The spotlight has finally shone on the chasm between the outstanding MarTech available today and then businesses’ ability to be able to utilise it. This means we too often fail to achieve our marketing objectives and our customers' needs in an increasing digital world.
Poignantly, the highlight in this article is that with the exceptional digital customer experience (CX) technology that exists today, why, in our greatest hour of need, are consumers not receiving better online experiences?
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As we say at Forward - the time has come for change.
This is not a new problem. The inability of businesses’ to adopt and adapt to new digital technology to meet consumer needs - existed long before Covid, even with the $bn's spent in this space. A small solace of our current climate, is that this dramatic increase in need for a better digital service - has finally put the spotlight on a long standing problem.
So, what prevents us from delivering the experiences we want for our customers online?
The silver bullet sales pitch vs. the reality
MarTech giants create brilliant digital CX technology, however, their own success and growth is measured in sales of this technology - not on their client’s business outcomes.
Businesses and organisations too often see the procurement of new technology as a silver bullet, rather than a new way of working. Procuring smart MarTech is great… but taking ownership of how it will work is key to realising success. No matter how great the sales pitch and those functionalities are -the important question is, does this meet the needs of our business and of our consumers…. and have we done the work ourselves to understand this?
Change Management
Lack of involvement and ownership
Decision making processes rarely involve / include the parties that are needed to make this new technology actually function and fulfill its potential. As a result, new systems and processes are introduced to teams who are unaware of how this helps the business, themselves.... or the customers they deal with daily - creating pressure, frustration and lack of adoption. The result? Despite possibly adopting the right technology - change fails to materialise.
Accountability and success measures
Have we fully understood how to measure the success of our new MarTech? Too often success measures are siloed to sales growth vs. other profitability benefits. Therefore, ‘knee-jerk’ decisions are made, which don’t correlate with what we’ve procured, or can achieve with our new system.. Too often we look to blame the tech or the team - with rudimentary data to back this up. As a result, we end up back on the hamster wheel to find that next silver bullet.
What can we do to change and deliver better digital customer experiences?
The year is 2021. Going to a website to procure a service should reflect that of walking into a store. For example, walking into an establishment for a considered purchase (healthcare, education or specialist retail to name a few) - we would not be satisfied with being handed a brochure... and a “meet us at the checkout when you’re ready” experience. However, web experiences are like this across our most needed sectors. The time has come for change.
We can turn this around, today and how?
Understand the problem we’re solving for our own business
Create the vision for the individual business… before looking at what is in the market. Rather than be reactive, organisations can be proactive, in understanding what their customers need digitally, how the business is set-up to deliver this today - across multiple teams and functions... and then create a clear criteria for what is required. Create and own the vision - rather than procure flashing lights.
Engage all stakeholders in the process, from procurement to deployment
When embedding new technology into our business, each functional team and team member needs to understand how this benefits the business and them. They will have to learn new processes, which will be frustrating and time-consuming. However, understanding that this leads to better outcomes for them and their customers - will result in adoption throughout friction.
Explore and procure technologies that work for you
The larger the organisation, a consolidated technology stack is typically more efficient. That being said - smarter, nimble and scalable technologies continue to emerge that are cost-effective and outcome driven…. and these have a crucial place to keep up with pace of change and more importantly the needs of consumers. Bottom line, we need to be open-minded and have capable of adding new CX technology to our core stack
Be bold and call for change
The problems outlined here, as mentioned, are not new. Leaders are needed - who are willing to challenge the status quo and tie governing and marketing objectives with your customers' needs - to form a 360 degree solution. This requires making bolder and most importantly - outcome driven decisions, not buying sales pitches.
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