While brands are re-aligning their customer engagement strategies to keep up with the changing needs of the digital customer, there are a number of hurdles facing organisations when it comes to improving customer engagement in a constantly changing digital environment.

According to Justin Lee, Head of Customer Experience at Expedia in Australia and NZ, one common challenge facing brands today is acquiring actionable customer experience data across your key touch points that the business believes in and can use to drive tangible change.

“No matter what business, the challenge is around the economics behind customer experience and taking it from a Net Promoter (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score to evaluating the data and understanding the dollar impact an incremental shift of these metrics has on the bottom line of the business,” he said.

Lee believes this challenge is an industry-wide issue. In order to move forward, brands need to not only educate their business around customer centric metrics, but also link those metrics back to the commercial and economics of the business to drive change.

“It’s very easy to measure customer satisfaction scores and have metrics around those scores, but what is crucial is the ability to tie it back to the commercial side of the business to be able to effectively drive change,” Lee said.

The Expedia Experience

As an online business, engaging customers in the right way is integral to Expedia’s success.

Like most brands, Expedia strives to provide a seamless experience so customers return and have an affiliation to the brand. But a growing part of their strategy is also to concentrate on ‘customer lifetime value.’

This notion focuses on going beyond what an individual transaction is worth and looks at the overall value to the business of that customer relationship.

“We’ve been talking a lot about repeat business and the importance of building brand advocacy. The term ‘repeat’ is a good indicator of loyalty but with no lock in contracts in terms of where you purchase travel it is very black and white.

Repeat fails to take into account the fact that a customer may repeat more or less over the lifetime of the relationship. Customer lifetime value provides a richer insight on the overall net worth of the relationship with that customer,” said Lee.

To read more about Expedia’s approach to customer engagement download the full article The Expedia Experience here

Join Justin Lee at the Customer Conference at MAD Week 2014, where he will explore the strategies needed to measure customer experience alongside a panel with Steph Tully Qantas Loyalty and Rob Glennon, Vodafone Australia.

To register for the Customer Conference click here

For more information for events and networking forums taking place at MAD Week Download the official event brochure or visit http://www.madweek.com.au