Over the past four years, there has been little to no discernable change in marketers’ overall ability to integrate customer touch points. In both 2011 and 2014, 38% of marketers said that although they understood the customer journey, they had very little management and integration across all touch points, according to a report from ResponseTap.
The report, titled: Understanding The Customer Journey, was developed to help marketers explore the omnichannel customer journey and understand its numerous definitions. For the online survey, Econsultancy collected insights from approximately 2,000 client-side marketers, e-Commerce professionals and supply-side agencies.
Organizations still are lagging when it comes to implementing digital throughout the customer journey. Less than half (46%) of client-side respondents and 33% of supply-side respondents indicated that it was very important for businesses to conjoin online and offline activities, which is technically the definition of an omnichannel strategy.
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However, these organizations still face myriad barriers in understanding the customer journey. While 35% of client-side respondents said they have the most issues understanding the complexity of the modern customer experience, supply-side respondents have trouble operating with siloed organizational structure.
When it comes to understanding the new customer journey and creating the optimal campaigns and strategies, 41% of client-side respondents and 58% of supply-side agencies said they put their marketing departments in control.
But most companies don’t even have budget dedicated to understanding the customer journey. At least 35% of client-side companies and 49% of supply-side agencies use money that was originally assigned to other business matters to fund these processes. More than one third (36%) of client-side companies and 27% of supply-side agencies have no budget at all.
Of all the organizations surveyed, 18% of U.S. respondents said they had a “well-developed strategy” to improving the customer experience, compared to only 5% of European and 1% of APAC respondents. However, 66% of APAC companies said they are in the process of developing a new customer experience strategy.
Click here to access the report.
