The Customer in Context: Understanding the Real Expectations of Today’s Connected Consumer

Customers want omnichannel marketing experiences. Customers want to engage digitally. Customers want to walk into a store and be treated like royalty. Customers don’t really know what they want. In the past year, you’ve likely seen some of these exact sentiments when it comes to customers’ expectations for experiences that thrill and delight. Even in our own study, “Context, Commerce + Customer,” we noted that the senior marketers we surveyed admitted that their single greatest challenge in optimizing today’s customer experience was the need to constantly keep up with an ever-changing and increasingly connected customer.

Despite this challenge, we know without a doubt that marketing is committed to growing the bottom line and advancing the business through more data-driven and holistic customer experience strategies. This has led to a bigger question: What does the customer expect? How are today’s customers reacting to experiences? What’s at the core of their desire to connect and engage? And how closely aligned are marketers’ strategies with the customer’s needs and definitions of value? To address these questions, the CMO Council, in partnership with SAP Hybris, has extended its look into customer experience by conducting a consumer survey to ask these very questions. What follows is a recap of customer insights, along with comparisons to how marketers are planning to advance their engagement strategies.