Almost half (46%) of marketers only share customer insights, data and feedback with sales teams at most once a month, according to a new study.
New research from experience management company Qualtrics, conducted with 260 in-house marketing professionals, examines the extent to which marketers are working in a silo across many businesses. While integration with sales is lacking, the disconnect with other departments and teams is even more pronounced.
While 54% of marketers regularly share customer insights and feedback with sales, only 50% do so with customer service teams, 29% with the wider workforce, and 27% with the board or C-level executives.
While some marketers may question the need to keep the wider business in touch with customer insights, according to Qualtrics it is only by sharing data that businesses can develop truly effective customer experiences. Leonie Brown, Customer Experience Consultant for Qualtrics EMEA, explains: “Great customer experiences cannot exist in a vacuum. Brands must guarantee that every aspect of the customer journey is delivering a consistent, seamless and high quality experience. To achieve this, everyone involved – from sales staff to delivery drivers to the CEO – must understand how the customer thinks, behaves and what they are looking for.
“Access to data goes a long way to improve each interaction along the customer journey, but information alone isn’t enough. Today the vast amount of data that brands are using look only to the past for insights, reflecting previous shopping habits, purchases and behaviours. By bringing together insights from every customer touchpoint we can unlock “Experience Data” — or X-data — which reveals why consumers behave in the way they do and predicts their next move. That is the real secret to a successful customer experience.”
To find out more about the role of X data in customer experience management, download Qualtrics’ full report here.
Methodology
Qualtrics commissioned a survey with a panel of 260 marketing professionals in July 2017. All respondents worked in-house (rather than agency-side) in UK-based organisations employing at least 50 people and had a minimum of two years’ experience in a marketing role. A second survey of 250 consumers was conducted in August 2017 using the Qualtrics platform.
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