Recent Survey From IG Digital Reveals How Companies Are Responding To Digital Technologies

A recent survey conducted by IG Digital, the digital consulting service from The IG Group, raises interesting statistics and thought-provoking questions. These findings are driving companies to reflect on how they’re responding to challenges posed by digital technology, changing markets and ever-changing customer expectations.

One of the most pertinent statistics from the survey focussed on the ownership of digital channels. Although 40% of companies stated the marketing team was responsible for engaging customers through digital, 21% stated digital ownership was split between departments and in 17% of cases it was unclear. Only 6% of the organisations’ surveyed stated customer experience teams accountable for new channels. This lack of clarity highlights the need for companies to assign clear digital ownership and raises the question; how does your organisational structure impact on the digital customer experience?

With the rising popularity of digital platforms in the past decade, surprisingly, the survey discovered that using the telephone is still the primary channel for communication between brands and consumers. Of the participating companies, not one utilised Skype as a customer management tool, despite its hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

The report also divulged the key challenges companies foresee in the next 18–24 months when it comes to managing the digital customer experience. The majority of participants cited “delivering business change” and “meeting customer expectations” as difficulties they’ll face, however the “pace of technological innovation” was also a concern.

Now digital is an integral part of everyday life, organisations must innovate and share best practice on how to meet customer’s digital expectations and exploit the associated opportunities.

IG Digital and Zoodikers will be hosting a joint seminar during Social Media Week London 2014, where further survey findings and probing questions will be revealed and discussed in depth. The seminar, The Social Challenge: Connecting Customers’ in a Multichannel World will be held on the 23^rd September 2014 at The Virginia Woolf Room, Bloomsbury House. For more information and to register please visit http://socialmediaweek.org/london/events/social-challenge-connecting-customers-multichannel-world/