Digital marketers blame tech failings for wrecking CX

Nearly two thirds (63%) of digital marketing professionals say their finest work is being let down by poor, outdated and – more often than not – too much technology, leading to disjointed activity and disgruntled customers.

So says a new study from FullStory, which quizzed 700 professionals responsible for building customer experiences online, including product teams, marketers and UX professionals.

The global survey spans the the UK, US, Germany, The Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

According to the data, almost a third of professionals (30%) say that siloed tools and poor data are causing multiple teams to replicate work, wasting time and scuppering digital activity.

Many of those surveyed are also unhappy with their existing tools, with 68% agreeing that too many analytics platforms treat customers as nothing more than “numbers in a spreadsheet”.

To solve this, many brands have invested in additional tech, often simply building on what has come before. As a result, 66% of those surveyed said there are tools in their DX stack that they have never used. A quarter (25%) go as far as to say they rarely use “the majority” of their DX tools.

FullStory’s vice-president of EMEA Andrew Fairbank said: “A poor digital experience can damage everything from user acquisition to customer loyalty, and even a brand’s reputation.

“Over the years, the market has become flooded with tools designed to address just one or two small parts of a brand’s digital experience. As such, many businesses have ended up with disjointed technologies spread across multiple teams and all doing similar jobs. The result is siloed data, less informed DX strategies, and ultimately a worse experience for customers.

“Instead of piling more tools on top of each other, brands need to treat DX as a unified function with one ‘source of truth’ for data and insight.

“The future of this space will be single-platform solutions, built from the ground up as a cohesive platform designed to be that single source of truth, that span journey mapping, UX analytics, frustration signals, conversion tracking and more.

“Ideally these platforms should be used across product management teams, CX, engineering, customer success, marketing departments and more. That will be the key to better experiences, happier customers, and increased revenue.”