Accenture Confirms Customer Experience a Top Priority for Brands

A recently released study entitled “Digital Transformation in the Age of the Customer” is a survey of nearly 400 decision-makers in global brands which was commissioned by Accenture Interactive.

Some highlights from the report include:

• “Improving customer experience” tops the list of business priorities companies have over the next 12 months.
• Improving “customer satisfaction,” “profitability” and “speed to market” are top digital transformation motivators.
• 63 percent of brands are planning to enhance their online experience.
• 26 percent of organizations are ‘completely ready’ to execute on their digital strategies.
• 5 percent of organizations feel that their digital approach gives them competitive differentiation.

As Anatoly Roytman, managing director Accenture Interactive, explained, “Customer experience is now clearly at the heart of digital transformation, and digital is at the center of that customer experience, but many companies have considerable ground to cover on their path to becoming digital enterprises. They’re challenged with setting a digital vision and strategy, getting the right people in place, and measuring digital success.”

We sat down with Clutch CEO and cofounder, Ned Moore, to discuss these findings and get his thoughts on the challenges and triumphs brands are facing with customer engagement and digital marketing.

Q: Ned, only 26 percent of brands say they are ready to execute on their digital strategy. Given your experience partnering with an array of leading brands, what do you think this is rooted in?

NM: We see this sentiment with so many brands irrespective of their industry. They realize the exponential impact and value of digital and they know they need to get there, but they’re not sure how to equip the business to take advantage of the intelligence and engagement opportunities with customers. Typically, we’re discovering that marketing teams have been shackled to antiquarian CRM technology that was engineered for sales teams to manage contacts. These traditional CRM systems don’t support the expanding, specific digital needs of marketing which is tasked with synthesizing real-time customer data across in-store point-of-sale systems, ecommerce platforms, email subscription lists, mobile applications and social accounts. Having the right marketing technology platform is critical.

Q: How do brands resolve this issue to execute on their customer strategy?

NM: You need a technology platform designed specifically for marketers to support their customer strategies. A Consumer Management platform is the right foundation to help marketing transform their cross-channel customer data into intelligence, segmentation, scoring and profiles that help identify and understand their customers. Then they can construct automated campaigns and personalized experiences that engage and motivate customers to drive affinity and profitability. This ends up being a major driver of that “competitive differentiation” the study reviews that only five percent of brands feel they’re currently achieving.

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