Despite how confident retailers may feel about their ability to relate to the customer, they should always invest more in the shopper experience — because chances are they aren’t doing enough. While 75% of organizations believe themselves to be customer-centric, only 30% of consumers agree with this sentiment, according to research from Capgemini.
The organization-consumer divide extends to Net Promoter Score (NPS) — an index ranging from minus 100 to plus 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company’s products or services. For example, 90% of companies believed that their organizations’ NPS had increased by five points over the last three years. But only half of consumers agreed (54%) with this sentiment.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that higher NPS correlates with a higher investment in customer experience. Companies that closely link their business operations with customer experience (6%) enjoy a 14-point NPS® advantage compared to companies with business operations that are not connected to customer experience at all (33%). Businesses with close linkage also experienced double the increase in their NPS (12 points) over the last three years.
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Organizations Struggle Both With Technology And Rising Expectations
For those that aren’t meeting consumer demands, the challenges are both organizational and technical, particularly in IT. These challenges include:
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Rising consumer expectations (57%);
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The rapidly evolving technology landscape (56%);
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Integrating disparate platforms (38%); and
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A poor user interface (32%).
These organizations also cite a lack of dedicated customer experience budgets (41%) and internal ownership of the digital customer experience (35%) as barriers, suggesting that many organizations are still not prioritizing digital as a means of driving competitiveness and growth.
Capgemini’s Digital Transformation Institute compiled the report, titled: “The Disconnected Customer: What digital customer experience leaders teach us about reconnecting with customers,” a study of more than 3,300 consumers and 450 senior executives from organizations within retail, retail banking, CPG, utilities and Internet-based services.
