While more than 64 percent of UK enterprises invested in improving digital customer interaction during the pandemic, over half believe their short-term fixes won’t be fit for the long term.
A survey of 100 enterprise IT leaders, commissioned by Macro 4, suggests the pandemic accelerated many organisations’ plans to improve their customer communications technology. But IT chiefs recognise that more work is needed.
Almost all of the sample believed that their organisation needs to improve how it communicates with customers. And 91 percent saw technology as the instrument.
Underlying the main findings, 81 percent of IT leaders agree that the need to react quickly to the pandemic has forced organisations to fast-track technology changes – but 72 percent feel that over the next year they will have to invest in upgrading or replacing some of that technology.
With many face-to-face settings closed and longer wait times in call centres, millions more customers have turned to websites and other digital channels, and businesses have had to scale up their digital offerings to meet that extra demand according to Macro 4.
CIOs with limited time and resources haven’t had the luxury of planning and implementing the most complete or perfect solution on day one. Now they are seeking to minimise pandemic-induced ‘technical debt’ – the cost of reworking those quick fixes to their customer communications stack so that they work for the long term according to Macro 4.
When IT bosses were asked how they felt technology could be used to drive improvements in inbound and outbound customer communications they highlighted a variety of requirements within their own organisations. On average, each respondent selected three different areas for improvement, with no single area dominating overall.
The IT leaders in the sample also see a role for technology in improving customer and user experience, with four in ten anticipating benefits from increasing personalization to meet the needs of different customers (41 percent) and increasing automation and AI (39 percent). Bringing customer communications across different departments, systems and channels under one umbrella (40 percent) can also help to support a more joined-up and holistic experience for customers.
The survey noted that three years after the GDPR came into effect, around a third of IT leaders still feel the need for improving the protection of customer data to enable compliance with regulations such as the GDPR, pointing towards a continuing struggle with data protection in many organisations.
You can view the full survey results here.
