The report, The Responsiveness Requirement: how agile marketers act on consumer feedback to drive growth, from the CMO council in partnership with Danaher, revealed that just 45% of marketers rated their organisations as ‘fairly good’ at responding to end consumers in this way. 

Just under two in five ( 36%) said that their firm’s responsiveness capabilities varied by channel. 

When it came to retail customers specifically, even fewer ( 12%) felt their organisation was ‘extremely responsive'. 

Looking at how long it takes organisations to respond to consumer feedback and requests, 78% of marketers said they were able to respond to consumer feedback, requests, suggestions or complaints specific to digital marketing campaigns within two weeks. More than two in five ( 43%) said they could respond within 24 hours. However, when it came to updating physical touchpoints, reaction times were much slower: 21% said they could react within two weeks, 19% within one month, and 59% in over 30 days. 

“Digital, in the past several years, has emerged as the efficiency powerhouse: easy to create, easy to deploy and even easier to track, measure and prove return,” the report said.

“But the impact of physical touchpoints like [point of purchase] and product packaging were asked to take a back seat: too hard to create, too hard to update, too hard to track and measure, and even harder to reimagine at the speed of customer expectation.”

Findings were based on a survey of 153 senior marketers.