Be honest – how many applications, solutions, and platforms does your marketing team use to engage with customers? Is your marketing tech stack a stack, or a bunch of squiggly lines? What if there were a magical unicorn to help you pull together your tech, and drive better engagement, personalization, and customer experience? (There is.)
These two statements are fundamentally contradictory.
Customer centricity is the act of putting your customers at the heart of everything an organization does. To be customer-centric, brands should consider a customer data platform - here’s why.
It’s clear that good customer experiences often depend on a consolidated technology stack. When you consolidate your marketing technology, you can optimize your customer experience, customer engagement, and CX.
Customers today use countless channels to engage with your brand. At first, you may see multiple channels for customer engagement as an opportunity. More channels for interaction mean more sales, right? Wrong.
The more complex your engagement channels grow, the harder it is to have meaningful and impactful interactions with your customers.
Today’s consumers are engaged and expect more from their experiences with your brand. With such high expectations, a single bad experience can spoil your image forever, so you have very few chances to really nail your engagements. And it’s likely that your technology stack is getting in the way.
Learn how an experience management solution collects customer feedback and translates this feedback into powerful metrics for the business.
It’s difficult to create engagements that customers want across an infinitely increasing expanse of channels and software solutions.
What if you want to send your loyal customers a coupon for a product that they regularly buy? Unless your software for e-mailing promotions to customers can easily pull data on purchase histories from your customer database, you won’t be sending personalized offers to anyone.
Companies are bringing on more and more customer experience solutions at an alarming rate. This assessment isn’t meant to devalue the worth of the customer experience – in fact, your business needs great customer experiences now more than ever.
But businesses are treating the latest in customer experience technology as a cure-all for an ailing technology strategy.
Many companies pour their energy into developing mobile apps, after all mobile is the “new black”. And maybe you’re guilty of this?
But new customers often wait to download a brand’s app until after they have already had several experiences with the brand. Why would a new customer download an app for a coffee shop before they know if they even like the coffee?
After researching online, 90% of consumers still buy in-store, but most companies only measure activity online. Learn how to measure digital activities and optimize your integrated marketing plan by knowing which activities are driving value and which aren’t.
You need to begin making smart, strategic decisions that prioritize the customer experience. You can’t do that without a consolidated technology stack for marketing tailored to the customer experience.
Let’s look at some of your other business challenges.Your brand is likely trying to adapt to customers who make decisions faster. Maybe you’re using your brick-and-mortar stores and your associates in them to fulfill online orders for in-store pickup. You’re making this happen with fewer resources that are expected to do more, such as your IT experts working hard to fulfill your digitalization goals by breaking down technology and data silos.
On top of that, there’s increased pressure on profit and revenue, as well as more competition. Perhaps you’re using heavy discounting to retain customers and trying to save money wherever you can. Many businesses are finding new savings by consolidating their existing technologies and eliminating those they don’t need. It’s likely you have heard some of your own peers and fellow marketing leaders say they only use a fraction of their marketing stack’s potential.
Not only does consolidation save you money, but it also helps you focus on your goal of prioritizing customer centricity, retention, loyalty, and data strategies.
So, what does it mean to consolidate your tech stack, and how are your peers consolidating their tech for marketing and the customer experience?
Technology consolidation starts with a robust technology platform that can connect disparate software solutions and applications.
Think of it as a foundation for creating unified customer experiences through the connection of your software, channels, and data. This platform should be able to create one data source for all your engagement channels. Without this, your business will continue to be stuck with ineffective, stand-alone customer loyalty programs that can’t take advantage of all the data insights you’ve gathered.
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