The digital experience is more important than ever, making up a much greater proportion of a consumer’s interaction with a brand, from discovery to transaction through to delivery and support of a product or service. Yet surprisingly 67% of CXOs from across industries admit they do not have an integrated digital business strategy, according to Gartner.
SAP’s Australian Digital Experience Report offers Australian brands a framework to measure and manage their digital-experience performance, based on insight rather than instinct. We’ve taken input from more than 3,000 Australian consumers who rated experiences from across six industries representing more than 7,000 digital interactions. The findings – though humbling – are extremely valuable for many organisations to form a baseline on where they stand in their customers’ eyes and, more importantly, how they can improve.
There’s a gap
The first and most glaring finding from the report is that there’s a significant gap between digital experiences that delight consumers and what Australian brands are delivering. Nearly half (47%) of respondents indicated they are unsatisfied with their digital experiences, while only 22% said they were delighted.
But what has been surprising to the brands we have shared the results with so far is the connection between this digital-experience gap and business outcomes. Of the 22% who indicated they were delighted with the digital experience, 73% said they would remain loyal to the brand. Conversely, of the 47% who said they were unsatisfied by the digital experience, only 17% said they would remain loyal. Similarly, the delighted cohort gave brands an overall Net Promoter Score of 63%, while those unsatisfied gave a sobering -55%.
The gap can be closed – and here lies the opportunity
The good news about the predominantly low digital-experience performance in Australia is that brands can do something about it. Brands such as Suncorp Insurance and Kogan.com delivered exceptionally high scores for their performance, and their best practice is telling. Both companies excelled at deploying technology that brought their front office and back office together to better understand and engage with their customers. They’ve successfully broken down the silos across business units to enable a free flow of data through their value chain.
We are witnessing an unmatched era of true business innovation. Breakthrough technologies have matured and hit scale together, enabling five defining trends: Hyper-connectivity, supercomputing, cloud computing, Internet of Things and cybersecurity.
From a customer experience perspective, digital technology has changed the game, but customers have changed the rules. They demand simple, seamless, personalised experiences across any channel – anytime, anywhere and on any device. 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. 57% of the buying process is completed before the first interaction with sales and 2.4 billion brand-related conversations happen online every day.
To gain and retain customers in this environment, organisations need to digitise their end-to-end experience by:
- Orchestrating business processes across marketing, commerce, sales and service
- Delivering personalised experiences in context with each interaction
- Creating a single, harmonised experience for the customer, while reducing the burden on employees
- Engaging customers on the channels they choose at any moment in their journey
- Fully integrating with core business processes
Powering this experience requires a true digital core that delivers real-time response, prediction and simulation, agility and lower TCO. This digital core not only helps organisations deliver delightful customer experiences, but also enables organisations to better engage their workforce, collaborate with their business networks and suppliers, and leverage the potential of their existing assets and the Internet of Things.
For more information on partnering with SAP to help your customers deliver the digital experiences Australians now expect, please call 1800 287 727, 0800 300727 or see us online.
