Marketers Don’t Really Understand the Customer Journey

New research has found that in the past four years marketers have made little progress in joining the dots on their customers’ journeys.

The report by ResponseTap and Econsultancy focused on the understanding of the customer journey by companies and agencies, mirroring a similar study from four years previously.

The initial research took place in 2011 and at that time just over a third (38 per cent) of marketers said that they understood the customer’s journey, though they admitted that there was little management across touchpoints.

With the technological evolution in recent years and advent of developments such as omni-channel and big data collection you’d think this statistic has changed in 2015, but it hasn’t. Marketers still aren’t any wiser on the customer journey.

And less than half (46 per cent) of the company respondents and just a third (33 per cent) of the agency respondents think it is very important for businesses to join up online and offline activities in an omni-channel strategy.

This stagnation could be explained by barriers that are preventing organisations from getting a better understanding of the customer journey as two-fifths (39 per cent) of the agency respondents identified siloed organisational structures as a barrier and 21 per cent of marketers agreed that a lack of sharing between departments was an issue.

And while call centres are one of the most relevant offline channels for businesses, cited by two-thirds of responding companies as important, only 37 per cent agreed that they are using this call centre data to understand the customer journey.

Bhavesh Vaghela, Chief Marketing Officer at ResponseTap, said: "With 66 per cent of the companies identifying call centres as the most relevant offline channel for their business, it is becoming essential to make the link between all the businesses' activities: it's now, or never."

He added that for an innovative business to deliver a premium customer experience, clarity around who in the business owns the customer journey is key.

"Ensuring that the internal teams are working coherently together across all channels will determine how successful the customer experience is," Vaghela concluded.