Happy Friday! We’re bringing you the latest roundup of industry news. This week, we’re looking at customer loyalty to ridesharing services, the focus of digital strategies, Pendo’s inefficiency report, and AI in the hardware industry.
Key news
- Gartner predicts conversational AI will reduce contact centre agent labour costs by $80 billion by 2026. 10% of agent interactions will be automated by 2023 – an increase of 1.6% from today’s activities.
- 35.7 million British adults don’t believe that utilities companies their best interests at heart. This is less than 19% of the British adult population and proves disbelief that they will be supported through the cost-of-living crisis.
- Optimizely have found over a 60% year-on-year growth of its content marketing platform, Welcome, following its acquisition eight months ago. The content marketing platform (CMP) that brings teams together on a single solution to ideate, collaborate on assets, and execute campaigns
- AR smart tech company Reactive Reality have developed the first-ever physical smart mirror. This allows shoppers to try clothes on virtually via their personalised avatar, as well as giving size recommendations and trying many different products. This means smaller stores won’t need to hold as much inventory. It has been called the PICTOFiT Mirror.
- Leading hardware support platform, Mavenoid, is now financially secured to implement AI power to hardware brands. AI appears to be seeping its way into more and more industries as time goes by. The question we propose to you is – how will you stay on top and implement AI to your organisation?
Customer loyalty for ridesharing is declining, Chattermill has found
Ridesharing apps such as Uber, Bolt, Cabify, Careen and Grab are now under threat of rapif decline in customer loyalty. New research from Chattermill has found that this has decreased by 25 points in the past year. This comes from 810,000 responses to the most popular services.
Customers for Chattermill’s analysis rated overall loyalty to ridesharing at +5 in February 2021. A year later, it is now residing at –20. When paired with the UK’s recent train strikes, transport services are now an area of distress for customer experience.
Some testimonies from customers have embodied their frustrations and discontent to the industry, and can help with areas to improve:
“A service that should give you comfort and speed is becoming a humiliating situation.”;
“It’s a waste of time.”;
“The cost of my regular trip has increased fivefold for no known reason.”;
“They have price surges during busy times that are three times the price you would normally pay”
The top themes linked to customer disloyalty in the ridesharing industry includes:
- Cancellation of rides
- Increased wait time and ETA
- Overall price
- Car and ride availability
- App functionality and errors
- Quality of customer support
- Pickup location and GPS quality
“With heightened competition across every industry, price pressures, and customers less loyal than ever, having a laser focus on customer retention is business-critical whatever sector you work in. The businesses that thrive today, and in the future, are those that truly understand their customers, meet their demands, and deliver experiences that drive loyalty and retention.”
Dmitry Isupov, Co-Founder of Chattermill
This may be evidence of an industry where the devotion to customer experience is falling short. Where customers have these negative occurrences, they lose faith in the brand. Customer retention is crucial in our world of current disruptions – keep the driving fuel behind the organisation satisfied and wanting more.
Single view of the customer is driving business growth in digital strategy
“What areas of your digital strategy will you focus on in the next 12-24 months?” was the question asked to thirty top business leaders of the UK by Kin + Carta, and Google Cloud. The answer that came out on top was “building a single view of the customer”.
The following most popular answers were “getting the most out of data” at 54%, and a focus on “increasing customer lifetime value” at 46%. In all cases, the top businesses surveyed showed demand for growth and striving for more. The survey focused in particular for the next 12 months.
Other results showed that:
- 11% of business leaders were looking to “align organisational structures around customer goals”;
- While “understanding customer intent”;
- And “knowing when and how customers want to hear from you” was cited by 6% of business leader respondents
“It is encouraging to see that some of the biggest brands are understanding that they are not getting the most out of their data currently, and are putting that extraction of value front and centre for the next 12 months. Perhaps a sign there has been a shift in culture at these businesses, where data is not just the domain of the data teams, but also being taken seriously by the senior decision makers?”
Mark Collin, Managing Director of Product and Experience at Kin + Carta Europe
Digital strategy and experience is reaching the centrefold of businesses, and should be driven forward wherever possible. It is constantly advancing, which can only advance a business too. Single view of the customer and their experience is core to engage them with both your organisation and the digitally progressing shape of the world.
Is your digital strategy focused on that customer’s single view? If not, what can you do to change that?
Pendo’s Inefficiency Report: where businesses waste the most time and money
The latest research report by Pendo engaged 100+ business leaders and investigated where they experience the most waste; how they use their products to save costs; grow efficiently; and prepare their companies for downturn.
The report has found that most large companies struggle with 10 key areas of inefficiency. These include that businesses are:
- Unable to handle the volume of support calls and tickets
- Struggling to onboard new customers or employees at scale
- Wasting time trying to decipher user needs and behaviours
- Experiencing high and unpredictable rates of customer and/or employee churn
- Missing data needed to prioritise roadmaps and focus resources to see what to build next
- Confusing users with disengaged communication through external channels
- Overly reliant on sales to drive growth, growth, and expansion
- Struggling with a cohesive way to work on user feedback
- Struggling to demonstrate value and drive adoption
- Lacking a strategy for migrating users across new tools and working methods
From these inefficiencies, organisations have needed to focus on addressing these challenges through a product-led approach. For those that have work on this and implemented it successfully to grow from these findings, it has resulted in a 15% cut in support calls and tickets, a third more qualified sales leads, and a 5% reduction in customer churn.
“Right now, it’s more important than ever for companies to prioritise efficiency, trim excess waste and spend, keep the customers they already have, and make sure internal teams are focused on the right – ideally revenue-generating – things. They just need to learn to look inward and learn how to leverage their secret weapon: their product.”
Spencer Earp, EMEA MD at Pendo
Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!