Hey Marketers, What’s Your New Year’s CX Resolution?
CMOs are focusing more on improving the Customer Experience and increasing customer retention in 2018, primarily using customer feedback technology.
It’s safe to say that New Year’s resolutions have become a popular cultural practice. It seems you can’t scroll through social media toward the end of December or at the beginning of January without seeing several commitments to be more active, healthy, or proactive in the new year.
I think the reason resolutions are so popular is that with the dawn of a new year comes the opportunity to be better than before, which often means we need to do things differently. Perhaps this is one reason why many businesses make major changes in the way they allocate their budgets each year.
If we’re judging by the latest research, it seems that the majority of CMOs are placing customer retention at the center of their New Year’s resolutions. According to Gartner’s 2017-2018 CMO Spend Survey CMOs are spending more on customer retention over customer acquisition by a ratio of 2 to 1. Spending on customer experience in order to retain existing customers is an incredibly wise investment as a 10% increase in customer retention results in a 30% increase in company value—and a 5% increase in customer retention increases profits by up to 125%.
These numbers don’t lie: Customer retention is profitable, so it’s no wonder that marketing budgets are putting more money into the analytics that encourage existing customers to keep coming back.
Gartner expands on the reasoning for this spending, explaining that the shift is “grounded in CMOs’ understanding that analytics is central to delivering customer experience, identifying, understanding and growing customers, and measuring and optimizing marketing performance.”
As a CX technology company, there are quite a few things about this latest research that excite us at Pearl-Plaza. Firstly, this shows that Forbes’ 2015 prediction that customer experience would become a vital part of marketing is coming into fruition. Secondly, it means that companies are taking to heart more and more the fact that a customer experience focus is a key driver of business impact. As businesses recognize this, we are seeing more brands than ever invest in CFM tools, like Pearl-Plaza, that don’t just collect VoC feedback but also provide advanced analytics, giving marketers insights as well as data so they can make informed business decisions.
With so many companies expanding their marketing budgets for advanced analytics, there is no doubt that they will be considering several customer experience solutions as possible investments. With so many options available, choosing a platform can seem like a daunting task, but it helps when you know what you’re looking for.
If your business resolutions for 2018 include optimizing customer experience, check out the “Customer Experience Buyer’s Guide: What to Know Before You Buy Software Promising to Improve the Customer Experience.”
