Firms risk their own future by failing to adapt to customers, consultancy warns
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Ovum Ltd, a UK-based consultancy specialising in analysis on information technology, says 90 per cent of organisations are putting their futures at risk by not adapting to customers.
Preliminary research by Ovum says such companies are at risk of becoming irrelevant to their customers unless they can learn to adapt much faster and in ways that customers value. While CRM (customer relationship management) systems are prevalent, businesses are being held back by slow decision cycles, a lack of workforce engagement, operational and channel “silos” (failure to integrate) and a serendipitous attitude towards innovation.
At its recent CX (Customer Experience) Forum, Ovum revealed that the average score across all key attributes of a customer-adaptive enterprise (CAE) was 52 per cent. This indicated that organisations were insufficiently connected to their customers and did not have the insight or discipline to enable them to sense and respond at speed in ways that would ensure their relevance to customers.
“No sector is impervious to the rapid march of technology developments or the rise of the increasingly choosy and powerful consumer, whose often-vociferous voice can make or break reputations in minutes,” said Jeremy Cox, principal analyst at Ovum. “Given the advanced nature of a ‘customer-adaptive enterprise’, it is unsurprising that no single enterprise scored 80 per cent or more across all attributes.”
The key challenge according to Ovum is a lack of leadership to break through departmental or channel silos, and create the conditions to fully engage the workforce and start to create a more rounded view of the customer journey to be supported.
The voice of the customer must also be embedded so that the customer experience can be effectively monitored and fine-tuned over time. Innovation is crucial to future success and although it might be counterintuitive, it is a discipline that needs to be supported and managed in any organisation irrespective of sector.
“There is no shortage of technology out there to support those with the ambition to become customer-adaptive, but the fundamental blockage is a lack of visionary leadership, insight and the ability to translate that into a fully engaged and connected enterprise,” Cox said.
“It is time that investors examine the capabilities of firms to truly engage and build trust with their customers. Then perhaps we [will] see more evidence of leaders orchestrating and enabling rather than commanding and controlling and chasing short-term results.’’
