Insights

The Top Customer Management Trends throughout the DACH Region

At the BSI Customer Summit, the time had finally come: the participants were given their first insights into the brand-new 2022 Customer Management Study. To conduct the benchmark study, BSI and gateB partnered with the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences. Dr. Frank Hannich, Head of Customer Management at the ZHAW, and Reto Heierli, Research Associate, dove into the results, illuminating the most important trends in customer management right now.

Understanding the study

This Customer Management Study shows the trends in customer management in the DACH region from a company's point of view. A total of 219 companies took part in the survey. Of these, the majority operate primarily in the B2B sector (around 46%) and are SMEs (around 60%). The four sectors most frequently represented in the study are: Banking and finance (11%), Consulting (11%), Insurance (11 %), IT/computer science (10.1 %).

Download Study (in German only)

Current priorities in CRM — and where potential remains untapped

Heierli and Hannich presented the survey respondents’ current priorities in the customer relationship lifecycle. The three main takeaways here are: Loyalty still matters to companies. Nearly 60% of respondents said that customer loyalty is their top priority. Digitalization isn't going anywhere. The study revealed that the pandemic has given a sustained boost to digitization. More than half of the companies that participated in the survey have created new digital or hybrid services. And these are particularly well received by customers.
Winback presents a major opportunity. Just 13.7% of responding companies said they prioritize winning back existing customers.

A large amount of potential lies with that last point. Winback pushes are "typically the most efficient campaigns," Hannich explains. "Why? Because you already have the contact information and because you know something about the value of those customers — who you want to win back and who you might not." All told, if you neglect customer recovery, you're giving away potential.

Customer data platforms are on the rise — and here to stay

Customer data platform (CDP) solutions are riding high this year. CDPs allow companies to consolidate usage data for their products and services from multiple sources in one place and make it available to other marketing tools in real time.

At best, the platforms serve as a "golden record" — a single source of truth for the customer journey where companies can collect and share data, manage customer identities, and segment customers.

Nevertheless, the platforms are not yet widely used — or even known about. More than half of the companies surveyed had never heard of CDPs. Of the nearly 44% who were familiar with the concept, only around 17% have already implemented a CDP solution of their own.

In principle, the benefits of CDPs should be attractive to many companies. The three most frequently cited benefits are:

Dissolving data silos
Personalizing customer interactions
Integrating all contact points in one place

With so much to gain, Hannich and his team assume that more companies will adopt CDPs in the coming years.

Robert Schumacher

Director, Member of the Executive Board

The limitations of classic CRM systems quickly become apparent, especially in large companies: they usually cannot be used to map end-to-end customer interaction. Only one in six companies already uses a CDP. For all others, the CDP will become increasingly important in the future.

Building sustainability into customer relationships — environmentally and otherwise

At the BSI Customer Summit, attendees had the chance to learn about another interesting result of the study: the way sustainability ties in. More than one third of the responding companies said they strive for perfect sustainability in CRM, i.e., a balance between the economic, environmental, and social dimensions.

From whom does this development originate? Many assume this shift is customer-driven, but there is actually a tendency for sustainability to be demanded more by employees than by customers.

This makes it all the more important for companies to not just assume social responsibility, but also to make it visible. Especially since, according to recent studies, this improves the willingness to perform, job satisfaction, and the health of the workforce.

Human-to-machine-to-human — widespread, yet often unnoticed

Finally, Heierli and Hannich presented findings on the topic of H2M2H (human-to-machine-to-human). Per the results, many companies are not aware of how many customer relationships already work with intermediary AI. Nearly 73% believe AI plays no role in their customer interactions. Yet many companies already have numerous examples of H2M2H relationships in their stack — at an average of 3.5 AI-powered applications.

SEO is the most prevalent AI-supported customer management measure, with just under 53% of companies employing it. Looking at the benefits — alongside issues like control, data protection, and ethics — Hannich predicted, "Some opinions... will still change there. The first thing that should probably change is awareness."

Key takeaways and outlook

Looking for a quick synopsis of the most pertinent customer management trends, as illuminated by the survey? They are:

Companies tend to focus on customer retention in the customer lifecycle, yet customer recovery offers enormous potential.
Customer data platforms (CDPs) offer attractive benefits and will continue to gain traction in the coming years.
Sustainability is one of the megatrends of today. Companies that demonstrate social responsibility can increase the motivation, satisfaction, and health of their workforce.
AI or H2M2H communication is already used in many applications in customer relations. The next step would be a deliberate, targeted use of the technology — to take advantage of benefits such as next-best-offer, but also to ensure data protection and ethical handling.