A new report from the CMO Council detailing how to best achieve an ideal customer experience concludes that much room for improvement remains, especially as marketing heads still struggle to articulate a clear-cut CX strategy and grapple with assorted challenges. Titled Data-Driven Decisioning Powers CX Forward, the report also highlights the time horizon required to attain ideal CX and other important goals, such as harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced data capabilities, creating customer data platforms (CDPs), and surmounting the current deficiency in AI and related high-tech skills.

Published at the end of September by the CMO Council in collaboration with Deloitte Digital, the report presents the results of two surveys that sampled more than 300 market leaders across a wide array of industries. Ideal CX, the report notes, can be achieved by tailoring messages to customers and converting them “with as little friction as possible” to sales or an information exchange. Data science and AI can then provide CX with the necessary data points to arrive at informed decisions on what to do next.

Overall, the report found viable opportunities for CX improvement, with 69% of marketing leadership still in the process of developing or defining their CX strategy. Other eye-opening findings include the following: at least 40% believe it will take more than a year to deliver ideal CX; a smaller percentage—14%—say that ideal data science, AI, or machine learning (ML) capabilities remain more than 18 months away; and 65% agree that connecting data silos constitutes the biggest challenge in providing ideal CX.

“Much is on the line, given the transformative powers of using data and AI to create richer CX,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. “In order to achieve such a competitive advantage, our study points to the need for more and better: more data, better data, more technology, and better technology, along with data governance and data analytics.”

Marketers pursuing ideal CX face a host of challenges, the report noted. They include connecting siloed data and content from multiple systems; creating cross-channel CX; ensuring the availability of appropriate skill sets within organizations; possessing a complete view of customers; and implementing alignment and collaboration across teams.

“The days of personalization as a ‘nice to have’ are long gone,” said Michelle McGuire, an executive in experience management at Deloitte Digital. “Today’s customer expects that the brands they do business with are invested enough to serve them in a way that is efficient, transparent, and unique only to them.”

Even so, many brands still lag behind in implementing the AI needed to create the type of branded CX demanded by customers, McGuire added. “Our hope is that this report can help CMOs and organizations still teetering on the edge of embracing this technology see how it can provide them with the tools needed to achieve ideal CX,” she remarked.

The CMO Council is a global network of senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a broad range of industries dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership, and personal relationship-building. Based in San Jose, California, the CMO Council has more than 16,000 members who collectively control more than $1 trillion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. Deloitte Digital is the Seattle-based digital consultancy that helps organizations embark upon digital transformation and aids in formulating business and creative strategy. The company offers solutions in many areas, including mobile, digital content, digital enterprise resource planning, digital design, and communications.