MaritzCX provides customer experience software and research services to help companies improve customer retention and growth. Today, many brands are seeking outside help from such organizations because exponentially increasing data, rapidly evolving technologies, and changing customer expectations are making it hard for many companies to keep up.
Recently, Carine Clark, President and CEO of MaritzCX, spoke with Loyalty360 to discuss her perceptions of this dynamic marketing landscape, and what brands can do to capture success in this new environment.
Q: How has the marketing model changed with regards to data and customer feedback?
Clark: Before I joined MaritzCX, I was with Symantec as chief marketing officer. I was in the middle of a $5 billion enterprise business and $2 billion consumer business. And we spent millions of dollars with firms to collect information so we could gain insights. They would give me stacks of paperwork, and I had 11 VPs wading through all that. Tons of data, but getting to the insights was tough.
We would build all of our plans around a foundation of data research, which these bright people pulled together. Then we would build a product launch, and we would launch a product. If it didn’t do as well as we anticipated, we’d go back to the research team and it was just a vicious cycle.
It was too complex and I actually had too much information. I was drowning in data. And by the time it would get to me, it was old. It couldn’t map back to specific customers. It was just “here’s what we have.” And when I did have insights, I couldn’t get that information in the hands of every single person down in the organization who was touching the customers and making decisions. It was very frustrating. All the information I needed was inside the company, but I couldn’t get to it and make sense of it.
At MaritzCX, we know there is a better way to do this. You can use technology to move through and make sense of this information. Then you can put that information in the hands of the person who is talking to the customer, who is making decisions everyday. So that is a big change in market research.
Q: How does this changing landscape affect how brands manage customer engagement and build positive customer experiences?
Clark: The customer experience space goes hand-in-hand with loyalty. Because from the time a customer raises their hand, to the time they give you money, there are opportunities for companies to do a better job along the entire CX continuum. Brands can provide a differentiating experience that the customers will value, which will turn into loyalty.
And there are different degrees of loyalty. There are some companies that consumers are loyal to until they can find someone else to be loyal to. I am always surprised at how bad the customer experience can be for most of us and we just put up with it. This is changing. Customers will demand better experiences.
Q: What are the biggest challenges you see for brands that are trying to manage successful customer engagement programs?
Clark: I think a lot of brands don’t know where to start. They want to build a customer experience program because it’s trendy right now and the CEO is hot about it. We find that a lot of CMOs don’t know where to start. So we say it doesn’t matter where you start, you just need to start. You need to start having a discipline around all of your data.
A lot of brands and practitioners think they have to develop a George Jetson type invention, when all they really need to do is take a look at their current processes and change one step at a time to do something better.
Q: What are some things the most successful brands are doing to succeed in this space?
Clark: Companies are shortening the time between when a customer has an issue to when they get a response. If you have your eyes and ears in the right places, you can use technology instead of people, because it frees up money and time to do the core things that are really important to the business. We love having market research as part of our company because the deep insights are still important to have. You need to be able to translate it so it can help drive your business. We are the only company that marries the technology with the market research and expert services.
Not understanding every tool in your marketing toolbox is like being a surgeon who uses one scalpel for everything. Different tools specialize in doing different things really well. You need to have all the tools that are available. The only way to do that, in the most sophisticated way possible, is to use technology. Then spend more real time on the things that make you unique, on the essence of the brand that you care about.
It’s getting more and more complex and marketers have to be a jack-of-all-trades. It is no longer good enough to just be a great brand guy, or a digital media guy. You have to be great at all of it. The companies that can do that are doing very well.
About the Author: Mark Johnson
Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.