Smart Insights: Nobody Owns the Multichannel Ecommerce Experience in Over Half of UK Businesses

LONDON, October 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Smart Insights and eCommerce Expo recently teamed up to carry out research revealing that 52.67% of UK businesses have no one clearly defined as being responsible for the quality of multichannel customer experience. The research was carried out to coincide with the eCommerce Expo earlier this month, with 401 responders to the survey made up of Smart Insights members and previous Expo attendees.

     (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130723/629764-a )

The responses went on to inform the Managing Customer Journeys 2014 report. The report shows a striking level of businesses lacking in the most basic areas needed to get multichannel experiences right.

Over half of businesses allocate no clear responsibility to multichannel customer experience

52.67 of of survey respondents indicated their business took a slipshod approach to the multichannel experience, by aligning to specific personnel to this task.

Dave Chaffey, CEO of Smart Insights, says in the report: "Over half of businesses have no clearly defined responsibility for customer experience suggesting poor management of customer experience with no proactive approach to the process of measuring customer experience effectiveness and putting in place methods to improve it."

Meanwhile 20.36% of respondents indicated they had achieved the best planning structure, with a single individual defined as being responsible for the multichannel experience.

UK businesses undervalue the Net Promoter Score (NPS)

According to respondents only 22% of UK businesses use NPS to assess customer satisfaction with online experiences. While other ways of measuring, like customer Satisfaction Surveys (61%), indicate that businesses are keen to see how they are performing, only 22% use the option Chaffey defines as being the recommended and more rigorous approach.

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) limitations

One third of respondents also indicated they carried out no or limited activities to optimize their Ecommerce conversion rates. This indicates businesses tend to miss out on chances to increase leads and sales for themselves.

In addition to this omission, 36% of businesses only carry out CRO work on an ad-hoc basis.

The report features tips to get the most out of managing the customer experience.

In addition, the survey and report also covered the areas of understanding an improving customer journeys.

The full report can be downloaded from http://tfmainsights.com/ecommerce-download-best-practices-online-customer-journeys/

http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/managing-customer-journeys-experience

Smart Insights Digital Strategy Advice (http://www.smartinsights.com )

Contact Dave Chaffey http://www.smartinsights.com/about-dave-chaffey/ for further commentary and charts from the research

Ecommerce Expo (http://www.ecommerceexpo.co.uk)