ANZ businesses ramping up CX investments

Three in four organisations in markets including Australian and New Zealand increased their customer experience (CX) technology investments last year, research from Gartner suggests.

A survey of IT decision-makers in seven markets, with 26% hailing from Australia and New Zealand, found that 52% are planning to increase funding on customer analytics in 2019.

The survey found that the top CX investment priorities for this year are metrics, voice of the customer (50%), increasing speed of product and service launches (45%), product proliferation and personalisation (45%), prioritisation of CX investments (44%) and customer journey automation (44%).

Meanwhile, the top emerging technologies expected to have the biggest impact on CX projects over the next three years include AI (53%), virtual assistants and chatbots (39%) and omnichannel engagement solutions (37%).

As organisations grow in CX maturity, they generally place greater focus on investments in increasing customer understanding and delivering accurate actions by analysing data, Gartner said.

Maturing organisations also increase their CX teams, which necessitates investments in employee training tools.

But the survey also found that many organisations have faced crisis situations in their CX programs on the road to maturity. Within the last three years, CX initiatives were stressed or stalled due to economic or financial pressure (53%), lack of executive support (60%) and difficulties demonstrating the return on investment on CX spending (59%).

“High-stakes situations impacting CX programs can result in the removal of funding for a CX initiative or its cancellation, or even employees losing their jobs. This may lead to a decline in the quality of the customer experience, weakened financial performance of the organisation and erosion of its competitive position,” Gartner Research Vice President Olive Huang said.

“Pay special attention to building recruitment, retention and succession plans for key technology leadership roles related to CX. Candidates for these roles are often hard to find and highly valued in the job market.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Yozayo

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