The latest Adobe Digital Trends survey may explain why brands struggle to deliver premium customer experiences.
APAC businesses know optimising their customer experience is a priority but say their technology adoption isn’t keeping up, according to new Adobe research.
The 2019 Digital Trends survey found personalisation remains an essential focus for brands looking to deliver excellent CX but two in five marketers face challenges understanding the needs of their customers. Almost one in three attributes this to issues integrating their marketing technology.
The survey shows CX optimisation is a top priority for businesses, with 19 per cent citing it as the most exciting opportunity in 2019. However, more than half of global companies categorise their CX maturity as either “not very advanced” or “immature”.
US organisations are more likely to regard their CX as “very advanced” (15 per cent), while just 9 per cent of APAC respondents describe their companies that way.
More than half of the marketers surveyed expect “better use of data for more effective audience segmentation and targeting” to be among their top three organisational priorities.
Most organisations (64 per cent) say their marketing activities are based on a “fragmented approach with inconsistent integration between technologies” or have “little or no cloud technology”. About one in 10 businesses globally has a “highly integrated, cloud-based technology stack”.
“Our research indicates that as new techniques and practices related to customer experience emerge, organisations are struggling to keep up with the rate of change,” says Paula Parkes, Adobe Asia-Pacific Senior Director of Marketing.
In partnership with Econsultancy, Adobe’s ninth annual survey of almost 13,000 marketing, advertising, e-commerce, creative and IT professionals is a snapshot of how global businesses are handling digital transformation. The full report can be downloaded here.
APAC executives certainly appear to be positive about automation – only 24 per cent say they are “cautious” compared with 34 per cent of US respondents. About one in five APAC respondents describe themselves as “excited” about future technology. Half of those surveyed work for organisations are using or planning to invest in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
According to the survey, organisations that classify themselves as “very advanced” at CX are almost three times more likely “to have exceeded their top 2018 business goal by a significant margin”.
B2B Marketing Leaders Forum APAC events will be held in Sydney, Singapore and Melbourne in 2019. See here for more information.
Further reading: Clear winners in the customer experience race