CX is playing an increasingly significant role in today’s competitive landscape – that's why we worked with Arktic Fox to explore CX challenges and trends in the Australian market. The report, Charting a new course in CX delivery written by Teresa Sperti, includes insights from Australia’s industry leaders, plus a checklist for success.
In this blog, we’ll explore the challenges businesses are facing, what trends lie ahead, and insights from industry leaders we spoke to for the report, including:
- Tim Armstrong, Director of Digital Capability & Data, Nova Entertainment
- Cam Strachan, Head of Data & Analytics, Southern Cross Austereo
- Mark Keevers-Hall, Head of Digital, The Australian Ballet
- Joel Mackenzie, Co-Acting General Manager - Marketing and Experiences, The Grand Prix
Today: The CX challenges brands face
Even with ambitious CX goals, many brands are struggling to bring that vision to life. Many challenges stand in the way, and our report outlined the five big inhibitors of B2C CX progress as:
- No clear enterprise CX strategy
- Lack of a unified, actionable first-party data set tied to the experience strategy
- Absence of a customer-first mindset
- The need for integrated, usable customer tech
- Skill and capability gaps within teams
Tim Armstrong, Director of Digital Capability & Data, Nova Entertainment, provided insights about what he believes are the main challenges – and how his organisation is tackling those hurdles, particularly around first-part data and the diminishing size and scale of data as privacy regulations evolve:
To navigate this new terrain effectively, embrace the change, even if it’s uncomfortable; prepare for a shift back to marketing fundamentals and innovate within the constraints of that new data landscape. By focusing on the quality and application of our first-party data, rather than quantity, we can continue to deliver valuable experiences to our audiences and maintain a competitive edge in the evolving audio market.
Addressing the common challenge of skill-gaps on teams, Cam Strachan, Head of Data & Analytics, Southern Cross Austereo spoke about what his organisation is doing to address this skill-gap and shift the mindset to embed a customer focus:
The business has been great at hiring people who can bring the business along the journey. We have invested in key roles across CX and personalisation, journey mapping, data, AdTech and sales and we have also hired some senior executives from digital businesses. The individuals within these roles have played an extremely valuable role in educating other parts of the business.
The future: What trends will reshape CX in the next 3-5 years?
Advancements in technology, changing regulatory landscapes, and shifting customer expectations will continue to re-shape CX expectations. And to develop a future-proof strategy, brands should focus on the following trends currently sitting on the horizon:
- Balancing privacy protection and disappearing data: While brands struggle to manage the rising number of sources of data to integrate, they also have to juggle the challenge of data disappearing from the ecosystem as a result of stricter privacy laws.
- Shift to hyper-personalisation: AI promises to enable an era of hyper-personalisation that will help brands offer highly curated products and content in real-time and at scale.
- Blending digital and physical experiences: As extended reality devices become more mainstream, we’ll see a greater convergence between digital and physical experiences which will help bring together the best of both worlds for a unified connected experience.
- Emotion plus behaviour: Biometric technology and voice will help brands better understand how a customer is feeling based on facial expressions, tone of voice and other emotional signals in the moment. CX technologies will also start to bridge the gap between behaviour and emotion.
Our report asked Mark Keevers-Hall, Head of Digital, The Australian Ballet for insights about the future of CX, and his thoughts on what leaders need to focus on:
Privacy and security are big areas for CX leaders to consider. With all of the change coming from Google and Meta and the privacy act, we ourselves are going through a process to work out what our permissions are, and what data we activate and don’t activate moving ahead off the back of all that.
Joel Mackenzie, Co-Acting General Manager - Marketing and Experiences, The Grand Prix Corporation spoke about what is changing in his market with respect to experience expectations and how it's influencing their CX strategy:
The GP is now very much about the experience, not just the race. This shift in expectations means we need to bridge the gap between the physical and digital. During the event, digital facilitates an attendee’s experience and digital can help the attendee get whatever they want from their GP experience.
What’s next? Building a CX strategy for the future
To deliver CX success moving forward, brands will need to optimise their foundations, while also putting a focus on innovation and future trends. But how can you achieve this? Our report written with Arktic Fox includes a full checklist of recommendations that brands can follow to chart a course forward. To access the checklist, download the full report and check out section 04: Charting a new course in CX delivery.
If you’re interested in learning more from Australia’s industry leaders, checkout our three-part webinar series: Mastering CX: Balancing strategy, data and tech to gain the competitive edge.
