What brands now need to deliver world-class CX

In Asia Pacific, most brands see customer experiences as a driver of loyalty and business performance. However, amid elevated customer expectations, more advanced Customer Experience (CX) capabilities are required to get results. Here’s how brands can uplift CX and capture the commercial upside.

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Adobe’s latest report, State of Digital Customer Experience: APAC in Focus, shows that brands across the region are targeting higher revenue growth. Experience leaders say that enhancing CX is a priority over other business goals, a clear endorsement of the power of CX to attract, convert and retain customers.

The report also shows that most APAC brands consider themselves CX pioneers, but looking more closely at the gaps between customer expectations and brands’ perceptions and capabilities might call that assumption into question.

First is the perception gap. Most consumers will avoid a brand if they have a poor experience, and many brands underestimate the impact. Take a negative service experience, for example. Here, 59% of APAC consumers say they would stop buying, but only 35% of brands think they will.

Second is the capability to deliver memorable and personalised experiences customers have come to expect. This is where most brands have good foundations, like customer data management or email and one-to-one marketing tools. But far fewer have adopted advanced tools that allow for discrete customer segmentation or personalisation at scale.

Consequently, brands excel in certain areas of CX while facing challenges in others. To optimise customer experience and drive intended customer and business outcomes, there are aspects of the organisation and technology stack worth paying more attention to.

The connection between CX and loyalty

Traditionally, the people responsible for a brand’s customer experience and loyalty sat in different teams with different strategies and KPIs. But, as leading brands move towards hyper-personalisation and replace broad customer profiles with micro-segmentation, the influence CX has over loyalty becomes clearer.

Our research backs this up. Experience leaders further down the personalisation path had more repeat customers and advocacy in the form of referrals. But to effectively cater to these micro-segments, organisations need to gather more detailed insights about their customers and tailor their CX interactions to match individual preferences.

However, not all brands have the organisational frameworks, technology, and tools to execute and create memorable brand interactions relevant to micro-segments. This included a minority of brands that have deployed personalisation at scale, predictive analytics, dynamic audience segmentation, and marketing automation.

Generative AI adoption poised for take-off

APAC brands are also set to increase adoption of generative AI. Despite being cautious adopters to date, many are drawn to its potential to create a potent, AI-enhanced, hyper-personalised customer experience.

This means that APAC brands are set to catch up to their global peers currently ahead in their adoption journey. Today, 11% of APAC brands have adopted generative AI, compared to 17% globally, but 47% say it is their primary CX focus for the next 12 months.

This is good news for almost half of APAC consumers (48%) who would choose an AI-enabled tool or service over an interaction with a person, far more than the global average and those in Europe (32%) and the US (39%).

APAC consumers are also more attuned to the positive impact of generative AI on CX, with nearly two-thirds agreeing that generative AI will accelerate customer support and enable product and service innovation (62%), well above global averages.

Moving beyond foundational capabilities

To tackle the challenges of rising customer expectations and a fast-moving technology landscape, we consider there are at least five essential CX building blocks. From organisational frameworks and tech tools to factors driving trust, they can help brands attract new customers, foster loyalty, and grow their business:

1. Lock-in your CX budget

It may seem obvious, but the first step is earmarking a budget just for CX. That is, distinguish between the CX budget and other marketing activity to ensure it isn’t diverted to other initiatives.

2. Getting the whole business on board

Not only do you need a unified CX vision across the business - something 44% of businesses don’t have - but cross-functional teams and enterprise-wide initiatives are a must-have for consistency and collaboration around shared goals.

3. Rethinking your stack

Re-evaluate your current CX technology stack to retool for personalisation. More advanced technologies, like generative AI and a personalisation engine, can help overcome common roadblocks, like tailoring content to customer needs and interests.

4. New tools of the trade

Brands deploying tools like predictive analytics and intelligent or dynamic audience segmentation are seeing product and service innovation and customer satisfaction, among other benefits. They’re pre-empting customer needs and personalising the experience, and seeing results.

5. Change up your data approach

While consumers preferred AI-led brand interactions, enabled by data, most were also concerned about consent and handing over too much information. That helps explain why more than half of APAC brands have restructured their data or adopted data management platforms to boost transparency and collaboration.

CX leaders outperform

By considering these best practices, brands in the APAC region can establish a strong foundation and develop a customised framework to meet their customers' specific needs. This strategic approach enables them to match the approach of experienced leaders who are outperforming on the customer metrics that are ultimately linked to growth.

Read the full Adobe State of Digital Customer Experience: APAC in Focus report, including new insights and commentary from Adobe experts.