Customer experience initiatives are non-negotiable for companies that expect to keep pace with direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands and digital-first companies that expertly cater to consumers. This report series explores how marketers are building a data-driven, 360-degree customer view to support relevant experiences across every touchpoint.

What is customer experience?

Every touchpoint a consumer has with a brand, from watching a TV commercial to calling a customer service representative to walking past a branded end-cap in a store, is part of the customer experience. Forward-looking marketers and their companies are focused on how to make sure the sum of those experiences is cohesive as each channel works in concert to deliver relevant messages to individuals.

What do marketers need to deliver relevant experiences to customers across channels?

The starting point for data-driven experiences is data. And marketers must work across their organizations to bring that information out of siloes and get it in a form that is actionable. Data and related insights fuel audience segmentation and targeting, personalization, and tailoring of the messages that those audiences receive. They also allow for the optimization that marketers use to deliver the right message at the right time and frequency via the right channel.

What are some of the biggest challenges?

Marketers face a host of problems when it comes to delivering the right message at the right time, and those problems also start with data. The quality of data may have improved over the years, especially as advertisers have looked to more first-party data rather than third-party. But recent legislation and consumer privacy concerns loom large. And challenges remain on the organizational front as companies continue their broader efforts toward digital transformation.

To deliver an effective customer experience, marketers must first know who their customers and audiences are. Of course, most brands and companies already have an idea of who they're targeting, what they need, and have probably created broad segments or personas to categorize those customers.

But that’s a long way from knowing your customer within digital and addressable media. Marketers must take those segments and translate them to each channel and touchpoint within the customer experience.