the organisation.

However, the research found that most business respondents recognise customer experience as an important competitive differentiator (88%) that’s also vital for driving loyalty (87%), revenue growth (68%), and cost reduction (56%).

Despite this, the research revealed that nearly a quarter of respondents (23%) are dissatisfied with the customer experience they deliver, and only 11% believe they’re delivering experiences that would lead customers to recommend them to others.

This is resulting in an ‘artificial reality’, where companies are talking about CX, but not delivering on it, creating a gap between their CX ambitions and actual CX capabilities. Businesses are looking at several CX technologies, such as customer analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital integration, but aren’t currently able to implement them properly.

Nemo Verbist, Group Executive for Customer Experience at Dimension Data said, “Customer experience must be higher on the agenda for every business and the whole organisation should get behind it. Brands acknowledge how crucial customer experience is, yet so few are making it a board-level responsibility, leaving it siloed or delegating it to individual managers. There’s an artificial reality between organisations’ CX ambitions and making real change that benefits the customer. This disconnect must be resolved. Brands must make customer experience the priority they say it is.”

The research also revealed that many brands are turning to technology to improve customer experience, but often without a clear strategy. However, in the MEA region 36% of organisations (31% globally) say they have clear CX strategy that is recognised as being crucial to organisational strategy – the highest of all regions.

Nearly a third (30%) of businesses said the digital solutions they’ve rolled out (such as chatbots and AI) don’t provide the functionality their customers need, while more than half of respondents (57%) said customer awareness of such technologies is the biggest barrier to adoption.

MEA is the only region where shortage of skills is one of the top three risks or fears relating to AI, robotics and automation, with 42% of organisations reporting this as an issue compared to 36% globally.

Verbist added, “Rolling out a technology only to claim it doesn’t provide the functionality required, or that customers are unaware of it, isn’t a failure of the technology, but a failure of the planning. Technology can give businesses many powerful tools to improve and support great customer experience, but it’s not simply a case of flicking a switch and it will work. Brands need to back their investments in technology with investments in their people, processes, and planning.”

Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst for Customer Care at Frost & Sullivan, advised that brands should look to address these areas of disconnect within their business and measure, benchmark, and report effectively to ensure such disconnects don’t creep back in.

“Customer experience benchmarking is more important than ever. Brands need to invest in customer experience, but they also need to know that those investments are paying off. And if they’re not, they need to know what to change. Right now, it looks like brands aren’t putting the right kind of focus on customer experience and, as a result, they’re not seeing the outcomes they want. That’s bad for them, and their customers,” she said.

To read this year’s Customer Experience Benchmarking Report Executive Guide, ‘Bridging the Artificial Reality’, please visit this website.