Research from customer engagement platform Twilio recently revealed the increased level of acceleration experienced by Australian companies in their digital transformation through investing in digital customer engagement.
The latest State of Customer Engagement Report revealed in particular that due to these efforts, Australian companies were able to advance their digital strategies by an average of eight years, ahead of the global average of 6.5 years.
As a result of the investment in digital customer engagement over the past two years, companies have boosted total revenues by an average of 64 per cent. Meanwhile, 15 per cent of responding companies in Australia, revenues doubled after making such investment
Given the achievements made by these business, the report has stated that Australia is now leading the way with the highest level of digital customer engagement (50 per cent). It is also predicted that by 2025, over half (59 per cent) of their customer engagement will be digital.
The report also highlighted that personalisation has emerged to be one of the most important aspects of delivering a competitive brand experience that will attract customers and create brand loyalty. In fact, it noted that nearly half of consumers said they’ll stop using a brand if it doesn’t personalise their experience.
However, while both brands and consumers agree that personalisation is important, the report uncovered some startling gaps between the two groups. For instance, 88 per cent of companies surveyed believe that personalisation is critical to their customer engagement strategy. Yet while 81 per cent of Australian companies claim to provide good or excellent personalised experiences to customers, 56 per cent of consumers say otherwise, reporting bad, poor or average personalisation.
Australian consumers are also the most likely to underestimate how much personalisation influences them. While companies say consumers spend 43 per cent more when engagement is personalised, consumers believe they spend just 12 per cent more.
“The research clearly shows that companies that prioritise digital customer engagement reap the biggest rewards,” said Glenn Weinstein, chief customer officer at Twilio. “Personalisation is actually getting harder to deliver, with high customer expectations, changing technologies, and the diminishing value of third-party cookies. We’ve seen five fundamentals to overcoming these challenges: embrace digital, personalise every interaction, shift to first-party data, close the trust gap, and avoid engagement fatigue by increasing the quality of your interactions.”
Kristen Pimpini, Regional Vice President, ANZ, Twilio added, “Many Australian companies accelerated their digital customer engagement over the last two years, creating entirely new and innovative ways of connecting with and servicing customers. While the research highlights that those efforts have translated to strong wins, it also shows us that they are still some way off in meeting consumer expectations. Companies need to close the experience gap, respond to consumers’ expectations of flexibility and choice in how they interact with brands.”
