The forest and paper industry is lagging behind in digital customer experience

According to research from Tieto
Several industries are adopting more and more digital channels for customer service. Research conducted by Tieto shows that most of European forest and paper industry companies do not take this change seriously and have exaggerated their expertise know-how in this area.

Digital customer experience management is not at the heart of European forest and paper industry: a mere 24% of all respondents believed that this could bring added value to business operations. Developing customer loyalty and production efficiency were considered to be most important in the recent Tieto study.

Self-evaluation shows that the forest and paper industry does not see itself as lagging behind. The respondents were asked to classify their company either as an innovator, a forerunner, a follower or as lagging behind; a clear majority (61%) saw themselves in the first two groups.

According to the research, forest and paper industry invests a mere 10-19% of the budget into developing digital customer experience. This is significantly less when compared to retail or finance industries. Diverse placement of investments is also problematic: more than half of the respondents were unable to say, which budget line covers customer experience-related projects in their own company.
According to the research, a significant share (71%) of forest and paper industry companies has already invested in customer experience management.

Active customer experience-related projects deal with optimising adaptability in the distribution chain, customer service personnel training for service culture and sales, and predicting customer needs according to behavioural models and analytics.

When asked about their own companies’ investment for customer experience development, Swedish ventures have larger expectations for success as compared to other countries. 80% of Swedish respondents considered their venture to be an innovator or forerunner. This opinion was shared by 60% of Norwegian, German and Austrian respondents. Finnish respondents placed clearly lower (52%), despite the fact that Finland has most likely invested more into customer experience development than the counterparts.

"Forest and paper industry is not in the forefront of customer experience development, thus the research responses paint an overly rosy picture. This might be due to the fact that comparisons are drawn with the respondents’ own industry or another industry, instead of comparing with retail, for example, where development has progressed further", explains Tieto sales director Jaakko Vilén.

 Noticias dentro de la industria de la pulpa y el papel
La industria forestal y el papel se está quedando atrás en la experiencia de los clientes digitales
Varias industrias están adoptando cada vez más los canales digitales para el servicio al cliente. Las investigaciones realizadas por Tieto muestra que la mayor parte de las empresas forestales y de la industria de papel europeos no toman este cambio en serio y han exagerado su experiencia conocimientos en esta área.

PULPAPERnews - SUECIA - 30 abril 2015