Retailers are struggling to effectively communicate with their customers, according to new research from Kin + Carta and Google Cloud.
Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of retailers don’t know how to communicate with their customers, according to the study. Fifty senior retail leaders from some of the biggest brands in the UK, including Dunelm, Marks & Spencer and Natwest, were asked ‘what are your main challenges in creating an intelligent customer-first digital experience?’ at a recent event held by Kin + Carta and Google Cloud.
Additionally, 19 per cent of attendees, who also represented the likes of Aviva, Ted Baker and Unilever, see the biggest challenge in creating an ‘intelligent customer-first digital experience‘ is getting the most of first-party data, while 14 per cent say it’s agreeing who owns the customer in their organisation.
“We’ve known about the importance of communication from retailers to their customers for some time, but the fact remains that many are still struggling to know what is best practice,” said Mark Collin, managing director of product and experience at Kin + Carta Europe.
“No matter what size of your business, to approach this challenge head-on, brands are going to need to get more out of their data. And that means across the business, not just the data team. By working cross-functionally with these insights, in the cloud, starting with small experiments but moving fast, retailers will be able to evolve their approach – creating the most intelligent customer experiences for their customers.”
Other results from the survey showed that 19 per cent of retailers are looking to improve their optimisation for customer value across marketing-sales-digital operations, while eight per cent saw the reduction of churn to increase customer lifetime value as the biggest challenge.
Results were taken from research carried out at The Executive Network (TEN) event: ‘Taking the Friction Out: How to Create Intelligent Data-driven Experiences’ in partnership with Kin + Carta and Google Cloud. Participants included Chief Digital Officers; Chief Data Officers, CIOs; CTOs; VPs; Product Directors, Ecommerce Directors, Data Director, Heads of Data from retail, CPG, retail banking & travel, tourism & broader consumer-facing
