New Harvard Business Review Analytic Services Research Finds Effective Customer Engagement is Business Critical Amid Economic Uncertainty

Despite this, less than half of global business leaders rate their current customer engagement strategies as "good" or "excellent"

SAN FRANCISCO, July 25, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services released a new report sponsored by Intercom, the Engagement OS, called "Future-Proofing Businesses with Modern Customer Engagement," which reveals a significant gap in how companies are engaging with their customers. This comes at a time when delivering exceptional experiences is even more critical to retention and revenue, amidst both an economic downturn and increasingly competitive landscape.

According to the report, 88% of global business leaders surveyed recognize that customer engagement has a significant impact on their organization's bottom line. Additionally, 92% view effective customer engagement as "very" to "extremely'' critical to their organization's success, but only 9% say they have excellent engagement today. What's more, less than half are investing in new or improved customer engagement technologies, and only 40% say they are effectively using data to send customers the right message at the right time via the right channel. 

"As customers engage with leading brands that provide exceptional accuracy in their personalization and recommendations, they've come to expect that same level of service from all companies," said Blake Morgan, author of The Customer of The Future: 10 Guiding Principles for Winning Tomorrow's Business. "Accurate engagement today is more than just knowing a customer's name—it requires a deeper understanding of their preferences, values, and demographics to show that an organization cares and can provide relevant engagement."

Organizations are turning to customer engagement efforts primarily for increased customer loyalty and retention (69%), increased revenue growth and profitability (59%) and improved brand reputation (42%). But the main obstacles that prevent businesses from fully realizing these benefits include:

• Poor Cross-Functional Collaboration: Nearly half (44%) of respondents say a lack of collaboration and siloed efforts are the top impediments to successful customer engagement.
• Siloed Data: 32% of respondents say their organizations are failing to properly distribute data-driven customer insights throughout the organization, and another 32% say customer data is siloed or hard to extract insights from. 60% also don't feel they're doing a good job of tailoring communications to customers with data.
• Scarcity of Talent: Over half (56%) of respondents encounter difficulty finding the right personnel to manage customer engagement efforts, and nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents "strongly agree" or "somewhat agree" that their organization is in need of employees with experience and expertise in customer engagement.

"This research shows that while business leaders understand the importance of customer engagement, they are encountering barriers in execution," said Alex Clemente, Managing Director of Analytic Services at Harvard Business Review. "Fostering a culture that supports more personalized engagement, eliminating data silos, deploying the right technologies, and recruiting robust talent are all barriers that organizations will need to overcome to achieve effective customer engagement."

"Engaging your customers and delivering deep value for them has always been key to driving retention and repeat customers, and fueling a healthy business. During times of economic uncertainty, engagement and retention become more important than ever," said Karen Peacock, CEO of Intercom. "Now is the time to double down on creating an exceptional customer experience – one that's personalized, contextual, and engaging across the customer journey and doing it in a highly efficient way that saves you money. The businesses who do this are the ones who will thrive and emerge as winners."

To read the full report and learn more about how organizations are delivering exceptional customer experiences, please visit the website.

The findings on the value of customer engagement are based on a global survey fielded in April 2022 of 317 business leaders conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services. Respondents were primarily senior or executive level management in a broad number of industries, led by manufacturing, healthcare, technology and financial services.

Intercom, the Engagement OS, enables businesses to build stronger customer relationships that drive growth and scale. With its all-in-one customer communications platform, Intercom offers next-generation solutions for sales, marketing and support teams to work together to convert prospects into paying customers, engage customers throughout their journey and provide world-class support.

Intercom is redefining the customer journey and unifying business silos to deliver ongoing, personalized engagement through in-context communications. More than 25,000 global organizations, including Atlassian, Amazon and Lyft Business, rely on Intercom to deliver unparalleled user experiences at any scale. Intercom's platform is used to send over 500 million messages per month and enables interactions with over 600 million monthly active end users.

Founded in 2011 and backed by leading venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer Venture Partners and Social Capital, Intercom is on a mission to make internet business personal.

Harvard Business Review Analytic Services is an independent commercial research unit within Harvard Business Review Group, conducting research and comparative analysis on important management challenges and emerging business opportunities. Seeking to provide business intelligence and peer-group insight, each report is published based on the findings of original quantitative and/or qualitative research and analysis. Quantitative surveys are conducted with the HBR Advisory Council, HBR's global research panel, and qualitative research is conducted with senior business executives and subject matter experts from within and beyond the Harvard Business Review author community. For more information, visit www.hbr.org/hbr-analytic-services.

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SOURCE Intercom, Inc.