4 Ways to Own Competitors in the CX Games: Part Two

In Part One of our blog: 4 Ways to Own Competitors in the CX Games, we took a look at the challenges and competitive advantages inherent in creating a winning Customer Experience (CX). We covered several practices you should implement in order to develop a smarter CX strategy, as well as the importance of providing a seamless and fully connected customer experience through integration technology. In Part Two, we continue our conversation with the final two steps critical to your CX game that will enable you to take home the gold for your business.

Step 3: Connect Your Departments

Whether your company culture is soaring high on the wings of collaboration or sorely lacking in teamwork thanks to a culture of information hoarding and silos, there is always room for improvement, so roll up your sleeves and start building results-driven cross-departmental relationships. Why? Because if your customers are getting one message from marketing, and another from sales, and yet another from customer service — all of you have failed. A great CX requires unity in messaging and continuity of the brand voice and image across all departments. In short, you need each other to reach the next level. Current research has found that:

• 80% of customers say the CX a company provides is as important as its products and services
• 57% of customers have stopped doing business with a company because they had a better CX with a competitor
• 67% of customers are willing to spend morefor a better quality CX

Just as the principle of “one-flunk, all flunk” applies to CX, so does its opposite. If you help the folks in sales and customer service win, your department wins, too. Thankfully, there are a host of collaborative tools you can deploy to get everyone rooting for the same team. For example, if you’ve had issues with sales people sending communications to customers featuring outdated brand messages and visuals (which creates a confusing and disjointed CX), try using a sales enablement tool that works with your CRM and allows sales to send the latest marketing-approved cross-channel campaigns with minimal effort. A big motivator in getting folks across departments to buy-in to the idea of a unified brand is the ability to track the performance of a campaign and equip fellow team members with content that is proven to shorten their sales cycle. Make sure that the collaborative tools you add to your stack give you a way to measure performance and share reports, so you can keep interdepartmental goodwill in a state of perpetual promotion.

Of course, as you develop content that moves the needle, you will want to regularly consult with the folks in customer service. Include them in the conversations you are having about buyer personas and customer expectations. You’ll find that when you join forces with them, they can help you quickly locate the most compelling customer success stories and keep you informed of changes in customer desires happening on the frontlines, from product satisfaction to loyalty programs and beyond.

Step 4: Connect Your Data

Perhaps the most important step you will take in creating a CX that is well-orchestrated is to connect all data sources throughout your company. Once everything is connected, you should clean, standardize and enrich your data. While there are countless articles touting the research of how high-quality data is directly correlated to lead quality, or how using clean and enriched data saves marketing and sales budgets by cutting down on bounce-backs, missed opportunities, etc.; it can easily be argued that the greatest promise of clean, validated and enriched data made available enterprise-wide is its impact on CX. When you have the right data, you are able to make smarter decisions about how you segment customers. This allows you to develop personalized marketing campaigns that produce the type of experiences that customers love and respond to with loyalty and increased spending.

• 79% of organizations that exceeded revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy
• 87% of customers report that personally relevant branded content positively influences how they feel about a company

When your data is connected and visible in real-time, you are better able to gain a holistic view of your customer, and identify issues and opportunities. A unified database also positions you to track customer interactions, and it equips the people in your company that they meet during their customer journey to build warm and trust-based personal relationships. When you can address a customer by the right name, talk to them about the goals associated with their position in their company, and suggest products and services to them based on their interests and place in the sales pipeline, you create in them a confidence that you know and care about them.

You’ve Got This

When it comes to a great CX, the most important key performance indicator is connection. You need to connect with your customers to build a CX strategy that enhances your relationship with them. You need to connect your martech stack and data sources in order to create a seamless digital experience. And you need to connect with the people in other departments and collaborate with them in order to present a united front. Connection is absolutely critical to your ability to create an ideal CX, and creating an ideal CX is critical to your company becoming and remaining a champion in the fiercely competitive B2B CX games.