Dash Calls Customer Insights and Feedback Technologies Critical

The technologies that enable customer experience (CX), such as CRM, customer data and analytics, personalization, optimization, contact center solutions, and employee experience (EX) solutions, are all integral to companies aspiring to build strong CX programs, according to a new report from Dash Research. The firm, however, argues that customer insights and feedback technologies provide the ignition for all of these solutions.

Customer insight and feedback tools provide the direct link between customers, companies, and employees, Dash said, noting that the flow of customer information, gathered through direct and indirect sources, is critical to the success of CX.

Dash Research forecasts that the global market for customer insights and feedback software and services will grow from $5.4 billion in 2021 to nearly $8 billion by 2026, an increase of 48 percent. It further said that insights and feedback platforms will represent 55 percent of the revenue mix during the forecast period, with services constituting 25 percent and applications composing 20 percent of the total.

"Customer insights and feedback has long evolved past simple surveys and outreach," said Dash senior analyst Sherril Hanson. "There has been an explosion in customer data type and channel options, and vendors have responded by offering a wide range of comprehensive solutions to support not just engaging and easy-to-set-up data collection, but also sophisticated data analytics, insight generation, relevant dashboards, and tools to enable those insights to turn into action."

Hanson added that at times, this platform evolution is at odds with the widely varying levels of CX maturity in the industry, with some companies lacking the operational processes or company-wide culture to take their CX programs to the next level.

Consumer sentiment toward feedback is likewise evolving, with high expectations placed upon companies to provide timely and empathic responses. Customers want the opportunity to be heard and acknowledged, but on their own terms and via their own channel choice. They also want action taken quickly and in a focused, personalized manner, she continued.

Dash Research's analysis finds that the key market drivers spurring the purchase of customer insights & feedback software and services include the following:

• The move to digital has created an enormous number of channels and sources for feedback.
• Artificial intelligence allows for the streamlining of analysis, more successful leveraging of unstructured data, and the development of more novel collection methods.
• Consumer expectations for quick response are spurring strong interest in technologies that enable insights to action and closing the feedback loop.
• Insight and feedback technologies provide the needed link between employee and customer experiences
• A high need exists to better prioritize initiatives and identify churn risk.

However, there are many barriers for organizations when attempting to deploy customer insights and feedback solutions, many of which are internal and operational, according to the report. The key barriers tempering the growth of customer insights and feedback, it said, include the following:

• Lack of CX maturity in organizations.
• Too much outreach can alienate end users.
• Inability to move beyond collection and metrics.
• Internal technologies and priorities lead to data silos hindering information flow.

Dash Research's report further states that customer insights and feedback software platforms, applications, and services are an integral part of customer experience and, if done correctly, will create a positive engagement, resulting in less churn, deeper loyalty, and the potential for customers to turn into promoters. Successful deployments, it added, can boost CX metrics, which are often then linked to an improved return on investment and can help companies prioritize and focus on the actions that will cause the greatest positive effect and identify other internal points of friction that affect EX..