Commentary
Automation Shellout: Marketing Is Key Part Of Customer Experience Spend
- by Ray Schultz , Columnist, June 2, 2023
Professionals siloed off in marketing may wonder how their automation compares with other parts of the company.
They’re hardly on top, judging by 2023 State of Automation: Eliminate Application Integration Challenges to Elevate Customer Experiences, a study by Jitterbit.
Companies are placing emphasis on:
- Information technology
- Customer Experience
- Finance/Accounting
- Customer Service
- Human Resources
- Marketing
- Administrative/General staff
But that may change: The brands polled plan to invest in integrating these customer experience functions in the next 12 months, and maybe a few dollars will trickle down for email automation:
- Marketing — 80%
- Ecommerce — 69%
- Customer service — 63%
- Sales — 50%
- Fulfillment — 39%
- Support — 30%
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In general, marketing is one of the departments and functions being prioritized for additional automation:
- Information technology — 58%
- Human Resources — 50%
- Finance/Accounting — 44%
- Marketing — 40%
- Customer Experience — 39%
- Customer Service/Client Service — 35%
- Executive Leadership — 28%
- Procurement — 27%
- Sales/Business Development — 25%
- Operations — 23%
The customer experience ranks high because 60% of firms don’t find it easy to deliver optimal customer experiences.
As to why, the respondents cite:
- Constantly growing application landscape — 63%
- IT infrastructure limitations — 56%
- Manual or legacy point-to-point integrations — 52%
- Time constraints — 44%
- Data silos — 33%
- Personnel constraints — 33%
Meanwhile, brands seek to automate these use cases to deliver optimal customer experiences:
- Marketing operations — 65%
- Sales and ordering — 57%
- Billing and payments — 57%
- Fulfillment and logistics — 50%
- Customer support — 40%
The primary drivers of integration within the marketing department are:
- CRM — 52%
- ERP — 41%
- Ecommerce — 7%
Who’s in charge? Responsibility for data sharing falls on:
- The department itself — 59%
- Shared between IT and departments — 56%
- Central IT — 44%
- Outsourced IT or system integrator — 41%
- Don’t know — 2%
In general, companies are seeking these benefits from integrating customer experience applications:
- Increased customer satisfaction and retention — 33%
- Increased customer cross-sell/upsell — 20%
- 360-degree view of the customer — 19%
- Improve efficiency of resources — 17%
- Reduced costs — 17%
Jitterbit surveyed 167 IT, marketing and HR directors and higher in firms with 100+ employees from February 2 to 10, 2023. The survey was part of a larger research project.
