Robotics and AI-driven Customer Experience still scores 5x lower for brand advocacy

Our annual Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report (CXBR) is always eagerly awaited. Year after year, it provides us with valuable insight into the state of affairs in organizations regarding the customer experience and - which is not without importance - how customers evaluate the efforts made. This blog discusses the European figures.

Let us start with this customer evaluation and with the bad news: according to the latest research, just 5% of organizations provide a total functional customer experience. Regrettably few when we see that over half (51%) of organizations see CX (customer experience) as a primary differentiator.

This is partly to do with an incorrect assessment of customer satisfaction in organizations: almost three-quarters (73%) are happy with their customer satisfaction levels, but just 10% of their customers are sufficiently satisfied with the customer experience to recommend the brand. Surely, as a company, you can’t be pleased about that?

So where is it going wrong? Somewhere between dreams and reality, as usual. Although most companies are well aware of what they need to do, at the moment not so many of them succeed in taking the right steps. Particularly when it comes to gearing their CX strategies to customer feedback, things often go wrong: 59% have not established a formal process to actually use this feedback and 14% do not even gather any feedback. Just 16% fully define their customer feedback and monitor the value contributed by CX.

Across departments and systems? Far too little...

Fewer than one-third (28%) of organizations are able to connect data relationships between various channels, so the feedback is seldom seen in the full customer context. We find an explanation for this, too, in our Benchmark Report. Failing technological systems, for example: almost one in three companies (29%) say that their technological systems do not meet current needs. Many teams are still wrestling with legacy systems (40%) and the integration of multiple technological systems (44%). What is more, the inability to pin down budgets (44%) remains a concern and a lack of skills seems to be a growing issue (28%).

These systems are often spread over various departments, without proper connections, and this silo structure is also found in the physical organization. Almost two-thirds (65%) of organizations acknowledge that roles only partly cooperate on the design of CX and 14% do not even cooperate at all. Two-thirds (64%) still do not have a cross-channel contact management strategy. In short: only one-fifth (21%) claim to have good or total consistency across all contact channels.

A final, somewhat disquieting explanation for the low level of satisfaction is that “customer satisfaction” is the most important motive for their customer journey design strategy for just 17% of organizations. Given this attitude, it is hardly surprising that with customer service in particular, almost one-third (28%) of the questions and problems are not resolved during the first contact.

Creating a smarter customer experience with data analysis

Nonetheless, we remain optimistic about the future. Even though today only 41% of organizations have determined what data they want to capture and for what purpose, and only 26% have a dedicated team for the company’s entire “data lake”, we note that most companies are prepared to work on this.

Half of companies confirm that data analysis and data management rank among the top three tech initiatives of the CX team. In particular, they see analytics (54%) and artificial intelligence (49%) as top priorities in reshaping CX within the next five years. Hopefully this feeling of urgency will also lead to better centralization of all customer data.

Robots for a more people-friendly approach

As well as insight into the customer, organizations also want to achieve a better customer experience using robotics. 78% of companies believe that customers’ activities will be positively impacted by AI and CX robotics. When robots based on rules can take over some of the customer contacts and thanks to better knowledge of the customer can often bring these to a successful conclusion, this will indeed undoubtedly contribute to greater customer satisfaction.

But at the moment, this too remains a matter of good intentions. Just 2% (5x lower than the general CX score) of companies that use AI and robotics say that customers assess their experience so positively that they recommend the brand. But this feedback, too, is useful and will contribute to a better CX in the future.

A customer understood is a satisfied customer

Nonetheless, it is high time to collect this customer data, both from in-house databases and from other sources such as social media. The better you get to know your customer, the greater the chance that you can use this new technology in line with their needs. Then we will see more companies really make a difference with their CX strategy.

I’m already looking forward to the next issue of the CX Benchmarking Report!