Around 84% of global consumers across all industries say their experiences with using digital tools and services fall short of expectations.
This is according to the Digital Consumer Experience Index, conducted by Gartner, to gauge the current state of consumers' perception of key characteristics of their digital experiences.
The online survey was conducted among 4 060 global consumers aged 18 years and above, to gauge specific elements of total digital experiences, such as their level of trust, perceived ease of use, and benefits received from using digital channels.
The cross-industry survey revealed most organisations do not meet consumer expectations, and leave much to be desired from their digital services offerings.
"Customer focus is a top business priority for CEOs and subsequently a large investment area for CIOs," says Brad Holmes, managing VP at Gartner.
"Despite these efforts, consumers report significant gaps in enterprises' ability to make digital experiences easy, to earn their trust, and to deliver desirable results."
The survey gauged consumers' engagement and reactions to common digital use cases across 11 industries. Digital use cases included actions such as placing a retail order, submitting a service request to a bank, purchasing life insurance, paying a government bill, and checking the status of healthcare benefits.
According to the survey, all industries show room for improvement, with the banking industry emerging as the best-performing industry.
Banks also enjoyed the highest level of trust among consumers. Yet sceptics remain, as 18% of those consumers who choose not to use online services of the banks say it's because they "don't fully trust them". Similarly, for governments and retailers, 20% of non-users point to lack of trust as their reason.
"In fact, among consumers who have used the digital services we asked about, 26% (banking) to 49% (government) rate their perceptions in the lower two quartiles of our index, leaving a lot of room for improvement," explains Holmes.
Retail experience
Consumers rated retailer digital products and services as the easiest to use; however, governments were seen as the most difficult to use.
"Ease of use is a critical element of a positive experience, and online retailers have innovated continuously to reduce the instances of shopping cart abandonment and other blockers to completing a purchase transaction. These efforts have panned out in relatively higher consumer perception. Consumers who are current and past users of governments' and life insurers' online services and tools perceive them to be more difficult," it pointed out.
Along with ease of use, trust was a key component of a consumer's satisfaction with a digital experience.
"Given that most industries' digital experiences don't perform very well in the eyes of the consumers, this is a wake-up call for all CIOs," explains Holmes.
"CIOs must get together with their CMO, customer experience, business unit and product leaders to revisit and reset the current digital experience priorities and projects in light of these insights. The path is well paved by best practices of leading retailers, banks and the successful digital natives. Understanding and applying cross-industry best practices in order to re-engineer digital product and service capabilities is the right way to make progress."
Millennial influence
The survey revealed millennials use digital services more often, but are less satisfied than other generations. At least two-thirds of millennials use retailers', manufacturers' and utilities' digital services.
"Out of all generations, [millennials] have the lowest opinion of most industries' digital services," according to Holmes.
"This may be because baby boomers and other older generations use over time has made them more immune to poor ease of use, or that they have become resigned to doing what it takes to get value, one way or another."
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