Australian and New Zealand organisations struggle to align their customer experience (CX) strategy to voice of customer (VoC) feedback with 50% of organisations having no formal process for considering this data and 14% which capture no feedback at all, according to an annual Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report from global technology services provider, NTT.

Further, only 5% of ANZ organisations are delivering a fully functional experience yet 50% of firms consider CX to be a primary differentiator, the report found. While 51% of firms connect data relationships between channels, almost half of all companies operate without a full view of the customer ecosystem and only 19% fully define and track the value contribution of CX.

NTT Ltd Australia general manager – CX business unit, Michael Slip said customers are demanding more from better experiences to more streamlined and seamless interactions so exceptional CX is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’.

“Businesses who listen to the needs and wants of their customers – incorporating technology into their offerings to do so – are often the ones who will stand out from the competition,” he said.

A successful CX strategy is proven to improve customer and brand engagement yet many organisations are still stuck in the development stage due to siloed technology systems, inconsistencies in experience and lack of clear processes. More specifically, 41% of organisations say their technology systems are failing to meet current needs and 61% of teams still struggle with legacy systems. Further, an inability to secure budgets and skills shortages are growing concerns, at 55% and 34% respectively.

The report also found that almost two-thirds (63%) of organisations agree there is only partial collaboration between functions when designing CX and 21% do not collaborate at all. Further, 82% of companies do not have a cross-channel contact management strategy and just 14% claim to have a good or complete consistency across contact channels.

Just 11% of organisations place ‘customer delight’ as the top driving force behind their customer journey design strategy, which may account for why 30% of assisted-services enquiries fail to be resolved during first contact, while automated channels have a 36% fail rate.

While 61% of companies indicate that they are satisfied with their customer satisfaction capability, only 12% of their customers rate customer experience at ‘advocacy’ level.

The report has revealed that only 20% of businesses have a dedicated team managing data and 21% have no data management strategy at all with almost two-thirds (64%) not having the required data management skills or resources to do so.