Download Bridging the Experience Divide

Bridging the
Experience
Divide
The State of Customer Experience
in Australia & New Zealand
An indepth study conducted with
over 300 members of the Australian
Marketing Association (AMI)
By Liz Berks
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CONTENTS
Introduction by Lee Tonitto
PG. 03
Executive Summary
PG. 05
Customer Experience:
The New Battleground
PG. 09
The Experience Divide
PG. 12
Key Findings:
a. Build a customer-obsessed culture
b. Understand the journey
c. Embrace personalisation
d. Create authentic human experiences
Conclusion
PG. 17
PG. 32
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INTRODUCTION
W
ith our commitment
to ensuring the
marketing profession
is future focused, the
Australian Marketing
Institute (AMI) has
partnered with Vision
Critical to investigate
the current state of
play within the customer experience landscape.
Marketers will argue its reputation. But
customer experience professionals know
that a company’s most valuable asset is its
brand. A great brand sets you apart from your
competitors. It builds an emotional connection
with customers. Your brand is the sum total of
experiences a customer has with your company.
The study incorporated AMI member
perspectives and was conducted via the AMI’s
Intelligence Connected Insight Community.
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AMI’s Intelligence Connected Community,
powered by Vision Critical’s customer
intelligence platform, is an exclusive platform
for Australian marketers to express their ideas
and opinions in key areas that are changing the
marketing landscape.
We thank everybody who contributed
and whose views are contained herein, and
encourage all AMI members to join the online
insights community and participate in future
studies of relevance to our profession.
Lee Tonitto
CEO of Australian
Marketing Institute (AMI)
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Executive Summary
Bridging the experience divide – the state of
customer experience in Australia and New
Zealand is based on a study with Australian
Marketing Institute (AMI) members,
conducted in partnership with Vision Critical
between February and April 2016.
The study includes online qualitative
discussions with nine AMI members and
a quantitative online survey amongst 130
members, and provides a fascinating snap-shot
of drivers and trends, along with the challenges
faced by marketing professionals across
Australia and New Zealand in 2016.
Study participants spanned a wide breadth
of seniority – almost a third of responses came
from the executive level (CEO, CMO or Director/
Head of Marketing), more than a quarter
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were senior or middle management, with the
remainder comprising self-employed, junior
level, academic, and other.
With broad agreement that customers have
never been more empowered, this report
highlights the crucial
importance of customer
Executive (CEO, CMO
experience as the new
or Director/Head of
competitive frontier.
Marketing): 31%
A timely call-toSenior or middle
action, the study also
management: 29%
reveals an experience
Self-employed 15%
divide between
Junior level 11%
what organisations
Academic 4%
know they need to
Other 3%
be doing and what’s
actually happening
on the ground, along with the perception that
Australia and New Zealand organisations are
lagging behind – not just globally, but also
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locally.
Other findings include:
Building a customer-obsessed culture
requires whole-of-organisation buy-in. Enabling
cultural change within the business is seen as
important to the development of successful
customer experience strategy.
Customer journey mapping is considered a
key trend set to become more influential in the
next 12 months. Yet despite this, four out of 10
participants were not aware of a journey map
being developed.
Delivering personalised experiences to
customers is also seen as a key trend, set
to become more influential in the next 12
months. However there is a perception that
some organisations currently have a poor
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grasp of what personalisation actually means,
and that systems and databases are not
necessarily being utilised to their full potential.
Meanwhile marketing organisations face the
challenge of striking the right balance between
personalisation and privacy invasion.
In an age of increasing transparency, younger
generations in particular are demanding
accountability and authenticity in areas such as
social justice and the environment.
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Customer Experience:
The New Battleground
Customer Experience (CX) is the new
battleground when it comes to competitive
differentiation.
89
%
“Customers demand
a better experience
of organisations intend
to compete primarily on
customer experience
in 2016
– Gartner Group
because we live in a
society which is time
poor, with lots of
choice and an easy
Empowered customers
are in the driver’s
seat, and they’re here
to stay. With more
access to information,
more choices and
way to give feedback
about good / bad
experiences online.”
– group brand
manager/
AMI member
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“Organisations need
to be a lot more proactive. Customers
are now empowered
to provide feedback
online via social
media. If an
organisation does
not keep up with
customer feedback/
complaints, it
spells disaster.” –
more opportunities to
broadcast their opinions,
loudly and widely,
the message is clear:
the big competitive
differentiator between
companies that win
and the companies that
lose will be customer
experience, or how
customers perceive their
interactions with a
company. (Forrester). 1
marketing lecturer/
88
AMI member
%
of marketing professionals
agree that customers are
more empowered and
demanding than
ever
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Companies and organisations are realising
they need to lift their game, with 93% of
marketing professionals in agreement that
organisations need to take a pro-active
approach to customer experience strategy.
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The experience divide
The study also delivers a timely warning
– revealing an internal ‘experience divide’2
between customer experience mission
statements and what many marketing
professionals are experiencing on the ground.
While nearly three-quarters agree that ‘My
organisation is constantly looking to improve
CX’, just four in 10 (or less) agreed that ‘My
organisation has a formal CX strategy’, ‘My
organisation invests enough time in improving
CX’, and ‘My organisation invests enough money
in improving CX.’
There is a disconnect between what
organisations know they need to be doing, and
what is actually being done.
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The internal experience divide
My organisation is constantly
looking to improve CX:
72%
VS.
My organisation has a formal CX strategy: 37%
My organisation invests enough time in improving CX: 38%
My organisation invests enough money in improving CX: 40%
In addition to an internal experience divide,
there is also the sense that organisations in
Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) are not
keeping up; both on a global scale as well as on a
local, competitive level.
On a global scale, one in two marketing
professionals feel Australian businesses lag
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behind other parts of
The question,
the world in leveraging
‘Who is the owner
technology and data
of Customer
to their full potential.
Experience
ANZ is still considered
Management in
very young in terms
Your Business,’
of utilising data and
revealed almost an
insights to inform and
even split between
shape the customer
experience.
the executive office
There are however
(28%) and marketing
examples of industries in
(27%) – customer
ANZ that are beginning
service followed
to leverage technology
(16%), then strategy/
and data to improve the
planning (14%).
customer experience,
with banks and the IT
sector seen to be leading the way.
Further afield, industries in the US such as
retail, are seen to be spearheading this trend.
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On a local competitive level, four in 10 feel
major competitors are investing more in
customer experience than their organisation,
and while marketing professionals are clear on
the need to provide good customer experiences,
43% rate the end-to-end experience currently
offered by their organisation as average to
poor. Additionally, many organisations are
yet to effectively measure or benchmark
their performance, with 61% rating their
organisation’s performance in this area as
average to poor.
Who owns Customer Experience?
With modern marketing focused on
competing on customer experience, it’s
imperative to deliver relevant experiences to
keep customers satisfied (and returning).
However delivering exceptional customer
experience is not the realm of one department
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View from the trenches
Our CEO visited a number of our top customers
to ascertain their satisfaction with us and heard
from them first-hand that we needed to improve.
We’ve hired a customer experience manager who sits
on our senior exec team reporting to the CEO and
works together with the marketing department.
We commissioned market research on what our
customers want from us (and the industry) as far as
customer service, and we’re still data collecting.
We are just going through the process of journey
mapping now. We have been working on this for
12 months. Last year was spent implementing and
integrating salesforce into our business.
– Brand Manager, multi-national B-2-B
alone and study participants believe an attitude
shift involving organisational cultural change
is required, in order to successfully deliver a
customer experience strategy.
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Key Findings
The study revealed four key insights for
marketing organisations seeking to create
customer experiences:
a. Build a customer-obsessed culture (This is
an attitude shift, not a dashboard)3
Customer-centric businesses are quickly
becoming the standard across leading
organisations and start-up disruptors.
Building a customer-obsessed culture requires
whole-of-organisation buy-in to customercentricity.
This means cross-collaboration – a shared
vision where senior management take a
facilitator role rather than a dictatorial one –
is viewed as essential to customer experience
development.
Our study highlights that over nine in 10
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“Organisations
don’t do CX well
due to lack of,
or inadequate,
‘internal marketing’
and buy-in from
other departments.
Effective
communication with
other departments
is key. Customer
Experience
Management
involves cultural
change.”
– marketer
marketing professionals
believe gaining buy-in
from all departments is
important, as is involving
every part of an
organisation. Meanwhile
99% cite communicating
effectively between
departments as
important.
When it comes
to designing and
implementing customer
experience management,
an organisation must
be cognizant of all its
various stakeholders –
not only customers, but
internal ‘customers’ such
as employees.
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Development of a successful customer experience strategy
97%
Believe enabling cultural change
within the business is important
to the development of successful
customer experience strategy.
Having guided brands such as Microsoft,
Land’s End, Allstate and Coldwell Banker,
creating transformational changes to each
brand’s customer experience, Jeanne Bliss is
considered the authority on what it takes to
design an organic, results-driven customer
experience program.
She notes that with this increased focus
on ‘doing customer experience’ comes a
responsibility inside organisations to ‘do’ it
correctly. 6
Getting it ‘done correctly’ sees marketing
organisations confronting challenges such as
silos (where customer data is not integrated
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“Frontline employees
(otherwise known as
boundary spanners)
are an important
human resource. They
are able to translate/
articulate what
customers want and
what the organisations
can do better and
improve – what needs
to change in order
for the organisation
to function more
seamlessly.” – marketing
due to legacy systems),
impeding customer
experience efforts like
personalisation.
Customer experience
must be well-designed
from the internal to
external environment,
and will require
sustained efforts and
resourcing to sustain.
Ultimately internal
culture will determine
success (or otherwise) of
a customer experience
strategy.
& communications
specialist
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Customer-centricity now at the heart of
everything we do - Australia Post
The past 20 months have been game-changing for Australia Post,. With the
explosion in online shopping, AusPost (the parcel business) has never been so
busy with 75% of daily parcel deliveries now generated by online order.
Culture change with frontline staff, who have learned to really listen to
customers, has been supplemented with the introduction of services like
ShopMate – enabling Australian online shoppers to buy from US retailers
who do not ship to Australia.
Australia Post was also one of the first companies to launch an app for the
Apple iWatch, providing online shoppers with delivery status alerts (and
garnering a 5-star rating on the app store).
“Systems and
business units that
are not aligned
through lack of
integration will be
slower to respond to
the demands of what
customers want.” –
marketing and brand
manager
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b. Understand the journey
The foundation for developing a customer
experience strategy is understanding your buyer
or customer journey, in order to create relevant
experiences along the way.
Creating customer journey maps not only
identifies the occasions where customers
interact with an organisation, but also
documents the variety of ‘journeys’ that a
customer may have within the organisation.
Customer Experience pioneer Jeanne Bliss
shares key strategies to improving the end-toend customer journey in the webinar: The Rise
of the Chief Customer Officer.
Given the importance, participants ascribe
to the need to deliver a seamless and holistic
approach (93% claim this as important) and
that three quarters nominated the integration
of online and offline experiences as a customer
experience trend set to become more influential
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in the next 12 months. It is not surprising that
over nine in 10 agree that businesses need to
understand how to merge the online and offline
experience – from the
“Journey mapping
store, to the call centre,
will be integral to
to online.
CX success and
Journey mapping
whole of business
provides the ideal tool
for organisations to
will need to be
better understand, and
involved. Increasing
therefore integrate,
integration between
physical and online
the physical and
experiences.
online experience
A key aspect of
is critical, and these
customer journey
experiences need
mapping is that a oneto be personal
size-fits-all approach
and emotional.”
doesn’t necessarily work,
– marketer
with 67% strongly
agreeing that different
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When was your customer journey developed?
It is in development
In the last 12 months
In the last 24 months
More than 2 years ago
26%
26%
14%
29%
How often is your customer journey reviewed?
Continually50%
Annually16%
Less often29%
Never5%
“Different
customer segments
must be mapped to
understand how to
deliver and cater to
different groups.
But while 96% agree
that an entire customer
journey map is required
(understanding
individual customer
stakeholders will
have very different
needs and wants
and their journey
maps will be
quite different.”
– marketing
lecturer
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touchpoints is not enough), only 60% say their
organisation has either developed, or is in the
process of developing one.
So while a customer journey map is widely
considered the cornerstone of any customer
experience management strategy, four in 10
participants were not
aware of a journey map
What Customers
being developed.
Want: We want all
the information; we
want to hear from
the community
and our peers; we
want it to be more
transactional,
self-directed and
personalized –
Roland Smart,
The Agile Marketer
c. Embrace
personalisation
Delivering personalised
experiences to customers
is a top priority for
marketing organisations
in ANZ.
According to 85% of
participants the ‘use
of customer data to
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personalise products,
“Expectations
services and experiences
will increase that
is set to be ‘more
every business
influential’ in the next 12
should be providing
months.
customised
However, there was
and personal
also a perception that
experiences that
some organisations
are relevant and
currently have a
poor grasp of what
engaging.”
personalisation actually
– marketer
means, and that systems
and databases are not
being utilised to their full potential in order
to deliver truly exceptional personalised
experiences.
Marketing organisations must begin to think
about how they can market to ‘an audience
of one’ at scale. With a landscape of over 3800
marketing technology solutions and over 150
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technologies in the personalisation space (2016
Marketing Technology Landscape, Chiefmartec),
marketing organisations can invest in
technology to build scalable personalised
programs and create unique experiences for
every customer.
“The issue of privacy
is big. A number
of Gen Ys say they
don’t care that their
privacy is nonexistent – they have
nothing to hide.
But it’s a problem
for Baby Boomers.”
– marketing and
communications
manager,
not-for-profit
Privacy: Although
the customer’s digital
footprint provides
great opportunity
for personalisation,
marketing organisations
must find the right
balance between
personalisation and
privacy invasion.
Privacy concerns arise
differently across
generations.
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While Gen Y and Z may
be happy to have their
data used to tailor unique
experiences, Baby Boomers
are far less comfortable in
having their data used
this way.
86
%
agree it is acceptable
for companies to collect
customer data to improve
products
Personalisation and V-commerce
eBay Australia has shown its faith in the future of
personalisation being all about v-commerce, launching
pioneering technology (in partnership with Myer), that allows
Australian customers to browse more than 12,500 products using
eBay’s new gaze recognition technology, Sight Search.
Following a 12-month development phase, the virtual reality
department store now connects to the existing eBay site, and can
be accessed by a new eBay VR Department Store app.
Once the app is downloaded, customers place their smartphones
in a set of ‘shoptical’ VR glasses to start the shopping experience.
With VR, retailers can quickly learn what customer like and don’t
like, and track customer interests and preferences to then offer a
far more personalised experience.
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d. Creating authentic human experiences
As marketers, our goal is to create meaningful
experiences and connections with ‘people’ in
business. To win over
customers (or people)
“Behind every data
today, marketing
point is a person,
organisations need to
and behind every
behave in a way that
person is a story.”
is genuine and that is
The Internet of
perceived by customers
6
People,
to be authentic.
- Scott Miller, CEO,
We live in an age of
Vision Critical
increasing transparency,
where information has
never been so accessible.
Social justice movements, environmental
concerns and accountability are increasingly
important – particularly to younger generations.
Marketing organisations need to keep the
pulse of social trends, iterate with movements
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and beware of value proposition clashes and
social interpretations, where a brand could
be adapted and re-interpreted. The slightest
whiff of inauthenticity in a strategy can easily
backfire. In recent news, the Liberal party’s
world-first political Snapchat filter ad serves
as a cautionary tale. According to coverage in
irreverent pop culture media service junkee.
com, the Liberal’s Snapchat campaign was
being widely panned and satirized by young
Australians, instead of winning their hearts and
minds. 6
Brand winners include businesses like
STREAT, the only not-for-profit social enterprise
coffee roaster in Australia. STREAT provides
hospitality training and support to homeless and
at-risk youth. They received resounding support
during a recent crowd sourcing campaign on
Chuffed to help fund the fit-out of their new
headquarters in Collingwood, Melbourne. The
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space will include a cafe, bakery, coffee roastery,
gardens, kitchens, youth training areas, offices
and event spaces. Prioritising maximum social
impact and minimal environmental impact,
STREAT is a business creating authentic human
experiences for its employees, community and
the homeless.
For more on
authenticity, see
The Authenticity
The
Handbook: How
Authenticity
Handbook
companies can build
Andrew Reid,
7
trust and loyalty.
Founder, Vision Critical
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Conclusion
Customer Experience is the new battleground
when it comes to competitive differentiation.
Yet, the study shows many ANZ marketers do
not feel their organisations are at the forefront
in exploiting customer experience trends – in
fact there seems to be concern about being left
behind.
Findings also show:
• An internal experience divide between
customer experience mission statements and
what’s actually happening on the ground.
• The importance of cultural change and
a whole-of-organisation approach, requiring
awareness not only of what customers want, but
also the demands of other stakeholders, such as
employees.
• The cornerstone of customer experience
management – journey mapping – is missing for
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many organisations.
• Personalisation and authenticity are seen
as increasingly important customer experience
trends.
Bridging the experience divide: the State
of Customer Experience in ANZ is a timely
reminder for marketing organisations
throughout the ANZ region that in order to stay
competitive, they must lift their game.
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ENDNOTES
1. ‘Forrester Blog’ – http://blogs.forrester.com/harley_
manning/10-11-23-customer_experience_defined
2. ‘The Customer Experience Revolution’, webinar by
Brian Solis, best-selling author of X: The Experience
When Business Meets Design, What’s the Future
of Business? digital analyst and principal, Altimeter
Group. https://www.visioncritical.com/resources/
the-customer-experience-revolution/?utm_
campaign=CX+Revolution+Webinar&utm_
medium=Social+Advertising&utm_
source=Facebook&utm_content=round2
3. The Rise of the Chief Customer Officer’ – webinar by
Jeanne Bliss. https://www.visioncritical.com/resources/
rise-of-the-chief-customer-officer/
4. The Rise of the Chief Customer Officer’ – webinar by
Jeanne Bliss. https://www.visioncritical.com/resources/
rise-of-the-chief-customer-officer/
5. ’The Internet of People’ by Scott Miller – presentation
at the 2015 Asia Pacific Vision Critical Customer
Intelligence Summit
https://www.visioncritical.com/resources/internet-ofpeople/
6. Junkee http://junkee.com/liberal-party-snapchatfilter-prove-nothing-matters-resistance-futile/81416
7. ‘The Authenticity Handbook’ - eBook by Vision
Critical: https://www.visioncritical.com/resources/
authenticity-handbook/
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