I read a recent report from Dr. Natalie Petouhoff of Constellation Research that stated how and why driving excellence in customer experiences is a top priority for marketing executives in 2015. Of course, as the founder of a company dedicated to driving quality, personalized customer experiences, it piqued my interest—particularly the notion of delivering contextual customer experiences.
Customers drive marketing success (and failure for that matter) and are the life-blood of marketing initiatives—satisfaction, profitability, retention, and advocacy. Understanding customers and the elements that go into their decision-making correlates directly to increasing loyalty, revenue, and competitive advantage.
Natalie puts it nicely in the following excerpt:
“2015 is the year of customer choice. Thus all companies will focus on delivering ubiquitous customer experiences at all levels. In this coming reality, customer experience presents itself as the leading business objective ahead of product and service. When building relationships is the chief differentiator, the actual product and/or service is secondary to the customer experience.”
We recently spoke with Natalie where she called out a big shift taking place—call centers are no longer the true connection with the customer. Marketing is emerging as the new, integral connection point. Competing for the customers has always been a top priority for marketers, but now, it starts with developing and maintaining consistent, quality customer experiences.
So, how can marketers drive excellent customer experiences?
It’s all about being relevant! And relevant means delivering timely and personalized content to the individual. It means surprise your customer in a very positive way.
Armed with the appropriate tools, marketers can use solutions that aggregate data based on a user’s interactions with the company, and their interests, behaviors, and preferences to reach out to individuals with content they like and have a propensity to consume or buy.
Information about customers is available through so many channels—social media, mobile, Internet, broadcast, etc., but even more data lies deep inside the systems of many organizations—call centers, CRM, banking records, and more. Herein lies the opportunity for marketers to leverage systems that harness this data to better understand their customers’ wants and needs, and deliver more effective, personalized customer experiences.
But, it’s all in the timing. Delivering relevant, appropriate content to customers is critical, but it’s all for naught if this content isn’t delivered in a timely and contextual manner.
As part of this, marketers need to be sure they’re reaching customers via the right channel, with the right content, at the right time to improve the experience, enhance brand loyalty, and increase the customer value.
It is all about putting the customer first, and we’re not talking about simply adopting a ‘customer first’ mentality. This means more than just technological change. It’s about committing to better understanding your customer—at all stages of engagement—and building personalized relationships with each.
Marketers sit on a gold mine of customer information, and if they have any chance at winning the customer experience war, they need to turn it into relevant and impactful interactions. This is the key to producing loyal and profitable customer experiences.
Is your company prepared to get closer to its customers?
