Report: Retailers fail to track and optimize CRM data

By CRM Management Editors | Jun 16, 2010

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Data from Aberdeen's November 2009, Automated and Connected Store report indicates that only 65% of retailers measure and track CRM data in stores and other sales channels, leaving a large customer mindshare gap and lost revenue opportunity. Over half (52%) of retailers do not possess customer-experience related information processes and technologies in stores and channels that enable timely responsiveness towards customer buying trends and shopping experience.

"Our data shows that retailers are conscious of the customer-related complexities that are posing a constant roadblock in the growth of their businesses," says Sahir Anand, Research Director, Retail Research and Chief Author of the report. Aberdeen data indicates that the foremost pressure related to the shopping experience of customers is a highly competitive cross-channel retail space that is presenting a wider and more complex basket of shopping choices for customers (48%). Shopping choices have diversified in the last few years due to popularity and adoption of online and call center shopping; proliferation of retail categories in non-traditional retail formats; and growing purchasing influence of new generation of shoppers.
 
The second highest customer pressure for almost a third (30%) of retailers relates to the inability to obtain adequate customer shopping insights from customer shopping data that is collected from a wide variety of sources such as point-of-sale (POS), online, call center, merchandise, supply chain, and other secondary sources such as industry data co-ops. Retailers find customer data and related analysis hard to handle. In the case of several large retailers that sell more than 30,000 stock keeping units (SKUs), customer demand and forecast data can run into a few billion records. Aberdeen data shows that 63% of leading retailers identified the inability to access information about customers during the full buying cycle (i.e. before, during, and after sales experience).