5 elements of digital experience analytics maturity

Digital transformation has been a hot topic in enterprise strategy for over almost 20 years. However, most organizations continue to struggle with one of the key elements of this transformation—how to effectively measure and elevate the digital customer experience.

According to Gartner, a whopping 87% of respondents to a recent survey said they had low analytics maturity. Yet, companies that have built strong analytics programs are more than twice as likely to say their customers are positive about their digital experience, leading to higher growth and loyalty.

That’s why we created our Digital Experience Maturity Assessment to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses in the five critical elements needed for successfully reaping the benefits of digital experience (DX) analytics.

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Once you’ve got your score, here are some ways to advance in each of the five pillars.

Governance

Who owns digital customer experience analytics at your organization? Do you have a dedicated leader, and how much influence does this person have within your organization?

Buy-in from the C-suite can be an important factor in the success of your digital analytics strategy. Of course, with increased attention comes increased expectations. However, this doesn’t always translate into an increase in budget or resources.

Organizations who score highly in this area have a senior-level leader (director or above) leading the strategy. They are empowered with a realistic budget and a team of skilled analysts.

Scope & objectives

This is all about defining what you’re going to focus on. Are you digging into specific digital channels, online activities or site areas? Are you looking at the whole digital ecosystem encompassing several websites or mobile apps? Organizations that are more advanced in this area look at the website, mobile app and beyond by tying their digital processes to offline channels, like the contact center or the in-store experience.

Have you defined what you are trying to achieve? Your digital customer experience analytics objectives should support the larger business strategy. Think long-term while still keeping it flexible enough to shift as technology and consumer behaviors evolve.

I know everyone likes to set SMART goals, but I prefer to think about this from a problem/solution mindset frequently used in Product Thinking. Here’s a statement I recommend working with your team to complete to help you define your scope and objectives:

In order to (vision), our product will solve (target audience) problem of (user problem) by giving them (strategy). We will know if our product works when we see (goal).

Team & expertise

How is your digital experience analytics team organized? Do you have the expertise on staff, and is the team structured in such a way that you can achieve your business outcomes?

I often see organizations managing customer analytics as multiple projects from separate departments, but this approach can lead to siloed data and competing priorities. Organizations who are advanced in this area, have a single, multi-disciplinary team with one manager at the helm.

I recommend structuring your team into three complementary skill sets:

• Technical abilities: These are the members of your team who have the expertise to use specific analytical tools. They understand information architecture to integrate data sources, and they should have a working understanding of machine-learning algorithms.
• Analytical abilities: These are individuals with a talent for statistical modeling and data science. These are the team members who will put the data into a consumable format.
• Leadership abilities: Team leads or managers of the CX data team should be able to convey analytical findings to other departments including the C-suite. They can tie CX data to overall business objectives.

With the right team and skill sets in place, your DX analytics team will help your organization move from information to action. More mature teams can move into predictive and prescriptive analytics which help anticipate customer struggles and pain points based on previous insights.

Process & methodology

This is all about defining what to measure, how to measure it and what it all means to your business. Whether you’re using Lean Six Sigma or Agile methodologies, it’s important to have a documented process that details how you’re gathering and analyzing data in order to act on it.

Organizations who score highly in this area have documented processes that are repeatable, and they focus on continuously improving their processes

Tools & data

What have you deployed in terms of technology? What data are you collecting and what analysis can you access in order to act and create improvements?

There are literally thousands of big data and MarTech solutions out there. Ensuring that you have the right tools in place to capture, visualize and analyze your digital experience and that your team is able to manage integrations with other data sources is a huge part of DX maturity.

With rising expectations from customers on digital channels, those organizations that have a solid digital experience analytics program in place will fare far better as technology and business inevitably evolves. With the right team, processes and tools in place, you can generate the insights you need to keep your customers coming back.