By Freya Purnell
Expect to see more alignment and partnering between CMOs and CIOs in 2015, as customer experience tops the list of customer-related priorities for organisations in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), according to research from IDC.
“Today, being first to market, having the lowest price, or being the best does not necessarily help. Businesses need to be agile and give customers what they want 24/7. Customers may buy your products or services, but what keeps them coming back is the experience,” says Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, senior program manager, big data, analytics, enterprise applications and social lead, IDC Asia/Pacific.
To achieve this, marketing leaders need to become more savvy about the business, data and customers to address the needs of “empowered buyers”.
CMOs are already being expected to lead enterprise transformation around customer experience, with 31 per cent of CMOs expanding to include this area, including customer support.
What is new about the customer experience area, according to Jimenez, are that “organisations are increasingly focused on ensuring these initiatives are tracked and using metrics that are closely aligned to the business”.
The IDC Asia/Pacific CMO Barometer shows that the top three key performance indicators (KPIs) for marketing departments in 2015 are increasing market share (66 per cent), improving marketing processes – particularly measuring effectiveness (60 per cent) and increasing customer satisfaction ratings or Net promoter score (55 per cent).
These will need to be supported by three key IT requirements, identified by CMOs – investing in disruptive technologies that can help gain competitive edge (25 per cent), enabling a multi-channel environment (16 per cent), and driving improved marketing automation and productivity (13 per cent).
“The road is going to be bumpy since growing data silos are still a major challenge for many organisations. This is stopping them from really knowing their customers and fulfilling their expectations. To be successful they will need to partner with the CIO. CMOs and CIOs need to establish common goals and define shared KPIs that can help them track the success of their joint initiatives,” added Jimenez.
