It is no secret that we are living in an era of increased complexity. That mantra is batted about constantly. But what are organizations actually doing to meet the new levels of service that effective customer engagement now demands? How has the rapid shift towards universal digital connectivity changed the way marketers are thinking about the new customer experience?
As more organizations are starting to ask these questions, Pegasystems is looking to provide the answers. As a developer of strategic CRM applications, Pega has helped some of the largest companies in the world deal with these issues.
Robert Tas, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Pegasystems, recently spoke to Loyaty360 regarding his perspective on the state of the industry and what businesses need to do going forward.
How has Pega evolved over the recent years and how did this change arise?
We began as a business process company and we were very successful at that. But then we began to focus heavily on customer experience. The business problems we were solving at major corporations like JP Morgan, Bank of America, United Health Care, and others were helping them connect the front end of the customer experience to the back end. Very naturally we started to do more and more in that area, and we started to build customer service and sales and onboarding applications.
Pega was able to take its years of experience on the workflow and rules side of software, incorporate it into customer-facing applications and leverage that with intelligent CRM.
How do you see the customer engagement landscape changing today?
The world is changing incredibly fast with customer expectations and with customer engagement. It is being re-defined every day. The digital natives have really pushed the envelope and really forced the traditional large enterprise companies to rethink how they are using digital to engage their customers.
Real-time marketing is a really important element. You can no longer afford to let an experience not resolve itself. You have to be able to manage that customer experience end-to-end and be able to deliver consistent, repeatable, and cost effective resolutions.
What do marketers need to do today to be successful in such a dynamic market?
Businesses need to offer real omni-channel customer engagement solutions now. CRM is not vanilla anymore and CMOs need to change and move fast. The 
experience of forcing customers to wait - to deny instant gratification - is no longer acceptable. This also applies to the B2B world with banking and telecommunications companies. That is the bar we all now need to meet.
And you see that as a big break from the customer engagement practices of the past?
Absolutely. We are living in an era of increased complexity. Businesses need to be able to manage the end-to-end customer experience and do so without hesitation.
For example, most credit cards bind users to the rules of the card or the specific vendor they are tied to when it comes to using points. Anyone who has tried to use points to purchase airline tickets has experienced that. And only a few credit cards have done the API work to allow customers to use points to pay for Amazon purchases. Customers are looking for and expecting more flexibility, but most companies continue to struggle with implementing those integrations as quickly as customers want them.
Brands need to be able to deliver on their promises and in a timely fashion. And they also must be able to manage that across the globe and across multiple product and business lines. Organizations now all need a robust analytics team, a robust content team, and a robust digital team. But most traditional marketers are still in the change process phase. They are trying to figure out how to be real-time marketers.
Historically, if a company wanted to change a resolution process or a shipping process, or some other customer touch point, those changes would go to IT. And IT would say, “we’ll get back to you in 12 to 24 months.” That is no longer acceptable.
We are on entirely new ground.
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.