Omar Akhtar guest blogs on Brian Solis’s blog about unifying your sales, marketing and service departments around the customer experience... Exactly! Add to that these brilliant pieces including; Dr Natalie Petouhoff’s [constellationr.com] “7 Ways for CMOs to Thrive When Leading CX”, Simon Yates [Gartner.com] on the Gartner 2015-2016 CMO Survey and Joe Ruiz [maximizesocialbusiness.com] talking about social capital fuelling CX marketing, and you have this week’s CMO Perspectives. Enjoy!
The Gartner 2015-2016 CMO Spend Survey is out and it reveals some interesting insights into the mindset of today’s marketing leaders – how marketing in a digital world is evolving, where CMOs plan to invest and what’s drawing more of their attention going into 2016. With insight gems like these, "Enough of the digital marketing label - it's just marketing now," and, "Customer Experience on the decline? - Not so fast!" you are going to want to make sure you read this blog review by Simon Yates before you dig into the report data.
Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, author of the research report, "Should the CMO Lead the Customer Experience?" has these 7 ways she thinks CMOs can thrive when leading the customer experience. As she says, "Leaders of Customer Experience Management must have an emotional tie to the brand, identify with it and want to share the value it brings to customers. They must be passionate about championing the customer experience and leading the development of the strategies, activities and tactics to create and sustain demand." Are you?
Joe Ruiz was recently listening to the inspirational Margaret Heffernan deliver a powerful TED talk about the value of social capital, when he realized that social capital is the fuel of true customer experience marketing. In other words, healthy organizations provide cultures with values that build social capital by nurturing trust and transparency and most importantly, have healthy conflict. So what does this have to do with the customer experience? Everything! There are many studies that have demonstrated the connection between happy employees and the financial performance of an organization. Happy customers are most likely to be loyal customers. In most cases loyal customers stay longer, buy or use more of a product or service and aren’t afraid to tell others about their experience. But it all starts with the people who serve those customers. What are you doing about making your employees happy?
You would think Brian Solis would be too busy with the launch of his new book this week to be putting out great content, but great content, in the form of a guest post from Omar Akhtar, is being put out indeed. Akhtar talks about how in today’s world of always connected, always on experiences, customer experience management is no longer just the responsibility of marketing, or even sales or service. Today, the entire company is responsible for the customer experience. And hence, the technology for customer experience management must allow multiple teams within a company to operate it in a unified way delivering a seamless customer experience across all touchpoints. Exactly!
How CMOs Can Build Cross-Functional Relationships & Improve The Customer Experience [influitive.com]
There is nothing surprising or that you shouldn't have already heard in this piece by Jim Williams. But still, it is a well written and concise analysis of how you, the CMO, can build cross-functional relationships to improve your customer experience. Don't know where to start? Follow his advice and make the customer the center of your world. As he says, "If you can come to a consensus with your colleagues about how you measure the success (or failure) of your customer experience efforts (like measuring revenue, brand awareness/association, advocacy, etc.) you’ll be well on your way to putting customers at the center of your decision-making process."
We hope you enjoyed this week’s CMO Perspectives, be sure to respond in the comments or tweet us @NICE_CX.