For most of history, customer experiences lived in the two-dimensional realm. Point A to Point B. The path to making a purchase was predictably linear, finite, and well traveled.
Today? Not so much. The modern customer journey branches in all directions and across infinite planes, meaning brands need to start seeing these experiences in 3D. Expectations at every stage have never been higher, and the challenge of meeting them has never been more exciting. And that means that Customer Experience Management (CXM) has moved to center stage.
Join us as we enlist some of the most forward-thinking minds in business, and share their views on what it takes to deliver a comprehensive, holistic, unforgettable customer experience.
Mellissah Smith
Engage: Use insights about content topic and format preferences to deliver the right kind of content experience.
CEO, Marketing Insider Group
The goal now is to deliver immersive, frictionless, seamless, and personalized experiences, where the customer is sitting at the center of the buying universe. @IanGertler
Founder & CEO, Zen Media
Co-Founder & CEO, Bell + Ivy
Customer feedback can make or break a brand
if it isn’t dealt with effectively. @marketingeyeaus
Lee Odden
Senior Director of Technical Publications, Palo Alto Networks
1. www.accenture.com/t20161011T222718__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/PDF-34/Accenture-Pulse-Check-Dive-Key-Findings-Personalized-Experiences.pdf
2. www.forrester.com/report/Engagement+Costs+Continue+To+Rise+Even+With+Digital+Heres+How+To+Fight+It/-/E-RES137864
3. www2.bain.com/bainweb/pdfs/cms/hotTopics/closingdeliverygap.pdf
When it comes to creating great experiences, reliable and useful data is ground zero. Square one. The point of origin. We won’t find resonance with the people we serve unless we fully understand them: their wants, needs and aspirations. Data unlocks the insights that power personalization at scale. Then it’s time to connect the dots.
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Scott Monty
CEO, TopRank Marketing
I don’t even know where to begin to describe what it was like to dine at Maaemo, a 3-star Michelin restaurant in Oslo and one of the top 50 restaurants in the world.
No menus. No ordering. You just have to roll with it… because what shows up is pretty adventurous.
So what’s that have to do with the business of marketing? Maaemo wasn’t memorably remarkable just because of the food. It was just as—maybe more so—memorable for its slow, deliberate, intentional approach to its business.
What made the entire experience special was how Maaemo created anticipation for its “product.” After receiving a confirmation email on the morning of my reservation, I couldn’t help but wonder, “what are they cooking right now?”
“Customer empathy” gets tossed around a lot in marketing. But it’s really about aligning yourself with your customer’s point-of-view. What if we thought about our marketing the way Maaemo thinks about its food?
Start By Considering How to Fit Into the Customer’s Life
Mellissah Smith
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Considering how you fit into a consumer's life is a much more important part of the experience creation than any other part of it. @ScottMonty
of customers use three or
more channels to connect with
a company in a single service interaction.
A good customer experience is satisfying. But is it memorable? Will it cause your brand to stand out from the many others encountered in the day-to-day shuffle? As CXM becomes a mainstream consideration for businesses, the emphasis shifts from simply covering our bases to developing unique and extraordinary experiences with lasting impacts.
Senior Director of Technical Publications, Palo Alto Networks
91%
The power of visualization that AR brings is creating new expectations from customers that brands will need to meet. @CathyHackl
Cathy Hackl
Shama Hyder
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Put Your Customers at the Center of the Buying Universe
Cathy Hackl
Ann Handley
&
Expand Content to Meet Evolving Expectations
The first part of delivering an extraordinary client experience is to not treat B2B clients any differently than you would B2C customers. They aren’t just comparing you to your competitors or industry; their expectations are higher across the board, and you have to rise to meet those expectations.
The second part of creating a memorable customer experience is to customize that experience as much as possible—and that personalization stems from empathy. Not every client has the same challenge. One client may be looking to attract talent while another might be seriously contemplating how to better retain their customers. You have to have empathy for these challenges as you help clients navigate and implement the right solutions.
At Zen Media, we truly believe in walking our talk. Our value statement is MESH—mastery, empathy, stewardship, and honor—so we try to align everything we do with those principles.
3.
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At Palo Alto Networks, our mission is to partner with our customers to ensure that they can protect their businesses from the cyberthreats that are becoming so prevalent in this digital age. While we of course want to engage new leads and highlight key messaging, it's also important for our customers to know that we're there for them throughout their journey.
Customers want to know that we're an authority in the security space and that they can trust our products to secure their most valuable assets. This requires deeper touchpoints with our customers to ensure that we're not just telling them what problems we solve, but also how to use our products in the best way to protect their environments.
Reaching people in the right place, at the right time, is essential. At every point of interaction with our brands, customers demand quality and congruence. Therefore, we need to anticipate where they’ll be, how they’ll feel, and what they’ll be looking for at each step of their journeys. Data analysis makes this possible. Sophisticated strategy makes it practical.
The bar has been set. Delivering compelling, relevant, and memorable customer experiences is the present and future of doing business. And that means it’s time to transform your brand into an experience business with CXM.
Data is the foundation, enabling you to unlock insights to personalize at scale. An adaptable tactical mix, plus the right method and timing of delivery, is the key to keeping pace with your customers’ evolving expectations. And differentiation is your golden opportunity to make a lasting impact on your customers (and your competition).
Make experience your business. For now, your customers are waiting . . .
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Ian Gertler
Attract: Understand how customers discover new solutions, and create relevant marketing in all the channels they use.
8%
2
Cynthia Johnson
Data & Personalization
Unique Differentiation
Ian Gertler
1.
Customer expectations in B2B are evolving and increasingly mirroring B2C expectations. The key to unlocking a personalized and exceptional experience is data and analytics. By ingesting and analyzing all of the data that we have at Dun & Bradstreet, we're able to understand, predict, and anticipate customer needs. This allows us to approach our customers with a solution that may fit a current or future need before they even realize that the need exists.
And even though we are a B2B business, we focus on understanding current and future needs at the company, location, and individual level. This holistic view enables us to fully customize and personalize interactions across the customer journey—from a website experience to email content to a product alert to an executive workshop. By harnessing the power of our data and analytics to deliver a tailored customer experience, we have successfully improved loyalty and deepened relationships.
of companies believe they deliver a superior experience.
Rachel Richter
It just happened to me. I sent out a recent monthly newsletter to tens of thousands of people who are definitely not named "[FNAME]". While I'm sure this happens to the best of us, interestingly, first and last names are not as important as other data in order to activate true and effective personalization.
In order to personalize, we need to understand data such as buyer intent, funnel stage, preferred content types, and channels of consumption. Once you know this (assuming you have the content to deliver on buyer needs) personalization can move beyond "Hey [FNAME].”
Vice President, Analytics, Insights & Operations, Dun & Bradstreet
Michael Brenner
A little empathy and a lot of data can go a long way when it comes to providing customers what they need in order to trust and buy. The three fundamental steps of the buyer experience in which brands should work to build trust are:
TACTICS
Capture Feedback to Improve the Customer Experience
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Creating a holistic and comprehensive customer experience requires a full understanding of where your customers could first be introduced to your brand, the unique pathways that could be possible, and the reasons why a customer found your brand.
Marketers need to use this information to create a seamless multi-touch experience that guides customers or potential customers to what they are looking for, without added steps that can deter or confuse them.
We need to answer their questions before they ask. This is what makes for a sophisticated and effective customer experience. It's not about telling the customer how to feel, it's about informing them, guiding them to their own conclusions, and recognizing their emotions.
Scott Monty
Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
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Co-Founder & CEO, Bell + Ivy
Build Trust in Each Phase of the Buyer Experience
In order to personalize the customer experience, we need to understand data such as buyer intent, funnel stage, preferred content types, and channels of consumption. @BrennerMichael
Use Deeper Touchpoints to Better Partner with Customers
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CEO, TopRank Marketing
DIFFERENTIATION
DATA
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Vice President, Analytics, Insights & Operations, Dun & Bradstreet
With augmented reality, we’re moving away from telling customers about a product, and actually showing them how that product looks in their home, or how it looks on them.
The power of visualization that AR brings is creating new expectations from customers that brands will need to meet. Two-dimensional, flat content is just no longer enough when content is expanding.
Using AR now, when it's still early enough in the expansion of content, is a great way for brands to differentiate themselves from others and give customers a better and more personalized way of accessing their products and services. Younger consumers are a lot more open to immersive experiences and will soon grow accustomed to expecting them from brands.
Futurist, You Are Here Labs
Customer experience (CX) has always been important, but now it’s a leading priority among decision-makers. In fact, a Walker study predicts that by 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
The goal now is to deliver immersive, frictionless, seamless, and personalized experiences, where the customer is sitting at the center of the buying universe. But this must be reinforced by agile cross-organizational collaboration and a real-time holistic view of customers via insights from aggregated data across all touchpoints—including AI, IoT, mobile, and beyond.
Customer relationship management is no longer enough. Organizations must shift from fragmented to more connected approaches given the increasing number of platforms, channels, partnerships, interactions, and influences. And this is why customer experience management (CXM) will become a necessary foundation going forward to deliver valuable, rewarding, and unique customer experiences.
Futurist, You Are Here Labs
How Top Brands & Experts Are Transforming CXM
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A little empathy and a lot of data can go a long way when it comes to providing customers what they need in order to trust and buy. @leeodden
Shama Hyder
of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognize, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations.
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Cynthia Johnson
Michael Brenner
CEO, Marketing Insider Group
Founder & Managing Director, Marketing Eye
"Customer empathy" gets tossed around a lot in marketing. But it’s really about aligning yourself with your customer’s point-of-view. @MarketingProfs
Data-informed insights about customer preferences around information discovery, consumption, and engagement are critical for providing the most relevant and meaningful experience.
Principal, Scott Monty Strategies
Lee Odden
Despite all of the talk about "customer-centricity," brands are still inwardly focused, by and large. It's understandable: brand managers live and breathe the brands they represent, and have an outsized enthusiasm for them. This isn't necessarily a bad thing—we need brand managers to believe in what they represent.
But unless you're Starbucks, people generally don't wake up thinking about your brand. They have other priorities: kids to get to get to school, assignments that are due, conference calls, doctor's appointments, and a thousand other things. Considering how you fit into a consumer's life is a much more important part of the experience creation than any other part of it.
The more brands that approach their experiences by truly understanding their customers and seeing the world through their perspectives, the better off we'll all be.
PERSONALIZATION
Laralyn Melvin
UNIQUE
Rachel Richter
Seek the Right Customer Data for Personalization
Founder & Managing Director, Marketing Eye
&
Laralyn Melvin
Remove Obstacles & Recognize Emotions for a Seamless Experience
Not every client has the same challenge. You have to have empathy to help clients navigate and implement the right solutions. @Shama
Principal, Scott Monty Strategies
Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
Ann Handley
Founder & CEO, Zen Media
Customer feedback can make or break a brand if it isn’t dealt with effectively. With new technologies that allow consumer brands to adapt faster, interact more intuitively, and directly give customers the power to influence brand and customer experience outcomes, the ability to keep customers loyal is much easier than ever before.
Capturing feedback—whether it's through voice communications, facial recognition technologies, changes in purchase behavior, or surveys—requires fast methodologies to understand it, analyze it, and take action where required. Technology and data science is by far the most relevant way to directly improve customer experiences through feedback, and taking action will help brands understand their customers better and create long-lasting loyalty. A human touch also helps!
Sources
95%
Customers want to know that your brand is an authority and that they can trust your products to secure their most valuable assets. @PaloAltoNtwks
Employ Empathy and Stewardship for On Point Personalization
80%
The key to unlocking a personalized and exceptional experience is data and analytics. @RachelJRichter
Reshape the Customer Experience. Transform Your Business.
Touchpoints
Marketers need to answer their customers' questions before they're even asked. This is what makes for a sophisticated and effective customer experience. @CynthiaLIVE
2.
of their customers agree.
1
Customize for Evolving Customer Expectations
Convert: Provide compelling triggers to action to help buyers understand what the solution is, how it matters to them, and what to do next.
Market Like a 3-Star Michelin Restaurant
Founder & CEO,
Symplegades Inc.
3
Founder & CEO,
Symplegades Inc.
Tactics & Touchpoints
