• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 23, 2022

Emerging from pandemic lockdowns, consumers have shifted priorities and, in turn, shifted priorities for businesses -- with an emphasis on customer relationships.

Nearly three-quarters of business leaders participating in a study released Wednesday say a deeper understanding of customers is more important than before the pandemic, with 74% looking to connect with them more on social media and 72% looking to increase customer retention and loyalty. 

Uberall, a global provider of hybrid customer experience (CX) options, on Wednesday released a commissioned study by Forrester Consulting.

The study, Reignite Growth with Hybrid Customer Experiences, sheds light on the importance for businesses to adapt to expectations of customers expecting a well-integrated mix of digital and in-person experiences when researching or buying their products and services.

The study -- which features responses from more than 200 decision-makers at companies with 150 or more locations -- highlights the challenges of breaking down departmental silos to connect disparate systems that create an end-to-end hybrid customer journey.

There are many retail companies, even today, that maintain separate accounting and ordering systems for in-store and online.

Okaïdi -- an Uberall client and a large retail product brand under the ÏDKIDS Group’s global umbrella -- has stepped up the use of a hybrid customer experiences. 

Mathilde Watine, omnichannel transformation leader at ÏDKIDS, believes that as consumer behavior shifted during the pandemic, the company needed to change its business model practically overnight, “offering things like click-and-collect and online appointment booking.”

Tracking and analyzing real-time behavior remains a challenge. Some 65% of businesses rate their organization's ability to track and understand customer behavior across end-to-end customer journeys as “average,” “fair” or “poor.”

The findings also suggest that when evaluating the ideal technology to support marketing and customer experience at physical stores, the ability to connect data and analytics from customer interactions and feedback throughout the customer journey was most critical.

Companies with fragmented teams create challenges. One of the biggest is that 25% of activities related to the beginning and end of the customer journey are outsourced and 75% are managed in-house.

Activities managed in-house are fragmented across different teams from digital marketing to customer service. 

More than one-third of decision-makers rely on external partners to manage tasks. Some 42% outsource intelligent communications, 39% outsource customer journey data analytics, 36% outsource social listening, and 34% outsource ratings and reviews.

Some 73% of decision-makers believe digital capabilities in physical locations such as QR codes, self-checkout, and contactless payment have become more important now than before the pandemic, but 45% of those surveyed said digital capabilities in physical locations is one of the most challenging to implement.  

The study also found that 70% of decision-makers believe their organization’s ability to provide seamless customer journeys across all digital and physical touchpoints is “average”, “fair” or even “poor.” In addition, 72% were “interested” or “very interested” in a platform that addresses multiple marketing and customer-experience needs.