Many of us reach for sporting metaphors to assist with the communication of business challenges. Once they don’t distract from the core discussion and provided they help illuminate the debate, I don’t see any harm in utilising them as an aid (apologies to non-sports fans!). There are some that immediately come to mind – ‘you are stuck in the blocks’, ‘hit them where it hurts’, ‘taking one for the team’, etc.
As someone who played soccer for many years and as a father who has fulfilled a supporting role on a sideline of a Sunday morning, the one line that you don't want to be accused of or worst still hear mentioned about your own child:
- 66% of European companies say that customer experience has been a “very important” priority over the last three years.
- Investment is continuing to increase and countries such as the UK are leading the way.
- 40% say that the CEO leads Customer Experience initiatives within their organisation. Sweden lead the way on this leadership item, with CEO’s leading CX initiatives in exactly half of the companies.
The Dangers of Complacency
If there was any danger of us getting complacent on the progress made, the following 2 findings from the research provide a sobering reminder:- On a global level, the research indicates a level of confusion within companies about who is leading the customer experience drive. Although 72% of CEOs surveyed believe they own the CX initiative, only 27% of other executives believe the CEO leads it.
- Within Europe 37% do not measure the success of customer experience transformation initiatives.
Putting The Ball In The Back of the Goal
There is nothing new or ground breaking about the advice offered to drive the ball into the back of the goal! Its about being really clear on your CX purpose and getting the basics right:- Make CX a priority - Across the board, companies that prioritise future investment in CX believe they are reaping the benefits of better revenue growth and improved profitability.
- Place the CEO in charge
- Find the evidence - More than a third of companies in Europe (37%) don’t measure the success of CX initiatives. This endangers the effectiveness of CX investment.
Companies who prioritise future investment in CX initiatives believe they are more profitable and have better revenue growth than their peers, according to the research. As a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) who works with large corporations on their digital customer experience strategies I don’t just believe that is the case, I know it is!
Graham Fagan is Head of Customer Experience and Multi-Channel at BT and is also a speaker on the IMI Diploma in Digital Business. He leads the development and go to market strategy for digital customer experience services at BT. He has worked in the ICT industry for 18 years and during that time he has held positions in business transformation, architecture, commercial marketing and digital strategy. [post_title] => Digital Customer Experience: An Open Goal? [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => digital-customer-experience-open-goal [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-05-11 20:42:22 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-05-11 20:42:22 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=11600 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 9370 [post_author] => 43 [post_date] => 2015-03-20 15:41:52 [post_date_gmt] => 2015-03-20 15:41:52 [post_content] => Cathy Winston is a facilitator and consultant in Strategic Marketing. She has worked with blue chip companies worldwide, companies looking to scale and start-ups to identify growth strategies, with a strong track record of commercial achievement. Cathy lectures on Innovation and Marketing and teaches on IMI’s Mini MBA. [caption id="attachment_9373" align="alignnone" width="575"]
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Digital Marketing Communications….Spending more and more but have no idea if it’s working or not?
Chances are this statement is true for many companies, because they have failed to answer 3 key marketing questions before jumping right in.- Who are your target customers?
- What message will be needed for you to engage them and convert them to your product or service?
- What media do they use to get information about or connect with, products like yours and where does digital fit within that?
John Fahy
John Fahy is an IMI associate on the Senior Executive Programme.
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Calling Time on the Digital Advertising Party!
With consumers spending more time researching products online and diverting their attention from traditional to social media, money has been pouring into digital advertising.
The past decade has seen a boom in digital advertising spend but could 2017 be the year when we finally see some sanity restored? With consumers spending more time researching products online and diverting their attention from traditional to social media, money has been pouring into digital advertising. The numbers are quite staggering. As a private company in 2011, Facebook generated just under $4bn in sales. Since going public its revenues have rocketed and last year it generated $10bn in income on sales of $28bn. Similarly in 2016, Google received $80bn in advertising revenues and it is by far the global leader in search advertising. It is estimated that this year, digital ad spend in the US will exceed TV ad spend for the first time. Think about it, all of the money going across all of the TV platforms in the US will be dwarfed by the money going, primarily, to the big two digital advertisers. It has been a great run but one that may just be ending.
Scarcely a quarter goes by now without some bad news story for the digital advertisers. Google have been making headlines this month when it was revealed that paid ads were appearing alongside extremist and unsavoury content particularly on YouTube. Up to 250 advertisers, including the likes of L’Oreal, McDonald’s, Walmart and GM suspended advertising on YouTube and in some cases on its entire display network until the problem was rectified. Similarly late last year, Facebook was in the news when it admitted that it had overstated how long users watch videos on its site by up to 80 percent. This was a result of how it calculated its ‘average duration of video viewed’ number which was the total number of minutes a video was watched divided by the total number of views. However, Facebook only counts a view as someone watching a video for at least three seconds which had the effect of understating the denominator and making the duration of video views look attractive.
Each emerging controversy reflects a growing disenchantment with digital advertising. As it grew, digital promised a shiny age of measurement and transparency where advertisers could target precisely the customers that they wanted to and measure the effectiveness of their ad spend to the cent. But instead, advertisers have encountered business models that are opaque at best and a dizzying fog of metrics to get their heads around. A particular case in point is display advertising – that is banner ads and pop-ups that appear on webpages many of which are now served up in real-time and the type that has been at the centre of Google’s problems this month. The structure through which an advert by say Coca-Cola appears on say TV3’s home page is potentially a complex one involving ad exchanges and demand-side and supply-side platforms. For each euro spent on this kind of advertising, some estimates put the amount actually reaching the publisher (in this case TV3) as being as low as 30 percent. The rest goes on intermediary commissions.
These types of issues are leading to more big brands to question their digital spending. Earlier this year Mark Pritchard, the chief brand officer at P&G, raised a number of concerns about digital advertising particularly the lack of external validation of the numbers being supplied by the digital duopoly of Facebook and Google. A study reported by Adweek last year noted that a third of brands had indicated that they were shifting more of their budgets away from digital and back to traditional media. It would appear that the era of easy money is coming to an end for the digital advertisers.
John Fahy is an IMI associate on the Senior Executive Programme. He is Professor of Marketing at the University of Limerick in Ireland and Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
