Products not everything as customer experience tops regional agenda

Customer experience will become the number one customer-related priority for organisations in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) during 2015, according to findings from analyst firm IDC.

However, the CMO and CIO will need to partner and align their goals to guarantee success.

"Today, being first to market, having the lowest price, or being the best does not necessarily help, businesses need to be agile and give customers what they want 24/7," says Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, Senior Program Manager, Big Data, Analytics, Enterprise Applications & Social Lead IDC Asia/Pacific.

"Customers may buy your products or services, but what keeps them coming back is the experience."

Consequently, Jimenez advises marketers to become savvier about the business, data, and customers to address the "empowered buyer" needs, with CMOs expected to lead the enterprise transformation around customer experience.

In fact, IDC Asia/Pacific CMO Barometer shows that 31% of CMO roles are expanding to include customer experience and support.

"The CMO role is evolving to incorporate new responsibilities," Jimenez adds. "In other regions, we have seen organizations completely replacing this role with a Customer Experience Head."

There is no denying there has been a lot of hype around customer experience and many organisations still struggle with the concept, since there are many moving pieces and intangibles.

However, customer experience is far from being just today's buzzword; it is a top priority for CMOs in 2015.

"If you are not already thinking about this then you are not listening to your customers," Jimenez adds.

"The idea of delivering greater experiences is not new; but what is different now is that organisations are increasingly focused on ensuring these initiatives are tracked and are using metrics that are closely aligned to the business."

Page Break

IDC Asia/Pacific CMO Barometer shows that the top three key performance indicators (KPIs) for marketing departments in 2015 are:

• increasing market share (66%)

• improving marketing processes — particularly measuring effectiveness (60%)

• increasing customer satisfaction ratings/ Net promoter score (NPS) (55%)

"The road is going to be bumpy since growing data silos are still a major challenge for many organisations," Jimenez adds.

"This is stopping them from really knowing their customers and fulfilling their expectations. To be successful they will need to partner with the CIO.

"CMOs and CIOs need to establish common goals and define shared KPIs that can help them track the success of their joint initiatives."

Also, according to the IDC Asia/Pacific CMO Barometer, to achieve its KPIs CMOs have identified 3 key IT requirements for 2015: investing in disruptive technologies that can help gain competitive edge (25%), enabling a multi-channel environment (16%), and driving improved marketing automation and productivity (13%).

"But don't expect to achieve this just by making technology investments," Jimenez recommends.

"First and foremost, 'Starters' need to define their goals (with quantifiable metrics), as well as assess if their organizations’ customer service culture is well aligned to their customers’ priorities.

"Then, look at their processes (internal and external), people (skills) and technology," Jimenez recommends."