The Secret to Delivering Great Customer Experience While Achieving 3x ROI

New research performed by IDC (International Data Corporation) and sponsored by Adobe has found that, on average, enterprises can achieve a return on investment (ROI) of 379 percent by focusing their digital transformation efforts to improve customer experience with forms and documents. This significant business value comes from reduced form abandonment during digital enrollment, improved productivity for line of business and IT teams authoring forms and documents, and increased efficiency in customer onboarding times. Read on to learn about more findings and what this means for your organization.

Rethinking the value of customer experiences

The modern customer expects the best when it comes to interacting with brands. Every touchpoint throughout the customer journey should be consistent, personalized, and simple to navigate. For many industries, such as financial service organizations or government agencies, the customer journey for new service enrollment or customer self-service starts with filling out forms and documents. From design to delivery, an end-to-end, integrated employee and customer experience is critical to securing customer loyalty. But what many organizations don’t realize is how improving experience could also directly impact their top-line revenue by enabling cross-selling and up-selling products and services to your loyal customers. Research done by Forrester shows that improving CX improves profitability — in fact, the revenue growth of CX leaders is 5.1 times that of laggards.

Adobe has always been at the forefront of digital transformation, empowering organizations to deliver amazing experiences for customers every day through Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud. For organizations whose core business and services involve multiple forms and documents, Adobe’s form and communications management system, Experience Manager Forms, can transform enrollment processes into simple, streamlined digital experiences.

AEM Forms has enabled many organizations to improve efficiency, boost conversion rate, and increase revenue. We wanted to dive deeper and understand the measurable business impact of AEM Forms through independent third-party research, so we partnered with research firm IDC to conduct a comprehensive study to assess the ROI for customers using AEM Forms.

Understanding the business value of Adobe Experience Manager Forms

IDC interviewed seven large organizations across industries including financial services, government, and insurance about their use of our solution. On average, these enterprises had over 26,000 employees and a revenue of $22.7 billion per year. They processed more than 2.2 million forms per year, mostly for their customers, but also for internal employees.

Survey results showed that participants were able to deliver better customer experiences as their forms and documents were much more consistent, easy to use, and had fewer errors. Study participants also achieved higher efficiency in the processes of authoring and managing their forms and documents, which led to a substantial gain in business value. Let’s look at some details below.

Faster, easier, better

Participants reported substantial improvement in the time needed to author new forms, update existing ones, and onboard new customers. The user-centric digital platform powered by AEM Forms enhanced customer engagement while lowering operational costs. With features such as an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and reusable fragments, business users can author web and mobile-responsive forms and documents via a create-once-publish-everywhere experience. This increases staff productivity and reduces the burden on IT teams so they can focus on higher-value business tasks.

Overall, participants saw an average three-year ROI of 379 percent and $1.73 million additional gross revenue every year by implementing AEM Forms.

Some of the key benefits reported include:

• 20% lower form abandonment rate.
• 63% faster time to author new forms and documents.
• 64% higher productivity for teams using AEM Forms.

While these statistics are already remarkable, results are even more impressive when translated into tangible business value. One of the key metrics for many organizations is form abandonment rate: each abandonment represents a customer who has made it part or most of the way through the funnel but is dropping off before converting, which also means lost business revenue or poor customer satisfaction. Decreasing form abandonment can translate directly into increased revenue from digital channels and a decrease in fulfillment via more cost-intensive channels like the contact center or in person.

Take a retail bank, for example. Let’s assume that every year roughly 100,000 customers go through the onboarding process, each with an average lifetime value (LTV) of $200. If the bank originally had a 70 percent form abandonment rate, a 20 percent lower rate would bring $2.8 million additional revenue — just by improving the customer experience and processes with forms and documents. All this doesn’t even account for the additional value gain from higher customer satisfaction and increased brand loyalty.

One customer noted, “We’ve seen an uptake of about 50 percent in form completions, so the revenue impact is probably about $5-8 million per year… we didn’t have the ability to measure false starts on form completion before AEM Forms.” With AEM Forms integrated with optimization tools, customers can track form performance at the field level and implement A/B testing to increase conversion rates. The ease of connecting AEM Forms to other business systems also allows organizations to save hours of staff time while providing customers with a customized experience.

A constantly evolving experience

In an era where customer expectations are constantly evolving, Adobe is committed to innovating experiences and pushing the boundaries of digital marketing. With Adobe Experience Manager, organizations can now deliver the perfect digital experience to their customers — anytime, anywhere. We’ve already explained how organizations can benefit from digital transformation at any stage of digital maturity in the Adobe Digital Forms Maturity Model. The results of this IDC study are a great validation to quantify the business value of a successful digital transformation. While we continue to explore the unlimited possibilities, we invite you to join us along the adventure and reinvent your journey with forms and documents. Start by checking out the full IDC white paper, “Understanding the Business Value of Adobe Experience Manager Forms, sponsored by Adobe, August 2018,” here. You may also learn more about Adobe Experience Manager Forms on Adobe.com, and see why industry analysts ranked Adobe among the best in workflow and content automation as well as customer communications.