Customer experience (CX) is now the top priority among technology and IT companies, according to a survey of 1,420 IT decision-makers published by Rackspace Technology.
Technology companies are now focusing on CX implementations that help them see more rewards.
Companies that have CX at the forefront enjoy 1.6 times higher brand awareness, 1.5 times higher employee satisfaction and nearly twice as high customer loyalty rates, repeat purchases, average order and customer livelihoods.
50% of IT executives participating in the survey said it would take weeks to reach a consensus before technology changes could be implemented, while another 42% said it could take months.
The negative effect of this time delay is that IT companies are beaten by competitors who are making faster progress in developing, designing and releasing CX technology.
The survey identified the main obstacles to the adoption of new technologies.
These are IT legacy IT (26%), budget (24%), skill gaps (22%), expertise (18%), cultural problems such as resistance to change (16%), lack of buy-in (16%), and lack of leadership support (13%).
On the positive side, there appears to be no objection from the vast majority to the introduction of new technologies to improve CX as only 23% of respondents reporting resistance.
The survey also found that 48% of IT executives prioritize CX over IT security and compliance (45%) and IT strategy (41%).
More than half of the credit applications consider it important to improve the customer experience, and a whopping 94% report that some form of user experience effort is underway in their respective companies.
Modern technology should also enable better CX. 63% of respondents use technology for automation efficiencies and 51% use it for IoT and cloud-native initiatives. Technology initiatives that focus on real-time data analysis (44%) and customer engagement (30%) are also very common.
For more information, read the original story in ZDNet.