CX directors are struggling to make customer journey improvement strategies operationally useful to those in charge of carrying them out, suggests Verint.
The notion stems from statistics within its latest study, entitled: “The 2022 State of Digital Customer Experience Report.”
From its research, the vendor first uncovered that CX directors believe the experiences offered to customers are more “effective” than how managers perceive them.
Indeed, 50% of respondents who are directors or higher (i.e. c-suite execs, VPs, SVPs etc.) believe that their company offers an “extremely effective” experience via digital channels. However, just 22% of managers feel the same way.
Such a disparity leads Verint to the following conclusion:
[There is likely] a lack of communication between those responsible for setting strategy and the employees solely responsible for managing customer interactions.
Digging deeper, further discrepancies emerge. For example, 63% of directors (or higher) believe that their digital-first engagement stance is “proactive”. However, only 46% feel the same way.
Meanwhile, just 44% of managers feel as though customer expectations have increased since 12 months ago, whereas 57% of directors (or higher) do.
Such statistics suggest that managers can assess CX performance much more honestly, while they also support the notion that the feedback loop between many CX directors and managers is bust. As a result, teams are struggling to carry out the vision of the CX director.
Of course, the long-standing tribal mentality that often exists within individual functions is a significant obstacle to overcome. Nonetheless, improving communication between managers and the director will likely pave the way for greater alignment across the company, which is conducive to better CX.
In addition, directors may do more to make their vision – often laid out in customer journey maps – relevant to the managers of each department, ensuring everybody is on the same page.
More Findings from the Verint Report
The Verint study uncovers many further findings into the current state of digital customer experiences. More thought-provoking figures from the report include:
- Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers have switched to a competitor following a poor customer experience.
- High effort to resolve a customer query is the biggest barrier to brand loyalty (34 percent), ahead of long hold times (25 percent) and poor bot experiences (22 percent).
- 76 percent of CX leaders believe customer engagement challenges will increase in 2022.
- 59 percent of CX leaders cite digital-first customer engagement as a top priority initiative over the next 12 months.
- Half of consumers under 45 years old have used a channel like WhatsApp or SMS texting.
Verint ran two separate surveys to gather these results. First was a brand survey sent to 1,000 CX employees in positions such as manager, director, SVP, EVP, or C-level executive. Second was a consumer survey sent to 2,000 US participants between the ages of 18 and 75.
For more cutting-edge CX insights, check out our article: The Future of CX: 5 Predictions from Industry Leaders
