Digital Demands Across Industries: Insights from Our Latest Research
In today’s digital landscape, consumers have come to expect seamless, efficient, and intuitive online experiences from brands across all sectors. But expectations across industries are not the same, especially when we consider factors like the nature of the product, customer investment levels, and frequency of interaction.
Our research across multiple regions and industries has identified and categorised the emotional dynamics at play in each sector. These insights reveal unique challenges and opportunities for brands as they navigate the complexities of digital service delivery.
Here, we’ll break down four primary demand categories as seen in the chart below: "High Investment - High Demand," "Grudge Products with Dynamic Needs," "Non-Frequent Use or No Ties," and "Diminished Appeal."
Understanding the digital demands of each category can help brands prioritise features that align with customer expectations and create value where it matters most.
1. High Investment - High Demand
Customers in this category invest substantial time, money, and trust. They expect a premium digital experience in return. Sectors like higher learning and wealth management, where customers place a high degree of value on service reliability and support, have little room for error.
Students and investors alike need efficient digital solutions that are informative, user-friendly, and responsive. High-stakes investments create a natural expectation for top-tier digital experiences. Customers in these industries want platforms that simplify complex information and empower them to manage their decisions confidently.
For brands in these sectors, it’s crucial to meet and exceed these digital demands by offering features that prioritise transparency, security, and real-time support.
2. Grudge Products with Dynamic Needs
This category includes motor insurance across Australia, Ireland, and Canada. Here, customers’ digital demands stem from a lack of initial interest and a need for relatively frequent, potentially complex interactions.
Motor insurance is a grudge purchase that customers feel burdened by before the experience even begins. As a result, they have high expectations for the digital experience, desiring seamless interactions that minimise friction and simplify the process.
Customers may need to access their accounts to add drivers, update policies, or initiate claims. A grudge purchase followed by grudge interactions. This heightened need for interaction and a general lack of enthusiasm for the product results in elevated digital demands.
Brands in this category must ensure that their platforms are reliable and designed to make each interaction as quick and painless as possible. Meeting these demands means prioritising intuitive design and self-service options that reduce the need for customer support interventions.
3. Non-Frequent Use or No Ties
In this category, we find industries where customer interactions tend to be infrequent. Superannuation, for example, operates under a long-term “set it and forget it "mindset. For products like home or health insurance, engagement is often limited to the initial purchase or occasional claim. However, it should be noted that health insurance is evolving in terms of engagement. The rise of on-demand digital health solutions and behavior shifts accelerated by COVID-19 have created significant opportunities to foster deeper and more frequent connections in health services.
Despite these differences, the digital experience remains crucial in all these industries for retaining customers during their limited interactions. Users expect clear navigation and intuitive interfaces that simplify tasks like account management, even when they log in infrequently.
On the other hand, industries like sports betting face minimal customer loyalty. Users often switch platforms at will, with little attachment to any particular provider. Asa result, they don’t expect premium service levels, as their investment and commitment are minimal.
Nevertheless, ease of use in digital services can still be a differentiator. Lower expectations create an opportunity for brands to exceed them, leveraging seamless digital experiences to attract and retain users, bridging the gap between infrequent use and lasting loyalty.
4. Diminished Appeal
This category, which includes banking and energy, reveals an interesting phenomenon. Despite the relatively advanced level of digital maturity in these sectors, customers report lower demand scores for digital features.
In banking, brands may provide a surplus of features—some of which may not align with customer needs and wants—or they offer features that are so fundamental to daily life that customers have come to expect them as a baseline and do not perceive them as added value.
In fact, in both banking industries (AU and UK), the ability to report a lost or stolen card emerged as the most important feature - highlighting that even rarely or never-used features can carry a higher value in customer perception compared to features than customers rely on in a day-to-day capacity.
In energy, it’s more about lack of interest. While some utilities offer detailed usage analytics - device-by-device tracking, hourly comparisons—most customers just aren’t that engaged. It's good to have, but diving into daily stats doesn’t fit into their routines.
Brands in the "Diminished Appeal" category should focus on streamlining their offerings, enhancing the features that provide genuine value, and resisting theurge to add options that may contribute to an overwhelming or cluttered user experience.
Conclusion
Our research underscores that digital demand varies significantly across industries and is shaped by factors like customer investment, interaction frequency, and the product's inherent appeal.
Recognising and responding to these distinctions is essential for brands that want to optimise their digital strategy and better meet customer expectations.
Whether operating in high-stakes sectors like wealth management, handling reluctant but frequent users in motor insurance, or simplifying experiences in sectors with diminished appeal, brands that align their digital offerings with customer demand can enhance satisfaction, build loyalty, and stand out in an increasingly competitive market.
By understanding these nuanced digital demand patterns, companies can make informed decisions about feature prioritisation and ensure that their digital services provide the right balance of functionality, simplicity, and user satisfaction.
Interested in learning more about how digital demands impact your industry? Contact us to discuss how our insights can guide your digital strategy and help you better serve your customers.
