UserReplay, a leading provider of online session replay tools, commissioned Loudhouse to undertake research amongst e-Commerce heads (or equivalents) in finance, retail and travel organizations in both the US and the UK to explore current practices and priorities for Online Customer Experience Management (CEM).

The research finds that while investment in online channels is increasing, a lack of investment in online CEM is impacting growth. Currently, organizations find it difficult to understand the issues that customers may be having with their websites and to put themselves in the shoes of the customer. As such, barriers to conversion, however small, are going undetected and therefore unresolved. Businesses recognize the cost of not knowing the truth about the Online Customer Experience in terms of its impact on conversion, growth, reputation and loyalty, but are grappling with the transition to mobile and are hindered by a lack of tools to identify, replay and fundamentally quantify the impact of online customer issues on their business.

[Download PDF to see Figure A]

Research Methodology

207 interviews were conducted with those responsible for their organization’s online channel and the commercial performance of their website during May 2015. Interviews were conducted in the US and UK and across retail, finance and travel sectors.

The research was conducted by Loudhouse, a specialist B2B and technology market research agency, based in London.

[Download PDF to see Figure B]

Key findings from the research include:

In the dark on Online Customer Experience

• 76% plan to increase investment in online channels over the next 12 months, and 89% believe Customer Experience is a significant differentiator in their sector right now. However, 85% of organizations say understanding why customers may struggle with their website is a current challenge while 82% have difficulties maintaining a single approach to Customer Experience Management across mobile and web.
• Understanding customer behavior is seen to diminish as customers move from getting to their website (where 48% describe understanding as excellent) to knowing what customers do on their website (36%) and how the purchase process works from the customer perspective (35%).
• On average, businesses only think they know half of the customer difficulties experienced with their website.

Counting the cost of not knowing

• 71% think a lack of investment in Online Customer Experience is impacting growth in their organization.
• Sub-optimal Customer Experience is seen to result in reduced online conversion rates (43%), reputational damage (38%), preventing repeat business (30%) and eroding online revenue potential (28%).
• Not knowing the full truth about Online Customer Experience has further consequences within the organization. 90% say it makes planning and decision-making around online marketing activity more difficult, 80% say it makes it harder to justify budget for website design, 76% find it more challenging to prioritize what to address first on the website and 76% struggle to report on website performance.

Barriers to knowing the full truth about Online Customer Experience

• The biggest barriers to having a greater understanding of the Online Customer Experience are the transition to mobile access and its impact on usability and sales (40%), a lack of tools to quantify and prioritize online customer issues (33%) and a lack of tools to identify online customer issues (31%).
• Just one in five (21%) can accurately quantify the amount of revenue being lost through a less than optimal Online Customer Experience.

Moving forward – the search for the truth

• 62% believe they could increase their sales if their website was running optimally and more effectively. Furthermore, half believe their Online Customer Experience could definitely be improved – desktop (51%) / mobile (48%) – with a further 42% saying it could probably be improved for desktop, 42% for mobile.
• Web analytics (62%) and customer surveys (47%) are currently most likely to be used to better understand the Online Customer Experience. One in three (34%) currently use online CEM tools, including online session replay, with 38% planning to use them in the next two years.
• Organizations are looking for quantitative data that helps prioritize what to fix first (97%), qualitative data that gives detail around the User Experience (95%), easy to understand reports on website issues (93%) and assurance that websites are meeting compliance requirements (93%). 93% want quantification of what any given issue is costing the business in terms of lost revenue. 73% believe that a combination of quantitative and qualitative feedback on website performance is ultimately most useful.
• There is strong interest in analytics, including online session replay tools delivered via the cloud (52%). The main benefits of these are seen as cost savings (57%) and increased business agility (48%).

Online Customer Experience looks set to be a key competitive battleground for brands in 2015 and beyond. A visibility void currently exists, where customer issues are going undetected and unresolved, impacting everything from marketing planning and budgeting to conversion and reputation. The cost of not knowing the truth about Online Customer Experience is significant, but businesses are hungry for a quantitative and qualitative perspective on Online Customer Experience, putting them in the best possible place to compete.

In the dark on Online Customer Experience

Customer Experience is being hailed as the significant differentiator in business today by 89% of respondents, but with omni-channel shaking up the world of commerce and consumers demanding a seamless experience every time they interact with a company, achieving optimal Customer Experience is far from straightforward. With 76% of respondents planning to increase investment in their online channel over the next 12 months, particularly in finance companies (89%), it would make sense for much of this investment to be directed towards improving the Online Customer Experience.

Yet, as Figure 1 shows, the biggest e-Commerce challenge that organizations currently face is understanding WHY customers may struggle with their website (85%). This increases to 95% in travel companies. In addition, 82% say they have difficulties maintaining a single approach to Customer Experience management across mobile and web, again increasing to 92% in travel companies. Other challenges include customer churn (82%), managing negative sentiment around online experience (81%), payment / checkout abandonment (81%) and ensuring websites meet compliance requirements (80%), the latter a particular concern for finance companies (87%).

The big challenge, however, remains a lack of understanding of why customers may struggle with their website. Understanding of online customer behavior generally is seen to diminish as customers move from actually getting to their website (where 48% of respondents describe their understanding as excellent) to knowing what customers do on their website (36%) and, indeed, how the purchase process works from the customer perspective (35%).

[Download PDF to see Figures 1 & 2]

This highlights a focus to-date on customer acquisition and getting customers TO the website rather than THROUGH the website and achieving a particular customer outcome, whether this be finding out desired information or completing a financial transaction.

This lack of understanding of customer issues, in the simplest terms, is down to a visibility void. Figure 2 shows that on average, businesses only think they know of half (50%) of the customer difficulties experienced with their website. This figure drops to an average of 46% in retail businesses and 47% in UK companies, compared to 53% in US businesses. In short, half of customer issues with websites are going undetected and therefore unresolved. To draw a comparison with a store environment, additional checkouts can be opened if there are long queues and shelves can be restocked if supplies are running low, assistants can be approached by customers for help in finding particular products and payment issues can be managed with relative ease. Transition any of these issues into an online environment and the simply ‘not knowing’ that customers may be having difficulties creates a very real problem for businesses.

Counting the cost of not knowing

Not knowing what issues customers are experiencing online has a number of significant consequences for businesses. 71% think a lack of investment in Online Customer Experience is impacting growth in their organization. Ouch, indeed.

Figure 3 shows the key consequences are the impact of online conversion rates (43%), damage to reputation / brand image (38%), a poor mobile User Experience (33%) and potentially preventing repeat business (30%). Every one of these consequences can be very costly for a business. Negative Customer Experience can quickly ripple across social media as customers vent their frustrations, meaning the cost can extend beyond the loss of one transaction and go on to impact the lifetime value of a customer as well as have longer-term effects on brand reputation, something that businesses in the US are particularly concerned about (44%).

While these consequences carry a financial and reputational cost to businesses, the visibility void also has an effect at an operational level within businesses. Figure 4 shows what can happen in businesses that do not know the full truth about the Online Customer Experience. 90% say it makes planning and decision-making around online marketing activity more difficult, 80% say it makes it harder to justify budget for website design, 76% find it more challenging to prioritize what to address first on the website and 76% struggle to report on website performance. These are significant issues that can fundamentally undermine online investment and complicate day-today digital operations. 72% say, for example, that not knowing the full truth about Online Customer Experience can make it more difficult to understand who should be involved, whether IT or marketing.

[Download PDF to see Figure 3]

This visibility void can end up being something of a vicious cycle. The old adage that you can’t manage what you can’t measure holds even more power when visibility of customer issues is so restricted. While investment in online channels continues to increase, there is really no reason why customer frustrations should be going unnoticed, allowed to perpetuate and to have such costly consequences at both an operational and strategic level.

76% find it more challenging to prioritize what to address first on the website when they don’t know the full truth about Online Customer Experience

[Download PDF to see Figure 4]

Barriers to knowing the full truth about Online Customer Experience

There is no doubt that e-Commerce and marketing professionals have had five to ten years of unprecedented change in their organizations, and that keeping abreast of the inherently dynamic digital landscape creates a host of pressures. Add to this the increasing demands of consumers, and delivering the optimal Customer Experience can seem idealistic.

Figure 5 shows that barriers to a greater understanding of Online Customer Experience sit primarily in the transition to mobile access (40%) and how this impacts usability and sales. Mobile is seen to present a key learning curve for organizations, with 65% considering that it is more difficult to deliver an excellent Customer Experience over mobile than on the web.

Beyond this, the key barriers revolve around a lack of tools and technology that enables businesses to quantify and prioritize online customer issues (33%), to identifying online issues in the first place (31%) and to enable them to reproduce and replay online customer issues (24%), which alongside a lack of skilled resource (24%) is preventing organizations from getting to the full truth of the Online Customer Experience. Against a backdrop of an increasing array of web analytics tools coming to the market, it seems that the ability to quantify the impact of online customer issues and to reproduce / replay the Customer Experience is still eluding many organizations.

[Download PDF to see Figure 5]

The issue of quantification is particularly significant in an era where ROI dominates many digital investment decisions. Figure 6 shows that just one in five (21%) organizations can fully and accurately quantify the amount of revenue being lost through a less than optimal Online Customer Experience. This figure drops to one in eight (13%) in the UK and to 15% in travel companies. Organizations have a partial understanding of this at best (67%) in most cases, so there is scope for improvement in truly understanding the financial impact of a less than optimal Online Customer Experience.

Just one in five (21%) of organizations can fully and accurately quantify the amount of revenue being lost through a less than optimal Online Customer Experience

[Download PDF to see Figure 6]

Moving forward – the search for the truth

Organizations clearly recognize the impact of a sub-optimal Online Customer Experience and can pinpoint the transition to mobile and the lack of tools to identify, replay and quantify online customer issues as key barriers to getting this right. It follows that most businesses (62%) acknowledge they could increase their sales if their website was running optimally and more effectively. While mobile is seen to present a particular hurdle to Online Customer Experience utopia, Figure 7 shows that organizations readily recognize that their Online Customer Experience could be improved across both desktop / laptop and mobile environments. Specifically, 51% say it could definitely be improved for desktop / laptop access and 48% say the same for mobile, with significant and similar proportions agreeing that they could probably do better.

A number of tools and technologies exist to help organizations to better understand the Online Customer Experience. Web analytics (62%) and customer surveys (47%) are the most likely to be currently used. One in three (34%) organizations currently use online CEM tools, including online session replay, with 38% planning to use them in the next two years suggesting this is a key growth area as businesses see the benefits of greater Online Customer Experience insight.

While a lack of tools and technologies is seen as a key barrier to fully understanding the Online Customer Experience, it is clear that the tools currently being used are not delivering the full insight organizations want. Organizations, however, are clear about what they are looking for.

[Download PDF to see Figure 7]

As shown in Figure 8, organizations want quantitative data that helps them prioritize what to fix first (97%), qualitative data that gives detail around the User Experience (95%), easy to understand reports on website issues (93%) and assurance that websites are meeting compliance requirements (93%). Furthermore, 93% want quantification of what any given issue is costing the business in terms of lost revenue. It seems that numbers and the context around those numbers hits a particular sweet spot for organizations, with 73% believing that a combination of quantitative and qualitative feedback on website performance is ultimately most useful. There is also a strong interest in analytics, including online session replay tools to be delivered via the cloud (52%), with the main benefits seen as cost savings (57%) and increased business agility (48%).

73% believe that a combination of quantitative and qualitative feedback on website performance is ultimately most useful

[Download PDF to see Figure 8]

Sector summary: Finance

Digitalisation has had a profound impact on the financial services sector, fundamentally transforming the process of managing finances from both a consumer and business perspective. It has provided financial services organizations the opportunity to create a smarter and more efficient service for customers. Get it right and the benefits are significant. Get it wrong and the risks are substantial; take RBS’ online payment problems in 2013, as an example.

Nearly all financial organizations (96%) surveyed believe Customer Experience is a significant differentiator in their sector right now. Over the next 12 months, 89% intend to increase investment in online channels, the highest seen in any sector. However, this brings with it numerous challenges, particularly around the User Experience. Around 9 in 10 (87%) believe maintaining a high quality Customer Experience, while also delivering a complex range of services is a notable challenge for financial institutions.

The impact of a sub-optimal Customer Experience is strongly felt in the finance sector. Organizations are more likely to experience reduced online conversion rates (51%) and a fall in their mobile service (41%). However, in a sector where trust is key, brand image is also highly vulnerable. 39% believe a poor experience will create reputational damage, an issue which can be irreversible. For financial institutions, a lack of tools to identify online customer issues (38%) is the biggest barrier to achieving a greater understanding of their Online Customer Experience issues. Without visibility of the difficulties faced by their customers, businesses are left not knowing the full truth. Subsequently, decisions around online marketing activity (90%) and justifying website design budgets (86%) become more challenging.

[Download PDF to see Figure 9]

For financial institutions, the role analytics plays in supporting and driving online change is significant. Over nine in ten (93%) use data analytics to inform changes to their website compared to 87% in the retail sector. Alongside this, use (38%) and desire (45%) for CEM tools such as online session replay is higher than any other sector. Critically, 80% agree that a combination of quantitative and qualitative feedback on website performance is ultimately most useful, an attitude markedly higher than both the retail (73%) and travel (65%) companies. Qualitative data that gives detail around the User Experience (99%), quantitative data that helps prioritize what to fix first (97%) and easy to understand reports on website issues (96%) are key requirements from the finance sector. The potential for online CEM to revolutionize the finance sector is huge and allencompassing and the winners in Customer Experience battle will be those that embrace tools and processes that provide the best possible insights to drive improvements.

The potential for online CEM to revolutionize the finance sector is huge

Sector summary: Retail

Online retailing has significantly grown over the last couple of years. In the US, online sales reached over $300 billion in 2014 alone. Omni-channel is the new normal and consistency and seamlessness are critical pillars of the Customer Experience.

As with other sectors, retail firms are focused more on getting people to their website rather than through their website. This is reflected in their knowledge of how customers progress through their buying journey. Just under half (49%) have an excellent understanding of how customers get to their website, yet this knowledge diminishes when it comes to what customer do on their websites (28%) and how they pay for their products (24%). In practice, retail companies have visibility of fewer than half (46%) of all difficulties experienced by customers with their websites.

With Customer Experience less than optimal, ultimately sales suffer. For retailers, the impact of a poor Customer Experience is likely to result in reduced online conversions (42%) and reputational damage (38%). Nearly a third (31%) believe a sub-optimal experience prevents repeat business. Retail organizations recognize the commercial value in improving their Online Customer Experience. Indeed, over half (57%) believe they could increase their sales if their website was running optimally. But only 19% of retailers are able to fully and accurately quantify the revenue they are losing as a result of nonoptimal website performance.

[Download PDF to see Figure 10]

A lack of tools to quantify and prioritize online customer issues (38%) acts as the biggest barrier to achieving a greater understanding of the Online Customer Experience. Subsequently, retail companies have no real way of knowing why customer may be becoming unhappy or leaving their website. Internal decisions around online marketing activity (91%) and knowing what to prioritize first on their website (73%) are likely to suffer as a result as a result of not knowing the full truth.

90% of retailers recognize that they could probably or definitely improve their Online Customer Experience via desktops; 84% say the same for mobile. Retail firms are open to a range of tools to boost performance. Nearly all businesses (97%) believe quantitative data that helps prioritize what to fix first on their website is useful, with 73% acknowledging that a combination of quantitative and qualitative data is ultimately most useful. 66% say that in two years’ time they will have embraced online CEM, including session replay, suggesting that not knowing the full truth about Customer Experience is no longer an option.

Sector summary: Travel

Online platforms have become increasingly popular amongst travellers searching and booking travel, whether flights, train journeys or hotels. While the travel industry continues to strive to improve speed, flexibility and services, maintaining a consistent Customer Experience is a big challenge.

Travel organizations experience more challenges with their Online Customer Experience than other sectors. Understanding why customers may struggle with their website (95%), maintaining a single CEM approach across both mobile and web (92%) and customer churn (87%) are all felt more keenly by travel organizations. Just over a third (35%) say they have an ‘excellent understanding’ of what customers do on their websites. Without knowing the ‘full truth’, 90% believe decision making around online marketing activity ultimately suffers.

Travel firms are the first to acknowledge the relationship between Customer Experience and growth. Over three-quarters (76%) believe a lack of investment in Online Customer Experience is impacting growth in their organization, higher than amongst businesses in retail (64%). The impact of sub-optimal Customer Experience is seen as most likely to affect the firm’s reputation (37%), with over a third expecting reduced online conversion rates.

[Download PDF to see Figure 11]

Critically, however, it is sales which matter. Over half (55%) believe they could increase their sales if their website was running optimally. For travel firms, the transition to mobile access (52%) and its impact on usability and sales makes understanding the Online Customer Experience significantly more difficult. Effectively managing both the web and mobile experience will be vital if travel firms are to maximize their online service.

Appetite for tools to help understand the Customer Experience is encouraging. 60% and 34% currently use web analytics and CEM tools respectively. 34% of travel organizations plan to adopt online CEM tools, including session replay, in the next two years. The future belongs to organizations that put their customers at the center of everything they do and with such tools in place, travel companies stand a better chance of competing on Customer Experience.

Concluding thoughts from UserReplay

With Online Customer Experience fast becoming a key competitive battleground for retail, finance and travel brands alike, organizations are finding themselves on the back foot as a significant proportion of customer issues are going undetected and unresolved. This visibility void impacts everything from marketing planning and budgeting, to conversion and brand reputation. Costly consequences indeed in a time of increased consumer fickleness, where every website click really does count and the customer journey moves from device-to-device and channel-to-channel.

A lack of investment in Online Customer Experience management impacts growth and remaining in the dark on customer frustrations is really no longer an option as competition intensifies. Businesses that want to deliver the best possible Online Customer Experience know they need to put themselves in the customer’s shoes and replay the online experience from the customer perspective in order to identify ALL the issues a customer may be experiencing.

Businesses further acknowledge that when they are already stretched resource-wise, there is considerable value in being able to prioritize which issues to fix first by quantifying the impact of any given issue in financial terms. The combination of quantitative and qualitative insight is particularly compelling to businesses keen to get to the full truth of the Online Customer Experience, as is the ability to access these tools and technologies on-demand via cloud, alongside on premise delivery.

2015 is the year when organizations will get serious about uncovering, and responding to, the full truth of Online Customer Experience or they will get left behind by consumers and competitors alike. The e-Businesses that implement the capabilities to examine their Customer Experience proactively and make changes based on true insight will be the ones that succeed.