Brands shift control over digital experience to dedicated teams, study says

Dive Brief:

The organizational structure for brand marketers is shifting when it comes to who has control over digital customer experiences and journeys, with 48% of brands reporting that they have a dedicated team focused on this area, according to a new report from Clicktale. In the past, marketing and digital departments were generally tasked with handling digital experiences. Today, 31% of respondents said that marketing handles this responsibility and 27% that the digital team oversees it.
For most companies, responsibility for digital customer experience resides with design/UX departments, at 54%, and digital analytics teams, at 52%. However, dedicated digital experience departments are more prevalent than data science teams, which 44% of those surveyed employ.
Control over the digital customer experience can also be a shared responsibility across departments, with 44% reporting this to be the case. The report is based on data from more than 200 of U.S. and U.K. brands.

Dive Insight:

The news points to the fact that digital experience is no longer relegated to a few staffers in the marketing or IT department, but is becoming more important to companies who understand that digital is core to how a customer experiences a brand. With more consumers interacting with brands on devices and online — meaning there are fewer face-to-face interactions — the digital experience can be just as important, if not more so, than the products that are being sold when it comes to repeat business, Clicktale CMO Sara Richter said in a statement.

Brands clearly recognize the importance of the digital customer experience. More than two-thirds of marketers report that they compete mostly on the basis of customer experience, according to Gartner’s Customer Experience in Marketing Survey. By next year, 81% of marketers expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of customer experience.

Marketers are likely putting so much emphasis on the digital customer experience because consumers expect it. Nearly half (47%) of consumers believe that companies should customize their products and services using technology in the next few years, according to a recent We Communications report.

While the Clicktale report underscores the importance of having a dedicate team in control of the digital customer experience, a number of brands continue to share digital responsibilities across departments. In addition to 44% merging digital customer experience with other departments, 40% said that digital analytics and insight is merged with another department and 32% reported that design and UX are part of another team.