A survey of more than 350 strategic IT business decision makers has found that connectivity plays a crucial role in helping organisations achieve their customer experience objectives.
London, UK, 21 February 2019 – Colt Technology Services has today released a study in partnership with Global Research and Analyst Firm GigaOm, which found that connectivity is viewed as a significant enabler when it comes to achieving customer experience (CX) goals – but many businesses are yet to utilise its potential to deliver CX improvements fully.
Available to download here, the survey explores the link between connectivity and customer experience; in particular, whether underlying connectivity platforms can have a positive impact on CX goals. Completed by more than 350 strategic IT business decision makers, it found that 92% of respondents saw a strong link between connectivity and CX, with 51% already making use of connectivity technologies to help meet their businesses CX needs.
Of those sectors more likely to use connectivity to drive CX, the study found technology and financial companies have made more progress than manufacturing and consumer-facing industries (63% and 59% versus 50% and 47%), while more distributed corporations feel they have more work to do than centralised organisations (63% versus 44%).
While a clear link is identified between connectivity and CX in the survey, business decision makers believe creating a meaningful picture of the relationship is the most significant blocker to improvement (according to 82% of respondents), followed by a lack of education/training (76%) and then leadership (74%).
Keri Gilder, Chief Commercial Officer at Colt, said: “When we set out to explore the link between connectivity and customer experience, we weren’t sure what we would discover, so it’s encouraging to see that many companies are already taking advantage of the strong relationship between the two. This research shows that setting clear, customer-centric goals is the key to success. Business leaders need to think about how to deliver on business goals quickly and cost-effectively, all the while putting the customer first.
“Colt strives to be the most customer oriented business in the industry, and we know that connectivity solutions are the backbone for the fast-paced environment of today. We put substantial investment into helping our customers realise their goals, and this study clearly demonstrates how important it is to get the underlying connectivity right if you want to deliver the best possible customer experience.”
The research shows that having a single point of customer contact and management frameworks set up solely around CX are practices aligned to organisations which are progressed along the CX journey. However, only 32% of businesses thought they had these processes in place.
When it comes to measuring CX from a service provider perspective, performance and reliability rank much higher than responsiveness over time in the eyes of the customer. Time from ordering to delivering a service is the most important factor followed by initial service performance and reliability when assessing suppliers (47% and 46% respectively), and the two elements also rank highly when measuring the organisation’s service delivery (38% and 46%).
Jon Collins, Principal Analyst at GigaOm, said: “As enterprises look to differentiate, customer experience is becoming a centrepiece of digital business strategy. Looking at the research, it is fascinating to see how organisations are looking to deliver services that ‘just work’ and deliver from the outset, prioritising these criteria over longer-term performance and responsiveness. In this online age connectivity is an essential pre-requisite to building customer loyalty and trust.”
This survey was conducted across the UK, US, Germany and France and the full report can be found here.
About Colt
Colt aims to be the leader in enabling customers’ digital transformation through agile and on-demand, high bandwidth solutions. The Colt IQ Network connects 850+ data centres across Europe, Asia and North America’s largest business hubs, with over 27,500 on net buildings and growing.
Colt has built its reputation on putting customers first. Customers include data intensive organisations spanning over 213 cities in more than 30 countries. Colt is a recognised innovator and pioneer in Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV). Privately owned, Colt is one of the most financially sound companies in its industry and able to provide the best customer experience at a competitive price. For more information, please visit www.colt.net.
About GigaOm
GigaOm provides technical, operational, and business advice for IT’s strategic digital enterprise and business initiatives. Enterprise business leaders, CIOs, and technology organisations partner with GigaOm for practical, actionable, strategic, and visionary advice for modernising and transforming their business. GigaOm’s advice empowers enterprises to successfully compete in an increasingly complicated business atmosphere that requires a solid understanding of constantly changing customer demands.
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