On top of ongoing supply chain disruptions and employment challenges, brands are now facing a rapid loss of consumers at surprising rates with levels that the authors of SugarCRM’s latest report threaten the future of companies across all industries worldwide.
To understand this “great customer resignation,” SugarCRM’s report includes a survey of 1,600 sales and marketing professionals from both business-to-consumer and business-to-business businesses and aims to pinpoint organizational turbulence across the customer journey. The findings also highlight the “inadequacies of traditional CRM solutions that aren’t purpose-built to address today’s post-pandemic customer experience realities.”
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“Data fuels the actionable insights that sales, marketing and service teams need to act decisively at every critical touchpoint — to drive high-definition customer experiences — and to reverse the great customer resignation,” said Craig Charlton, chief executive officer of SugarCRM.
Within the report, the company compares customer churn seen last year — which was costing mid-market companies an average of $5.5 million per year — finding that 58 percent of survey respondents say customer churn has increased over the last year.
While more than half (55 percent) of survey respondents said they were not able to identify customers at risk of leaving, 57 percent also said they are not able to track customer churn rates effectively. Additionally, while 75 percent of respondents said a consolidated view of customer information across their organization is critical to delivering optimal customer experiences, 56 percent said they are missing data to improve marketing campaigns and sales conversions.
A fourth of respondents also said they believe they could miss a quota due to incomplete data across the customer life cycle.
For 71 percent, it is believed that customers are leaving due to poor customer service or experience. Similarly, 70 percent of survey respondents reported they need to do more to “improve customer trust in their brand or organization” and 73 percent cited the need to act on customer feedback for improved customer service and experience.
“Clearly, customers are changing the rules of engagement, and many companies are at an inflection point,” said Volker Hildebrand, senior vice president of product marketing at SugarCRM. “Technology can be the game-changer here, but the time to act is now. It starts with removing blind spots: understanding what your customers want and predicting what they need next. It continues with a focus on eliminating busy work — making it easier for customers to engage and empowering employees to create the experiences customers expect. Finally, it removes roadblocks and friction points to enable brands to consistently deliver on their promises.”
While the authors of the report note respondents believe organizations need CRM strategies to fight customer churn, 58 percent of survey respondents think that the CRM system their company is using is costing them money while 55 percent say their CRM system cannot be customized to meet specific needs. With this in mind, 55 percent of those surveyed said they are planning to change their CRM platform within the next year.
Additional plans for technology investments were also reported with 91 percent saying they plan to deploy AI technology to augment existing processes.
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