How Can Brands Redefine the ‘Culture of Customer Experience’?

All companies are struggling to define their internal “culture.” But for brands, the bigger challenge during the pandemic is how to redefine the culture of customer experience (CX) amid “at-home digital fatigue.” For Leah Pope, CMO of customer data platform ActionIQ, the answers need to start with brands’ marketing decision-makers. There has always been a tug-of-war between the chief technologists and information officers when it comes to personalization programs in efforts like lead generation. But directing the “cultural” elements of these kinds of marketing need to be led by the CMO. Naturally, the conversation doesn't end there. And as Pope hastened to note, CMOs need to reflect the persona of the "marketing technologist" to substantively create a CX culture that drives measurable results. Adweek: How is ActionIQ defining “customer experience” when it comes to your own clients? How does a CX-centric culture drive specific outcomes, like leads? Leah Pope, CMO, ActionIQ: Our go-to-market strategy focuses on creating relationships and bonds with customers that provide them greater voice in our product development and road map—ultimately, leading to greater satisfaction among our clients. We have also changed the way we approach sales, pipeline development and demand generation. From product-first to customer-first, uncovering buyers’ pain points, and ensuring that brands’ needs line up with our product capabilities. With strong alignment and visibility across all channels and teams, we are driving more consistent and personalized messaging and campaigns to drive our own growth, including greater inbound demand [and] conversion rates from leads to opportunities. Looking at Gartner's finding that 25% of organizations will merge sales, marketing and services functions into one single "experience" function by 2023, have you seen an uptick of CMOs and marketers being the client point-of-contact rather than CTOs or CIOs? If so, where do those other functions fit into the mix? We’ve really seen the “merging” of the sales, marketing and services functions happen in real time over the last several years—watching as ActionIQ operationalizes customer data assets throughout every facet of even our largest clients’ business. It’s not uncommon that leaders from marketing, IT and sales organizations are all stakeholders in the process of onboarding ActionIQ and activating against it. We are seeing CMOs and marketers taking on more of a leadership role in driving the transformation, in close alignment with these stakeholders. It’s not as simple as saying that all of CX is “shifting over to the marketer,” though, because the marketer is changing, too. A great example of this is the rise of the “marketing technologist,” a role that can liaise effectively with IT groups, but is focused on deploying technology and processes to improve customer experience and enhance revenue streams. Great marketing technologists can even uncover areas in a business that are typically cost centers and turn them into revenue drivers: Think personalizing call center experiences or improving call matching rates. At the same time, the CTO and CIO are able to operationalize key assets for those who need to drive CX impact—without relying on time-intensive, manual processes to do so. How has the death of the cookie influenced the need for marketing leaders to take on oversight of CX? Because anonymous personalization is becoming challenging—if not downright illusive—it has caused a shift for marketers. Previously, marketers focused heavily on acquisition. Now, there is a heavier focus on retention—and retention requires a CX-centered approach. Each moment is an opportunity to ensure a brand-customer value exchange provides enough motivation for a customer to want to share their information. If the brand is able to deliver on the value exchange, they’ll have the data they need to facilitate better CX across all future interaction points—marketing, sales, commerce and service. How can a customer data platform (CDP) help a brand marketer shift from an ROI perspective to a “return on experience” one? What are the benefits in terms of performance? In the last economic recession in 2008, companies that prioritized customer experience realized three times the shareholder returns, compared to the companies that did not. Instead of brands organizing their employees by channel—which silos plans, campaigns and experiences inside their individual channels—a CDP allows an organization to plan experiences holistically across touchpoints. This puts customers’ desires at the forefront of what message gets communicated. This results in less over-contacting (too much), blind-contacting (guessing) and inappropriate contacting (thinking you know what to say, but getting it wrong because of incomplete data). The byproduct is not just greater ROI—but also greater retention. And with the deprecation of third-party cookies and the ensuing rise in CAC [customer acquisition cost], retention is rapidly growing in importance. An AI-Powered Approach Is Key to Customer Experience Management