SINGAPORE: Only one quarter of marketers in Asia Pacific think that their back-office systems and operational structures allow their companies to live up to their marketing claims, new research has found.
The CMO Council surveyed 245 senior marketers in 16 Asia-Pacific countries during the latter half of 2013 as part of its Maximize How You Individualize study into customer experience in the region.
The CMO Council surveyed 245 senior marketers in 16 Asia-Pacific countries during the latter half of 2013 as part of its Maximize How You Individualize study into customer experience in the region.
Just 10% of respondents felt there was a strong alignment and synergy among functional heads when it came to ensuring a seamless experience across all customer touchpoints.
Most thought that ownership of the customer experience was fragmented and distributed across multiple titles and areas of operational responsibility, including the CMO (31%), head of service and support (10%), vice president or director of customer sales and service (9%), chief operations officer (8%), chief sales officer (6%) and chief experience officer (6%).
Moreover, only 39% of marketers felt that these individuals had the authority and budget to really influence and impact the consumer experience.
There was a widespread belief that creating a customer-centric culture needed both commitment from senior management and empowerment of employees. This would be driven by real-time market insights, more personalised engagements and higher-value, actionable information and analytics delivered across the organization, the report said.
"There is no point wasting marketing resources on seducing customers with offers, incentives and captivating branding if there is a big disconnect on the product, business policy or service experience site", said Donovan Neale-Kay, Executive Director of the CMO Council.
"You will just see churn, disaffection and bad word of mouth, which can be quite damaging in a socially connected region like Asia," he added.
The need for marketers to improve their performance was further emphasised by the finding that there is a business case for improved customer experience. Of the 23% of respondents who directly calculated the impact of customer experience on results, 42% reported that revenue had increased.
But - despite the many opportunities that now exist to capture customer sentiment, from social listening to predictive analytics - few companies in the region had systems in place.
Around one third (36%) of marketers reported having a formal CXM strategy or program in their organisation, while 24% were able to take advantage of a comprehensive view of engagements and interactions across all stages of the customer life-cycle.
And a mere 8% felt they had a well developed and fully evolved system for understanding and meeting the needs of customers.
Most thought that ownership of the customer experience was fragmented and distributed across multiple titles and areas of operational responsibility, including the CMO (31%), head of service and support (10%), vice president or director of customer sales and service (9%), chief operations officer (8%), chief sales officer (6%) and chief experience officer (6%).
Moreover, only 39% of marketers felt that these individuals had the authority and budget to really influence and impact the consumer experience.
There was a widespread belief that creating a customer-centric culture needed both commitment from senior management and empowerment of employees. This would be driven by real-time market insights, more personalised engagements and higher-value, actionable information and analytics delivered across the organization, the report said.
"There is no point wasting marketing resources on seducing customers with offers, incentives and captivating branding if there is a big disconnect on the product, business policy or service experience site", said Donovan Neale-Kay, Executive Director of the CMO Council.
"You will just see churn, disaffection and bad word of mouth, which can be quite damaging in a socially connected region like Asia," he added.
The need for marketers to improve their performance was further emphasised by the finding that there is a business case for improved customer experience. Of the 23% of respondents who directly calculated the impact of customer experience on results, 42% reported that revenue had increased.
But - despite the many opportunities that now exist to capture customer sentiment, from social listening to predictive analytics - few companies in the region had systems in place.
Around one third (36%) of marketers reported having a formal CXM strategy or program in their organisation, while 24% were able to take advantage of a comprehensive view of engagements and interactions across all stages of the customer life-cycle.
And a mere 8% felt they had a well developed and fully evolved system for understanding and meeting the needs of customers.
Data sourced from CMO Council; additional content by Warc staff