For years, companies have worked to build out great customer experiences. As demand for digital experiences spiked in 2020, companies have had to accelerate their timelines for customer-centric transformation even more.

While many executives are making customer experience a priority—and feeling confident about their progress—when it comes to actually executing on and operationalizing initiatives, there is room to grow. To understand their priorities, challenges, and investments, Merkle conducted a survey of over 800 marketing and technology executives in the US and UK—focusing on three key customer experience areas: data, digital, and organizational transformation.

Read the report for insights such as:

1. 90% claim that consolidating consumer profiles is imperative to their organization, but only about half of respondents are currently investing to create more personalized and identity-based experiences.
2. The biggest limitations to using data effectively are related to data quality, expertise, and lack of agile partnerships.
3. 67% of organizations have implemented personalization in 3-6 channels, and 73% use insights from one channel to inform targeting in others.
4. 43% of respondents believe “customer experience transformation” is crucial to their business in the long term.
5. 86% stated that their organizations already understand and meet their most valuable customers’ needs, but customers don’t agree.