NetBase 2018 Consumer Experience Analytics Report Finds Businesses Are Ignoring Essential Insights and Channels

By STS News Desk On Sep 19, 2018

Survey finds companies that effectively bring all information together have a significant advantage over competitors

NetBase, a global leader in enterprise social analytics, today unveiled the 2018 Consumer Experience Analytics Report, which found many businesses are taking the short-term view of customer satisfaction and are ignoring essential channels. The majority of customer experience professionals are not fully leveraging – or prioritizing – data from call centers, forums, employee feedback, or online reviews. Many are also not giving equal weight to all parts of the customer journey.

@NetBase today unveiled the 2018 Consumer Experience Analytics Report, which found many businesses are taking the short-term view of customer satisfaction.

“The Consumer Experience Analytics Report enables companies to fully understand the effectiveness of their current products and services, and gain deeper insights about their customers’ wants and needs so they can provide them with the best possible experience,” said Paige Leidig, chief marketing officer at NetBase. “Too many companies aren’t taking full advantage of these resources, and while brands use a plethora of data sources to fully understand and serve their customers, many aren’t using data with the future in mind and are underperforming because of it.”

Some of the report’s key findings include:

Customer experience will soon be king – By 2020, customer experience will surpass price and product as key brand differentiators. The study also found that customers place up to twice as much importance on negative experiences than positive ones, meaning there is more pressure than ever for businesses to get it right the first time.
Businesses are focusing on short-term customer satisfaction and not taking the long view – 41 percent of respondents identified improving customer satisfaction as a top priority for customer insights, but only 12 percent prioritized using customer insights to develop new products and services as a top priority. This is treating the symptom without treating the root cause or setting the stage for further innovation.
Most businesses are over-prioritizing the wrong data – There are two glaring gaps in most companies’ listening. Only 11 percent of businesses were focused on post-purchase consumer behaviors, which leaves the insights from the customer satisfaction and experience post-purchase being relatively untapped. This can have a significant impact on repeat business and word-of-mouth. Additionally, less than 50 percent of the companies surveyed focus on the experience offered from location to location, which means they are ignoring valuable insights to improve operations and address location-specific customer issues.
Reviews and advice are eclipsing expert reviews – More than 80 percent of consumers seek the advice of family or friends before making purchases online. That number goes up to 92 percent when the consumers are millennials.

Today, every company collects customer experience and feedback data, however, all the data doesn’t matter much if businesses can’t transform the data into insights that drive strategic initiatives. Companies that effectively bring all information together have a huge advantage over those that aren’t. Every channel, every touchpoint, every morsel of data businesses fail to consider is a gift to their competitors.