Digital customer engagement a revenue accelerator

Customer engagement has improved for businesses that have invested in digital customer and personalization technologies in the Asia Pacific. Not only has it had a significant positive impact on customer retention and trust, but the investments in customer engagement have also improved revenues.

In Singapore, business-to-consumer (B2C) companies that invested in digital customer engagement also saw an average increase in total revenue of 61%. Australia and Japan also experienced a significant positive impact following improved investments in digital customer engagement.

According to Twilio’s third annual State of Customer Engagement, businesses are preparing for more changes in engaging with their customers. The findings from the report showed a majority of B2C companies in Singapore (97%) saw an increase in revenue as a result of investments in digital customer engagement. 28% of B2C companies in Singapore surveyed also expect to at least double their digital customer engagement investment by 2025.

When it comes to personalization, 81% of consumers in Singapore say they’ll stop using a brand if it doesn’t personalize their experience, compared to the global average of 61%. While 3 out of 4 B2C companies in Singapore (75%) believe they provide good or excellent personalized customer experiences, more than half of consumers in Singapore (53%) disagree.

From personalization to cookies

In fact, personalization has emerged as one of the most important aspects of delivering a competitive brand experience that will attract customers and create brand loyalty. The consequences of not providing personalized experiences to customers can be severe, especially as consumers in Singapore tend to expect personalized experiences compared to other countries.

At the same time, third-party cookies, which are now blocked by Firefox and Safari, will also be blocked by Google Chrome by the end of 2023. Businesses need to prepare quickly for these upcoming changes, especially as the majority of consumers in Singapore (88%) prefer for brands to make use of only first-party data when delivering personalized experiences.

The deprecation of cookies will cause even more difficulty for brands who rely on such cookies to identify and track visitors to their websites. 73% of B2C companies in Singapore surveyed rely on third-party data for their current marketing strategies. In addition, nearly 2 out of 3 (65%) companies in Singapore say they are not fully prepared for a cookieless world.

Trusting customer engagement

Interestingly, the survey also highlighted that while 54% of consumers in Singapore want brands to do more to protect their privacy and be transparent about data usage, some consumers are taking action against brands that do not meet their data privacy expectations.

More than half stopped purchasing the brand’s products or services while another half of respondents reduced the amount of money spent on the brand’s products or services. 38% of respondents even told friends or family members not to trust the brand.

While trust in customer engagement is prioritized, 65% of consumers in Singapore are frustrated with inconsistent digital interactions with brands. Among the reasons why consumers in Singapore will stop doing business with a company included not being able to connect with someone from customer support and being transferred multiple times to different service representatives.

As such, Lee Hawksley, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia-Pacific, and Japan at Twilio said that the research clearly shows that companies that prioritize digital customer engagement reap the biggest rewards.

“Personalization is actually getting harder to deliver, with high customer expectations, changing technologies, and the diminishing value of third-party cookies. We’ve seen five fundamentals to overcoming these challenges: embrace digital, personalize every interaction, shift to first-party data, close the trust gap, and avoid engagement fatigue by increasing the quality of your interactions,” commented Hawksley.

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