Reducing Customer Struggle 2013

The third annual Reducing Customer Struggle report, published by Econsultancy in association with IBM Tealeaf, looks in-depth at the extent to which companies understand the overall online customer experience and the approaches or types of technology they use to identify and address issues.

This year's survey explores in particular detail how well companies understand the mobile user experience, what mobile platforms they use, and the most serious issues encountered by customers when they interact via mobile devices.   

The 56-page report is based on an online survey of more than 500 business professionals working for companies involved in ecommerce and e-business and includes the following sections:

• Understanding the digital customer experience
• Problems or issues with the online experience
• Use of customer channels
• Integrating online with offline channels
• Mobile customer experience

Key findings include:

• The proportion of responding companies who say that mobile accounts for more than 20% of their traffic has more than doubled in the last 12 months and almost three-quarters plan to ramp up their mobile investment this year.
• Only 5% of respondents rate their understanding of the mobile user experience as 'poor'.
• Two in five companies agree that 'delivering positive customer experiences is harder on mobile than the web'.

• Although more organisations rate their understanding of the the overall online customer experience as 'excellent', wider customer experience challenges still remain for many, both in terms of understanding customer struggle and also addressing pain points. 

• Companies are also less likely to describe the understanding of the multichannel customer experience as 'excellent'.

Table of contents

1. Executive Summary and Highlights
1. About Econsultancy
2. About IBM Tealeaf
2. Foreword by IBM Tealeaf
3. Methodology and Sample
1. Methodology
2. Respondent profiles
1. Business objectives
4. Findings
1. Understanding the digital customer experience
1. Understanding types of customer behaviour
2. Value of different types of customer behaviour
3. Difficulty collecting information about customer behaviour
4. Understanding the overall online customer experience
5. Methods used for understanding the customer experience
6. Effectiveness of different methods
7. Responsibility for online customer experience
8. Barriers to understanding the online customer experience
2. Problems or issues with the online experience
1. Discovering issues with the online experience
2. Effectiveness of different approaches to identifying problems
3. Most common website issues
4. Most serious website issues
5. Quantifying lost revenue
6. Measuring differences in conversion rates
7. Prioritising problems and issues customers face online
8. Business initiatives to improve customer experience quality
3. Use of customer channels
1. Change in investment in customer channels
2. Quality of customer experience for different channels
4. Integrating online with offline channels
1. Visibility into online customer activity
2. Rating of multichannel customer experience
3. Integrating the digital and physical experience
5. Mobile customer experience
1. Importance of mobile to business objectives
2. How customers interact with companies via mobile devices
3. Use of mobile platforms
4. Mobile optimisation
5. Proportion of traffic via mobile devices
6. Understanding the mobile user experience
7. How customers rate the mobile user experience
8. Most serious mobile issues
9. Responsibility for mobile customer experience
5. Appendix: Respondent Profiles
1. Business sector
2. Geography
3. Size of company by revenue

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