• by Ray Schultz , June 13, 2023

Email is not seen as the most important customer experience channel by European marketers. But neither is it ranked as the least, judging by The Future of Customer Experience, a study by Netigate. 

On a scale of 1 to 5, the respondents rated channels and activities as follows: 

• Websites (forms, chat, content, etc.) — 4.25 
• CRM system (e.g., segmentation, trend analysis, etc.) — 4.03 
• Feedback Surveys — 3.91
• Sales people and account managers — 3.78
• Social media — 3.53
• Email marketing — 3.20 
• In-person events — 3.20 
• In-app or in-product channels — 3.16 
• Online events — 2.72
• Paid advertisement online — 2.69 
• PR, media, radio, TV (non-paid) — 2.61
• Paid advertisement offline — 2.13 

Of companies polled, 48% have mapped their customer journey, but 43% have not and 8% don’t know. 

Meanwhile, many are using AI for these tasks: 

• Analyzing customer feedback — 46% 
• Conversational AI — 28% 
• Improving customer service workflows — 24% 
• Other — 22% 
• Predictive personalization — 13%

Netigate surveyed 81 CX professionals in the spring of 2023, spread across Sweden, Germany, the UK and other countries.