The new customer relationship is here

The rela­tion­ship between cus­tomers and brands has trans­formed in recent years, and not only how they inter­act across dif­fer­ent chan­nels but also the nature of their rela­tion­ship. Where­as pre­vi­ous­ly that rela­tion­ship was almost entire­ly defined by how well com­pa­nies met the needs of their cus­tomers, now it is far more com­plex and requires a care­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy. In Salesforce’s 2021 State of Mar­ket­ing report, 90% of mar­ket­ing lead­ers glob­al­ly said the pan­dem­ic has changed their dig­i­tal engage­ment strat­e­gy.

Plain­ly, cus­tomers have grown to expect more from brands in the dig­i­tal age. In anoth­er recent report by Sales­force, State of the Con­nect­ed Cus­tomer, 56% of con­sumers said they have re-eval­u­at­ed the soci­etal role of com­pa­nies. It is no longer enough to be good at a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct or ser­vice. Brands now need to stand for some­thing larg­er; a cause that is impor­tant to the wider com­mu­ni­ty they serve. Be it cli­mate change, diver­si­ty, giv­ing back to good caus­es, eth­i­cal sup­ply chains or bring­ing more social jus­tice to the world, peo­ple expect com­pa­nies to align with their per­son­al val­ues.

Mean­while, with the rise of ecom­merce, brands have to engage with more rel­e­van­cy and human­i­ty, and tell a con­sis­tent sto­ry across touch­points. Those who show up con­sis­tent­ly in all cus­tomer inter­ac­tions grow stronger rela­tion­ships, and busi­ness growth becomes a by-prod­uct of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence done well. This is the fron­tier of a new kind of loy­al­ty that can­not be achieved with points on a plas­tic card or dis­count codes. In a switch-dri­ven mar­ket­place with unlim­it­ed choice, cus­tomers only return if they feel seen, heard and treat­ed as a human being.

“To hit long-term growth goals, lead­ers have to look inwards, ask­ing uncom­fort­able ques­tions such as do their cur­rent ways of work­ing and organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture sup­port a cus­tomer-cen­tric cul­ture?” says Jo Pet­tifer, vice-pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing, UK & Ire­land, at Sales­force. “As com­pa­nies embrace hybrid work mod­els in the post-pan­dem­ic age, they should be design­ing them around the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, lean­ing heav­i­ly on their core val­ues as they trans­form exter­nal­ly and inter­nal­ly to meet new imper­a­tives. It’s not a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion – it’s a dig­i­tal cus­tomer trans­for­ma­tion.”

Despite trust grow­ing more impor­tant than ever in a con­sumer-brand rela­tion­ship, 99% of cus­tomers believe com­pa­nies need to improve their trust­wor­thi­ness, accord­ing to Salesforce’s State of Con­nect­ed Cus­tomer report. Social media feeds have blurred the lines between friends and brands, with con­sumers now expect­ing the authen­tic­i­ty that they get in the for­mer with the lat­ter too.

Released ear­ly August, Salesforce’s State of Mar­ket­ing report revealed that the top tac­tics which high-per­form­ing mar­keters turn to are aimed at increased engage­ment: pre-pro­duced video, livestream video and influ­encer mar­ket­ing. Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with human­i­ty is a com­mon thread through all three.

Trust online, under­pinned by real-time, human­ised engage­ment, trans­lates direct­ly into sales. In the sec­ond quar­ter of 2020, traf­fic to dig­i­tal web­sites from social media refer­rals grew by a record 104% over the same quar­ter the pri­or year, and orders gen­er­at­ed by those refer­rals were up by the same fig­ure, accord­ing to Salesforce’s State of Com­merce report.

Of course, trust is about more than just com­mu­ni­cat­ing in an authen­tic way. When shop­ping online, there is an under­ly­ing expec­ta­tion for strong pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty, and con­sumers will only trust brands which col­lect and process their data with care and trans­paren­cy. If data is used to pro­vide a bet­ter expe­ri­ence, they’ll trust brands with more of it, and reward them with loy­al­ty.

“With so many inter­ac­tions mov­ing online, safe­ty and secu­ri­ty have become an inte­gral part of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence,” says Pet­tifer. “A secure, cus­tomer-cen­tric expe­ri­ence includes every­thing from the reli­a­bil­i­ty of your store­front at peak times to the secu­ri­ty of your pay­ments infra­struc­ture and the effi­cien­cy of your local ful­fill­ment cen­tre. Cus­tomers expect their data to be treat­ed with dili­gence, so it must now be part of your brand promise to be a good shep­herd while also hold­ing pay­ment proces­sors, secu­ri­ty providers and oth­ers to the high­est stan­dards.”

To improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence as a whole, lead­ers across all cus­tomer-fac­ing depart­ments must rethink how their teams work. Tech­nolo­gies like Slack allow cross-team work to flow with­out fric­tion, so cus­tomers feel heard and engaged through all touch­points, as opposed to the stop-start inter­ac­tions root­ed in siloed sys­tems and process­es. A cus­tomer-cen­tric cul­ture, empow­ered by tech­nol­o­gy, is the secret to brand trust, loy­al­ty and unlock­ing long-term growth.

Design­ing a great, trust­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence requires a shift in tech­nol­o­gy, cul­ture and organ­i­sa­tion­al align­ment. But siloed data and lega­cy tools, when com­bined with the rapid pace of change, from cus­tomer expec­ta­tions to employ­ee skill set require­ments, make build­ing rela­tion­ships and con­nect­ing every inter­ac­tion to a cohe­sive jour­ney extreme­ly chal­leng­ing.

Suc­cess­ful CMOs, at the fore­front of the dig­i­tal cus­tomer trans­for­ma­tion, tack­le these chal­lenges on both fronts. First­ly, they are high­ly invest­ed in help­ing their teams gain the nec­es­sary dig­i­tal skills to meet this new imper­a­tive. To lend a hand here, Sales­force has launched the Mar­keter Career Path, an on-demand, free online learn­ing plat­form offer­ing solu­tion-agnos­tic edu­ca­tion for those seek­ing to enter the mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion or advance their career.

Sec­ond­ly, CMOs are seek­ing to sim­pli­fy the tech stack, mak­ing it eas­i­er to use for all teams involved in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Win­ning cus­tomers’ trust is now a com­mon goal across the busi­ness, from mar­ket­ing, com­merce and ser­vice to IT, cyber secu­ri­ty and finance. Though it is no longer just down to mar­ket­ing, the mar­ket­ing team often leads the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion sup­port­ed by their cus­tomer data, sophis­ti­cat­ed per­son­al­i­sa­tion, inno­v­a­tive tools and ever-evolv­ing skill sets.

Salesforce’s cus­tomer data plat­form is built on the world’s most trust­ed and secure cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment sys­tem. Enabling all depart­ments to con­sol­i­date their data into one cus­tomer pro­file for each indi­vid­ual unlocks the oppor­tu­ni­ty for com­merce, mar­ket­ing and ser­vice teams to deliv­er real-time, human­ised dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions adher­ing to the high­est secu­ri­ty and trust. Thanks to its under­ly­ing inte­gra­tion, users of Salesforce’s solu­tion suite gain loy­al­ty through dig­i­tal excel­lence which so many oth­ers still seek to achieve.

“The brands that get ahead, by tru­ly know­ing their cus­tomers and human­is­ing every moment, will reap the long-stand­ing ben­e­fits of cus­tomer trust, loy­al­ty, increased life­time val­ue and, of course, busi­ness growth,” says Pet­tifer. “The mar­ket­ing lead­ers who are ready to take on the imme­di­ate chal­lenges, includ­ing cross-depart­men­tal align­ment around mean­ing­ful data and met­rics, exe­cut­ing the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy and upskilling, are tomorrow’s heroes.”

Long-term think­ing and a deci­sive move beyond van­i­ty met­rics is required to show­case not just imme­di­ate mar­ket­ing cam­paign effec­tive­ness but the brand val­ue and long-term strate­gic con­tri­bu­tion to busi­ness growth. Giv­en the com­plex­i­ty of the action required to meet cus­tomer expec­ta­tions, there is no room for play­ing safe. Brands that do will be left behind by the brands that focus on long-term rela­tion­ship build­ing, dri­ven by pur­pose and core val­ues.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it salesforce.com

Pro­mot­ed by Sales­force