Digital Customer Experience Research: Insights from Hospitality Decision-Makers
Sep 19, 2023 • 8 Minute Read • Stephanie Nardone, Content Marketing Director
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Research Report: Navigating Tech in the Digital Landscape
Dec 05, 2023 • 5 Minute Read • Stephanie Nardone, Content Marketing Director
The absence of an optimized digital customer experience (DCX) or marketing strategy can hinder your business's online presence, affecting visibility, brand recognition, customer engagement, and overall digital success.
Research we conducted in April 2023 revealed that most organizations have a DCX or marketing strategy but face difficulties in optimization and consistency. While many share common goals, they also struggle with multiple priorities, including technology utilization. Yet it's vital for their digital success as they aim to leverage new tools effectively.
Without a holistic strategy and appropriate tools, you could be missing out on data and insights. This may lead to a loss of competitive advantage, a consistent customer experience, and opportunities to reach a target audience, and ultimately hinder revenue growth.
The Current State of Digital Experiences
Predictive digital leaders plan to implement new marketing tech, and although they consider themselves industry leaders in utilizing technology, there's room for improvement. This year, optimizing their DCX centers around customer engagement, marketing attribution, and technology use.
- 31% plan to implement new marketing tech as their number one focus this year and 26% in first-party data solutions.
- 44% admit to lacking skills or adequate resources in their current workforce.
- 42% lack the technology needed to do what they want it to do (e.g., unable to implement personalization).
- 64% believe they're market leaders or toward the top compared to their industry.
- 95% think improvements are needed in technology utilization.
Technology Utilization
While many organizations acknowledge the need for improved technology utilization and admit to skills and resource gaps, there's a divide in perceptions of DCX technology enhancements.
The survey results highlight the potential that technology has for achieving digital success and being competitive.
Digital experience leaders who recognize the value that improving technology can bring to their organization are more inclined to be market leaders in technology (i.e., they're tech-savvy leaders). The benefits of improving the technology in their organization are seen by 19% of those tech-savvy leaders. However, the skeptical ones are less tech-savvy in the market and see fewer advantages to enhancing technology utilization.
Data Utilization
When it comes to steering the ship with data, here are some key insights into how organizations are utilizing it:
- 45% of digital leaders are utilizing data to make informed decisions regarding technology choices, ensuring they stay at the forefront of technological innovation.
- 44% are leveraging data to drive strategic decision-making, using insights to refine their overarching digital strategies.
- 39% recognize the potential of data in personalizing digital advertising, and tailoring content and campaigns to suit the unique preferences and behaviors of their target audience.
Solving for Technology Inefficiencies
Over the last three years, organizations have mostly invested in digital experience platforms (DXP) or content management systems (CMS), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, which help provide them with first-party data and customer insights to inform many areas of their business.
When it comes to selecting a DXP/CMS, over half of respondents found themselves relying on recommendations from digital marketing agencies. Limitations in capabilities within their existing tech solutions prompted the need for upgrades for all respondents, with the exception of 1% who to their knowledge haven't changed their DXP/CMS.
The top reasons that drove organizations to invest in new DXP/CMS solutions included:
- 34% Feature and functionality limitations
- 34% Total cost of ownership considerations
- 33% Multi-lingual functionality and constraints
- 32% Security concerns
- 31% Platform support lifecycle
- 31% Integration challenges
- 29% Content update difficulties
- 21% Design and User Experience (UX) constraints
- 20% Website performance issues
Drive Digital Change
In the dynamic digital landscape, expertise and data are keys to success without compromise. You can excel in both areas without sacrificing one for the other. By collaborating with experts in digital strategy and capabilities, aligning opportunities with your business objectives, and adopting a well-balanced digital strategy, you can excel operationally and adapt and grow with your customers, driving profitability.
Key Takeaways:
1. Upgrade Technology Infrastructure
Prior to upgrading technology, assess your current platforms, tools, and implementations to identify inefficiencies to take full advantage of new solutions, features, and capabilities on the market. Choosing a DXP can directly impact your digital success. When it aligns with your business needs and technical requirements you can leverage a DXP to unlock a consistent CX, provide data-informed personalized experiences, centralize data, streamline operations, and enable a future-ready infrastructure.
The Proof:
- Source Atlantic implemented a digital experience commerce platform and enabled an organization-wide digital-first strategy. Their results included increasing transactions by 100%, organic search by 160%, and mobile traffic by 80%. Upgrading to the latest platform enabled Acadian Asset Management to meet the latest tech standards, streamline UX and content, and set up a back-end with data-informed architecture to prepare for future integrations and performance improvements. The investment management company saw a 42% conversion increase, a 30% jump in article engagement, and a 308% lift in shared articles on social.
2. Embrace Emerging Trends to Optimize CX
Many early adopters are exploring the potential of AI and machine learning to enhance their team's capabilities. In a dynamic business landscape, where 84% of organizations acknowledge the need to enhance the speed of marketing content generation and distribution across various channels, embracing emerging technologies is a logical step to bolster your digital marketing endeavors. These technologies can drive improvements in areas, such as data insights, content creation and moderation, personalized content delivery, and more.
Considering that 59% of businesses have already harnessed the power of AI and machine learning for digital advertising and 33% for website chat functions, it's essential to evaluate your own utilization of these technologies. How has your organization initiated its journey with these transformative tools?
3. Put Data in the Driver's Seat
Which aspect of your DCX have you explored to harness the power of data effectively? What truly distinguishes leaders from followers is their adeptness in leveraging data to enhance both customer experiences and operational efficiencies.
To truly harness the power of data, it's crucial to not just gather insights but to effectively measure, act upon them, and automate processes where possible.
- Measure: Implement robust analytics and data tracking systems to continuously monitor and evaluate key performance metrics related to customer interactions and business processes, ensuring you have a clear understanding of how data impacts your DCX.
- Act: Develop a proactive strategy for using data insights to make informed decisions and improvements in real time. This will allow you to respond swiftly to customer needs and market dynamics, enhancing your overall DCX.
- Automate: Invest in data-driven automation tools and technologies to streamline routine processes, reduce manual intervention, and enable personalized experiences, ultimately boosting efficiency, consistency, and scalability within your DCX.
These are significant benchmarks on the path to digital excellence, but the journey doesn't stop here. So, how are you measuring, acting, and automating with data to propel your DCX to new heights?
Next Steps
Whether you're pondering the perfect solution or technology, embarking on a journey to optimize your data, or boldly taking your customers and business where they've never been, we'll help you get there. Get in touch to learn more.
This article draws upon data from Verndale's 2023 proprietary survey conducted in partnership with Vanson Bourne. Curious about more insights? Explore our comprehensive findings in the 2023 Trends Report: Digital Customer Experience.