The State of Digital Customer Experience report
As digital marketing leaders, the customer is at the heart of everything we do. And building deep, meaningful, and lasting relationships drives what we do. An understanding of what customers need to be successful shapes our insights, ignites our innovations, and inspires the experiences we create for them.
Digital has shaped customer experience (CX) to make audiences ever more discerning. They want elevated experiences that align with their evolving preferences and aspirations. They want to be treated to authentic personalized experiences that deliver value across all touchpoints.
Delivering experiences imbued with authenticity, helpfulness, and convenience has never been more important — and that makes the customer experience the urgent focal point for leaders driving experience-led growth.
In partnership with Oxford Economics, Adobe presents the State of Digital Customer Experience report, an extensive look at how organizations from across industries and across the globe are shaping customer experience to resonate with a global, multigenerational audience.
Drawing on insights from 4,000 consumers, including B2B purchasers and 1,500 executives, this report bridges the chasm between corporate visions and customer expectations to help organizations keep up with the rapid change in technology and customer appetites.
The research mirrors what we’ve long intuited about customers — they place a premium on high-quality product and service offerings and a personal touch, particularly individualized attention and experiences that cater to their preferences and interests.
About half say their interactions with brands have improved over the past three years, recognizing that the ability to adjust preferences is increasingly quick and easy, the usability of platforms and apps has advanced, and personalization follows them from the digital realm (online interactions) into the physical world (in-store encounters) more consistently.
Still, many executives find it difficult to deliver on these anticipated outcomes. Less than half (42%) of executives feel their organizations are executing effective personalization at scale. That’s a far cry from meeting the expectations of 70% of customers who think it’s important for organizations to provide a cohesive and seamless experience whenever and wherever they interact with a brand.
Generative AI has entered the customer experience space with the promise to transform how companies can engage with customers across all parts of their lifecycle. This technology will supercharge marketing and creative ideation across campaigns, journey building, and audience generation while perfecting the delivery of personalized and performant experiences across channels.
Adobe fundamentally believes that generative AI, across creativity and marketing, is going to augment human ingenuity and not replace it. More than 90% of executives agree, believing that generative AI will have a positive impact on customer attraction, experience creation, campaign planning, and content scaling. With only 8% of executives reporting their organizations have deployed generative AI, it hasn’t gained widespread adoption yet, but 59% are currently piloting or expressing intentions to incorporate it within the upcoming year.
As chief marketing officer for the digital experience business at Adobe, I see every day how marketing is evolving to become a transformative function for digital-first enterprises. Marketing organizations are federating customer data across the business; increasingly owning the end-to-end customer journey; understanding the needs and desires of customers; and are trusted stewards of data security and privacy policies. Marketing can also inspire a sense of urgency across the enterprise, pioneering a decision-making culture as digital transformation accelerates.
The path ahead is both demanding and inspiring, as it requires a strategic balance between customer expectations, technological innovation, and organizational ambitions. Join us as we dissect the many aspects of CX and learn from the strategies of CX leaders.
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