Thriving in Today’s Digital Experience Economy

Where once we owned CDs and DVDs; now we subscribe to Spotify and Netflix. Merchandise purchased onsite at big-box retailers; now arrives in our homes and offices from Amazon. We booked travel and managed finances through call centers; now we do this all online. Today, everything is digital.

This new reality forces companies to rethink their offerings and more importantly the quality of their digital user experience. Having high-value digital experiences is table stakes for a healthy relationship with digital customers of today and tomorrow.

Over 80 percent of businesses are talking about the benefits of a customer-first approach, but few are putting it into practice

Optimizely surveyed over 800 business decision-makers worldwide for our inaugural Digital Experience Economy Report and discovered that over half (51 percent) of respondents felt customer centricity was not focused on enough within their organization.

Companies that invest in changing their culture will beat these challenges

According to our findings, a majority of companies believe (79%) if there were more collaboration between teams, the customer experience would benefit. Brands should empower employees across the organization to have a meaningful impact on customer experience by creating shared goals for all departments.

Only one in five organizations (20 percent) reported they have a culture that does not honor (or reward) failure. Yet, only through experimentation can businesses consider themselves committed to improving the digital customer experience. New ideas don’t always work, so a culture of experimenting, observing, and iterating is necessary. This also means adjusting attitudes to failure to create a nurturing test and learn environment.

Change is happening. In the past 3 years alone 68 percent of executives have altered their attitude with 94 percent of these executives claiming their organization has become more open. Leaders are driving this trend, as 43 percent of decision-makers embrace failure to a greater extent than less senior employees.