Consumers are more likely to trust Google than the company website

The days when maintaining your own company website alone was enough to be well positioned in the digital space are over. This is because consumers' paths through the digital customer experience are no longer linear, but lead via an increasing number of third-party platforms such as search engines, map services, rating portals and address directories. Contradictory or incomplete information at the individual touchpoints causes confusion and creates chaos - such as outdated opening hours or incorrect addresses. These are the findings of a representative survey conducted by digital knowledge management provider Yext, which surveyed 1,000 German consumers. A separate survey of 200 marketing managers was also conducted to shed light on the topic from a provider's perspective. Michael Hartwig, Managing Partner Central Europe at Yext, warns: "Companies must take a proactive approach to the change in customer experience and must no longer ignore technological change in order to be well positioned for the future."

Loss of importance of the company website

There is broad agreement between consumers and marketing managers on the question of how the customer experience has changed in recent years. 95% of marketers assume that customers now obtain information from more, far more or even many more digital touchpoints than five years ago. 90 percent of consumers confirm that this assessment is true in their case. However, they do not have the same level of trust in all platforms: The majority now trust search engines such as Google (72 percent). The company website (38%) is surprisingly far behind and is only slightly ahead of review portals (32%). However, you should by no means neglect your own website - after all, Google and other providers also access it. With Schema.org, websites can be optimized so that the most important content is recognized more quickly by search engines.

But even Google doesn't know everything: 54% of marketing managers state that they have been confronted with incorrect information about their company on search engines, 39% on social media and 37% on review portals. Consumers also complain about missing or contradictory information: When asked about the biggest frustration factors in the digital customer experience, 56 percent complain that they often cannot find answers to their questions, 51 percent are bothered by a lack of clarity and just as many by incomplete information about providers, products and services, which makes purchasing decisions difficult. Other pain points such as lengthy registration processes (47%), the complicated process of contacting providers (39%) and a lack of individual advice (15%) came in a close second.

Lack of clarity drives customers away

The information chaos spoils the mood of consumers: 70 percent are annoyed when they are confronted with incorrect or contradictory information in the customer experience. 26 percent are frustrated, 19 percent even get angry. This has serious consequences for companies: 39% abandon the purchase process as a result, 33% buy from another provider. Particularly noteworthy: even when consumers come across incorrect information about a company or its locations on third-party platforms, 59% blame the company itself - and not the platform operator.

The problem for companies, however, is that correcting incorrect entries is often laborious - not least due to the mass of platforms and data records. 64 percent of marketing managers who have already found incorrect information about their company online state that incorrect entries are difficult or very difficult to correct. However, the fundamental problem is that many companies do not adequately manage their digital knowledge. According to the marketing managers surveyed, 19 percent of companies do not systematically manage information such as address data or opening hours of the locations at all, 22 percent leave this to the location managers and 18 percent manage it in a simple Excel spreadsheet. Only 42% manage their data via a central platform, such as a professional digital knowledge management solution.

Companies need to reposition themselves

The status quo already poses numerous challenges for companies. However, technological progress means that the customer experience is continuing to change: when asked which technologies will change shopping the most in the future, consumers attribute the greatest potential to the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and digital voice assistants. However, only around half of marketing managers have confidence in the skills available in their company when it comes to these future technologies. Take voice assistants, for example: 25 percent state that they are not well prepared for the increasing spread of technologies such as Alexa and Google Home and 14 percent do not feel prepared at all or even admit that their company is not yet actively involved in the topic.

"Today, the company website is just one platform among many, and new technologies are also entering the market that are significantly changing the shopping experience. In short, the customer journey is changing," says Michael Hartwig. "The results of our study show where the challenges lie and what the consequences can be if companies remain passive. The management of digital knowledge is becoming an increasingly important discipline - which is one of the reasons why more and more marketing departments are creating the position of Digital Knowledge Manager to take care of this. But technology is also important: with the right solution, company information can be managed centrally and third-party platforms are updated automatically. This ensures complete and consistent data sets on all channels and helps companies to retain full control over the information available to them."

About the study

These are the results of a representative survey conducted by Yext, in which 1000 Germans aged 18 to 65 and 200 marketing experts aged 18 to 65 were interviewed. The study was conducted online with Lightspeed in August 2018. There were questions with multiple answers.