Why isn’t Conversion Rate Optimisation bigger?

At Station10, we have provided CRO services for many years, and for many clients.  The industry has been growing for many years, and CRO techniques and teams continue to develop, so this is a well-established and well-understood business area. 

It delivers clear results and benefits with demonstrable and proven figures, and uses data at its core.  For any business going through a digital transformation, this should be a high priority.  Many businesses have proven success in this area, and have continued to grow these functions across all areas of digital.

And yet, I’m always surprised that the industry is not bigger.  By which I mean, massively bigger.  With the amount of data within businesses, this approach could be applied to the overall customer experience.  And yet, the CRO industry remains relatively niche, focused on digital conversion; in fact, I’d argue the many years of calling it “Conversion Rate Optimisation” have limited its reach.  Other areas like CRM and advertising are running their own experiments in silos too.  So, how does CRO, or more broadly, optimisation, break out of its corner?

I think the biggest challenge is that there tends to be no ownership of the wider opportunity.  As multichannel experiences become more common, the significance and value of optimising experiences in just the digital channel starts to diminish, and the value of understanding and optimising the entire customer journey and all of its touchpoints increases.  However, whilst there is clear ownership of individual channels, it’s still very unusual for any business to have clear individual ownership of the full customer journey.  As a result, these experiences operate in silos, and there is little, if any, cross-channel integration between them.  As a result, whilst optimisation techniques may be common in the digital environment, they rarely extend further. 

This can mean that the customer experience is not, in fact, optimised, while businesses think they are.  For some customer journeys there may be value in having a conversation with a call centre operative – perhaps the relevant information is not shown on a particular journey, or an individual customer, say a more elderly or perhaps disabled customer, may need more specific support or reassurance than the digital channel can provide.  However, this customer segmentation aspect will typically not get picked up by the digital-focused optimisation programme, which might try to discourage customers calling the call centre.

As a result, those organisations with CXOs – Chief Experience Officers – are best placed to break these silos, and so be able to deliver a full end-to-end experience optimisation (sometimes called cross-channel or customer journey optimisation).  Alternatively, having buy-in and sponsorship from the board is the next best approach.

If you have neither of these, then it’s going to take some perseverance to get it, but the business case does start to add up.  As a 2021 Forrester Report noted, organisations that invest in improving customer experiences to surpass customer expectations, grew revenue 1.7 times faster and increased customer lifetime value 2.3 times more than those that didn’t.

This is a clear value case, especially in highly competitive industries like retail, travel and financial services, but it applies to any business trying to improve its customer experience.

However, most businesses don’t have a Chief Experience Officer, so this high-level integration is much harder. So, for optimisation experts “on the ground”, and who want to extend the capability of their function, here are a few tips:

1.       Identify a “non-web” channel for which a current customer journey extends, and work with the product owner to identify how that journey may be optimised.

For instance, perhaps the simplest / closest channel might be web and app.  If this is not already part of your remit (and for many it may be), work with stakeholders in that area – are there customer journeys that cross both, and how often?  Where are the pain points on that journey for the customer?

Perhaps more likely would be a journey that goes from digital to customer service (typically, the call centre or My Account services).  This is already a fairly well-established use case, and can unlock real value, either by identifying where customers drop out of the website and end up calling, or by identifying more valuable segments who may do better with a person (for example, more elderly customers).  Work with Customer Service journey owners to establish how a test and relevant data could be integrated.

2.       Identify what’s possible to measure and where your data gaps are. There are relatively cost-effective tracking tools available, like unique call number tracking for a call centre integration.  But start with what you have got; this will help to build any business case if there are gaps.

3.       Conduct a test in partnership with the journey owner.  This is also partly testing whether your existing tools enable you to do multichannel testing, so make sure the test is well defined, and with clear goals and metrics (but then, that’s what you are good at!)