Customer Experience Simplified

Posted: 17 Oct 2016 07:06 AM PDT

I am a firm believer that we humans have a penchant for making (something) more complicated than necessary, a.k.a. overcomplicating everything. And we marketers take it to a whole new level.

However, as much as we overcomplicate things, there is no overstating the importance of providing the best customer experience possible each time, every time and across all channels. Here's some obligatory stats to back this up.

According to Gartner, 89% of all businesses will compete on customer experience this year.
Another 89% believe customer experience will be their main differentiator by 2017.
Improved experience can grow revenue by five to 10 percent—and cost 15 to 20 percent less—over a span of three years.
97% of global consumers cite customer service as important in their brand choice and loyalty.
Three out of four people have spent more with a company because of a history of positive experiences.

It's a Cross Channel World

As I mentioned earlier it is important to provide the best customer experience across all channels. And make no mistakes about it, ours is a cross channel world with two-thirds of all shoppers regularly using more than one channel to make purchases. And lest you think this applies to B2C only, 76% of B2B buyers use three or more channels before making a purchase.

The opportunities for engagement and ROI in cross channel orchestration are obvious, but only 5% of marketers say they are “very much set up to effectively orchestrate cross channel marketing activities" according to Econsultancy.

How can we understand this disparity?

Let’s start with technology. There are nearly 4,000 vendors in the digital marketing space. The challenge is not that the tools simply aren’t available. It’s easy to batch and blast a broadcast message to email, social, and mobile audiences. But marketers struggle with personalizing experiences for customers as they meander along their own individual, unstructured paths that cross channels—and leave behavioral data and ID numbers strewn into silos across the marketing department.

What's Broken Can Be Fixed

The bad news is the customer experience is broken because the marketing experience is broken. The good news it can be fixed by using the right technology; the right platform. A platform that, for example, provides robust third-party data to help you know your customers across every channel and a single customer identity that unites behaviors across all channels into one comprehensive profile.

Can your current technology do this?

Before you answer, download Customer Experience Simplified: Deliver the Experience Your Customers Want and discover discover how to provide customer experiences that are managed as carefully as the product, the price, and the promotion of the marketing mix.