Nearly all (95 percent) of the respondents in BRP's 2014 CRM/Unified Commerce Benchmark Survey indicated customer experience/customer engagement was one of their top three current initiatives. Additional top initiatives focusing on the customer experience included guided selling/clienteling, social selling and location-based mobile marketing.
An interesting initiative, still in the early stages, is the ability to identify customers when they walk in the store via their smartphones. This capability is a fundamental requirement for location-based marketing and personalizing the customer experience. Only 3 percent of respondents currently offer this ability, but 72 percent plan to implement it within five years.
