Customer Experience in Marketing and Creative: Bridging Skills Gaps and Technology

Article

By Lucy Marino, Executive Director, Marketing and Creative, Robert Half

Marketing and creative teams face a key question today: How can they use advancing technology while keeping their content authentically human? The solution isn't choosing between AI tools and creative talent—it's finding ways to make both work together effectively.

According to Robert Half's latest Demand for Skilled Talent report, customer experience (CX) in marketing and creative sits at the top of leaders’ priority list. To deliver this experience effectively, teams need to combine talent and technology—but first, they must understand what's holding them back.

Improving Customer Experience in Marketing and Creative

Understanding your obstacles
Building the right team for CX success
Integrating technology for better CX
Taking action on your CX strategy

Understanding your obstacles

First among these obstacles to their priority initiatives’ success is outdated technology, cited by 50% of marketing and creative leaders in the Demand for Skilled Talent report. Most legacy systems just can’t integrate smoothly with new technologies and, in the process, jeopardize the digital marketing customer experience.

Cross-functional collaboration is the second-biggest challenge, mentioned by 49% of leaders. Delivering outstanding customer experience requires teams to work harmoniously across departments. When professionals operate in silos, it's tough to create the consistent experiences your customers expect.

Budget constraints for headcount affect 45% of teams, while 42% report significant skills gaps. These staffing challenges create a vicious cycle: Without enough contributors and skills, your current team members can quickly become overwhelmed, leading to stalled initiatives and additional turnover. The numbers back this up—42% of business leaders across all sectors say unfilled roles lead to employee burnout, while 39% see project delays.

Explore the top in-demand marketing and creative roles for 2025.

Building the right team for CX success

To deliver excellent customer experience in marketing and creative, you need professionals who can blend imaginative problem-solving with the technical aspects of the work. Four areas stand out as particular challenges, with leaders reporting skills gaps in AI strategy, marketing analytics, marketing automation and digital design and development.

To help close these skills gaps, many marketing and creative leaders are turning to hiring, with 68% planning to add new permanent positions. However, in a competitive market where 91% of managers say finding skilled talent is challenging, you’ll need to be flexible. Contract professionals are becoming an increasingly popular option, with 72% of marketing and creative leaders planning to bring in more contract talent in the first half of 2025.

Integrating technology for better CX

According to Robert Half research, the technologies marketing and creative leaders are planning to prioritize in 2025 are marketing automation tools (44%), AI and machine learning (40%) and customer relationship management systems (38%). This push toward technology implementation reflects today's consumer expectations for personalization. Marketing teams must work faster and more efficiently to identify customer behavior patterns, deliver timely personalized messages and create seamless experiences across all channels. The key is implementing these tools thoughtfully, ensuring they align with both your brand voice and customer preferences. Start with one focused area—such as email personalization or website recommendations—rather than attempting a complete transformation at once.

Before adding new tools, evaluate your current technology stack. Remember that our survey found half of marketing and creative leaders cited outdated technology as their primary obstacle. Modernize legacy systems and ensure new tools truly advance your customer experience goals.

Also ensure that you improve data integration between and among platforms. Customer data often lives in different platforms that don't communicate well with each other, leading to an incomplete view of customer behavior and preferences. Carefully assess how your current tools handle customer data—are you capturing the complete customer journey, or are valuable insights fragmented across separate platforms like your CRM, email marketing software, and website analytics?

Importantly, any technology implementation must prioritize data privacy and compliance by following regional data protection regulations and implementing robust consent management. This includes maintaining transparent data practices, regularly auditing procedures, and ensuring technology partners meet compliance standards—all of which help build and maintain customer trust.

When choosing new technology, look for solutions that enhance your team's existing capabilities, while you support their growth through targeted training or hiring. While AI tools can make data analysis more accessible and automation can streamline personalization, these technologies should complement—not substitute for—developing your team's core marketing and analytics skills and making strategic hires.

Taking action on your CX strategy

Here are six more steps to enhance customer experience in marketing and creative initiatives:

1. Develop a flexible staffing model—Consider a mix of permanent and contract talent to address immediate needs while building long-term capabilities. Look for professionals who bring both technical skills and creative thinking to the table. Remember that contract talent can help you test new initiatives or bring specialized expertise to specific projects.

2. Connect your teams—When around half of leaders say departments aren't working together well enough, it's time to knock down silos. Schedule regular meetings where different teams can share best practices for improving customer experience in marketing and creative. Create clear communication channels between departments and establish shared goals that encourage collaboration as well as competition.

3. Build essential skills—If your team also has gaps in AI strategy, marketing analytics and automation, develop training that ties directly to your customer experience goals. Consider creating mentorship programs where team members can share knowledge and learn from each other. Don't forget to include both technical and soft skills in your development plans—successful customer experience requires both.

4. Track your progress—Set clear metrics for success in your customer experience initiatives. Watch how your technology performs and how well your teams work together, then adjust your approach based on what the data tells you. Make sure you're measuring what matters most to your customers, not just what's easiest to track. Regular reviews help you spot trends early and make adjustments before minor issues become major problems.

5. Balance data with dialogue—Create regular opportunities to hear directly from your customers through advisory boards, focus groups or client interviews. These conversations often reveal insights that pure analytics miss and help you understand the “why” behind the “what” in your data. Combining these subjective insights with your metrics gives you a much clearer picture of where to focus your efforts.

6. Partner with talent experts—Finding and recruiting permanent or contract talent can be challenging. Working with an established talent solutions firm like Robert Half can give you access to pre-evaluated professionals ready to contribute right away. These firms understand both the technical and soft skills needed for customer experience roles, helping you find people who can make an immediate impact while collaborating well with your team.

Creating better customer experiences in 2025 takes thoughtful planning and putting resources in the right places. But when you combine smart technology choices with strong teams working together, you can build experiences that connect with your audience and help your business grow.

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