A deep understanding of the digital environment—whether it’s big data, social media or online shopping—is critical for marketing success when the online and offline worlds are nearly impossible to separate. Organizing, analyzing and “humanizing” the wealth of customer data at our fingertips is one of the main challenges for CMOs today. Customers are more than just a series of numbers! Human response and interactions are ever more essential for good CX. Consumer data should support great customer service, but it can’t replace it.
We hope you enjoy this week CMO Perspectives. Let us know what you think in the comments below or drop us a line on our Twitter account @NICE_CX.
Customer Experience is Becoming More Important than the Product Itself [briansolis.com]
Customer Experience is the sum total of what your customers feel while dealing with your company, what they think about you and what they say about you. CX is measured by sentiments and moments of truth.
The heart of any CX strategy should start with making business more human in a digital age. Empathy is the key player in the success of a CX program. And in a sense CX becomes more important than the product itself. Because engagement around a product is limited but the numerous engagements along the customer’s journey have the power to make or break the deal.
Make Them Listen by Translating Customer Data into Engaging Customer Stories [linkis.com]
A Chief Customer Officer’s role is to take customers off the spreadsheets and make them human. The idea is to make executives and associates want to know more about customers by translating customer data into engaging and actionable pieces of information. Jeanne Bliss suggests using tactics like starting new hires working on the frontline or in the warehouse or calling lost customers to understand what happened and apologize.
With the internet and the rise of mobile devices, consumers are doing a larger share of their shopping online. A new generation of “digital natives” expect a digital element with nearly every consumer experience. Some older bricks-and-mortar retailers have a hard time adapting to this new consumer reality. The good news is that most people still shop heavily at physical stores, especially at major holidays like Christmas. But traditional retailers still need to evolve and offer consumers a “360° experience”.
Putting A Face On Anonymous Data [chiefmarketer.com]
Managing the explosion of customer data is more important than ever before. Successful marketing depends on analyzing and effectively applying information gleaned from customer data. A recent report by CSC found that 70% of data is created by individuals—not enterprises—but it is the enterprises that are responsible for managing the lion’s share of it.
Big data is essential for marketers and publishers. Converting anonymous users into registered ones will enable digital media brands to correctly interpret an individual’s page view data and glean insight about which devices are used to access content and when. The challenge is to do so without negatively impacting traffic.
Why your Customer Loyalty Program isn’t working [hbr.org]
Michael Shrage, writing for HBR, points out why customer loyalty programs fail in many instances. The main point of the article is that loyalty boils down to ethics. Loyalty shouldn’t be a data-driven gimmick for capturing customers and market share, but rather about developing and sustaining meaningful relationships between consumers and companies.