By Raviteja Dodda
There are definitive smoke signals when a brand’s current martech stack needs to be upgraded. The alarm goes off when companies face recurring stumbles like inconsistent data among departments because of data silos and lack of personalisation because of a fast-expanding customer community. In addition, this will further get harder with the discontinuation of third-party cookies.
The last decade saw the rise and use of technology-based tools like customer relationship platforms (CRMs) and customer data platforms (CDPs) to build and manage effective customer relationships. While these platforms/tools did well sometime back, with peaking demands, brands need something bigger at the helm – customer engagement platform (CEP).
Today, a CEP can help brands build a holistic and individual view of their customers and at the same time enable them to engage with them at scale.
Six vital signs that your martech is breaking down
Before deciding on which CEP is the best fit for the brand, it’s important to analyse the shortcomings or the pain points that you want to solve with the CEP. Is it data silos? Is it the number of resources?
Here are the six vital signs that indicate that it’s time to switch over to a new engagement platform.
- Lack of actionable insights: Inability to get real-time customer and campaign data.
To create customer experiences that make an impact, organisations need to keep data-driven decision-making at the core of customer approach. Although CRMs and CDPs collect data from multiple sources in real-time and unify them into customer profiles, they inherently depend on other analytics-based tools to convert data into actionable insights.
When the customer relationship process becomes long-drawn or ineffective, it’s time to look at a platform that not only collects data, but also transforms disparate data sets into customer-centric engagement.
- Data silos and disconnect: Inability to unify and map customer profiles and journeys.
Data silos commonly occur in evolving and large companies because separate business units operate independently and have individual goals and budgets. In the absence of a well-planned data management strategy, the outcome is data silos and disconnect. Incomplete data sets, inconsistent and duplicate data lead to dissociation among units threatening not only customer relationship but also data security and compliance issues.
A switch to an advanced platform enables a seamless end-to-end value chain from data integration to journey orchestration.
- Ineffective personalisation: Inability to personalise customer experience across channels
Personalisation goes beyond getting customers’ first name or location right. It is getting an optimised, real-time view of each customer and meeting their needs at appropriate moments.
Brands have to be sensitive to evolving customer needs and also learning from their changing behaviors and circumstances. So, at every step of the customer relationship process and throughout the lifecycle, a brand has to ensure personalisation. This is all about knowing their likes and dislikes, the language they speak, the device they use and channels they prefer for communication, ensuring they get the best possible experience.
Brands can switch to an advanced tool that comprehends how all these elements interact with each other in real-time and provide exactly what users need at any given moment and do so in real time.
- Over-reliance on third party data: Decline of third party cookies rendering personalisation extremely difficult
Many marketers rely on third-party data to transfer buyer behaviour information to ad campaigns. According to a recent survey, 41% of marketers saw the loss of third-party cookies to be their biggest challenge in future. The demise of the cookie will impact digital marketing processes completely leading to adoption of new technologies in their place. Alternate and advanced tools that operate sans third party cookies have already hit the market enabling personalisation in branding and advertising.
Investing in a state-of-the-art CEP helps brands identify and engage with their target audience even in the absence of third party cookies.
5. Questionable customer satisfaction: Low satisfaction scores, increasing complaint volume and negative responses to surveys.
There are multiple reasons why personalisation fails leading to low customer satisfaction levels. When brands treat personalisation as an ad hoc solution to customer issues instead of making it a standard procedure, it leads to irrelevant content and messaging resulting in customer frustration and loss of customer trust. A wrong technology stack and the complexity of data results in complaints and negative reviews.
An insights-led unified CEP is the ideal platform that irons out customer satisfaction issues and fills all gaps to make the engagement process smooth and seamless resulting in customer delight.
6. Untapped selling and potential opportunities: Manual tracking and nurturing of leads resulting in loss of sales opportunities
There’s a treasure trove of customer data out there for brands to study and learn from. Brands can use this to develop lead nurturing; a powerful strategy that builds relationships with potential customers. It focuses on engaging leads through different channels and proactively providing valuable information to increase conversions.
Automating lead nurturing with a smart CEP allows brands to track lead engagements systematically and send out suitable communication at suitable times.
With evolving needs, brands need an AI-backed solution like an insights-led CEP that integrates and unifies valuable customer data from various channels and touchpoints to create a single customer view.
This will yield a consolidated center of customers’ behaviours, preferences and contexts, bringing in customer delight and ultimately converting them into a loyalist for the brand.
The author is CEO and co-founder of MoEngage