Organizations skillfully managing the entire customer experience — in a world where it’s overtaking product and price as the key brand differentiator — reap enormous rewards. Listen in on how customer-service innovations from such companies as Apple and Whole Foods are nailing it!
Missed it? Access this VB Live event on demand right here.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1974296,"post_type":"vblive","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"marketing,","session":"A"}']“Having a great product alone doesn’t always translate into a market win with customers,” says Brian Boroff, head of customer success and user operations at Asana, the popular work-tracking app that’s landed a devoted following with companies such as Intel and Uber. “You need to have the supporting pieces and a strong experience outlined and actualized for a customer to actually succeed.”
Boroff, along with Nimble CEO/founder Jon Ferrara and Stewart Rogers, VentureBeat’s director of marketing technology, sat down to talk about how companies unavoidably define themselves in the marketplace through each and every interaction with the customer — and how to make those experiences as empowering and useful as the product itself.
“We don’t advertise at all,” Ferrara says. “All we do is inspire and educate our customers on a daily basis.” The result is 80,000 unique visitors a month on Nimble’s site, and over 100K individual subscribers and 10K company subscribers to its sales and marketing customer relationship management platform.
“It’s not enough for customer service to be doing the servicing, or for your sales people doing the selling, or marketing doing the marketing,” he continues. “You need to empower all of your team members to inspire and educate your prospects and customers and, ideally, their influencers.”
“And,” Ferrara adds, “if you can align the promises you make to the experiences you deliver, you can build a gold mine.”
That’s why transparency is a core company value at Asana, says Boroff. “From how product is designed to how the customer team interacts with customers, there’s a really clear strategy as a company to map back to all those north stars,” he says. “There’s a consistent tone and fit across all the pieces of experience — marketing, sales, and customer success.”
Rogers offers Whole Foods’ on-the-ground strategy as another successful example of company-wide customer connection. Whole Foods has 4 million followers on its corporate Twitter account and 2 million likes on its Facebook page. But the retailer also runs 300 local Twitter pages and 250 local Facebook pages to directly connect to the customers in their respective communities, consistently building its brand as a top-to-bottom conscientious, responsive and trusted resource — and keeping its brand front of mind.
IBM has also tapped into the top-to-bottom customer connection strategy. Its IBM Social Business account aggregates inspiring and engaging content from IBM team members around the world that not only builds team member identity and brand, but cements IBM as a social business thought leader.
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“Today your customers have made up to 60 percent of their journey of sales and marketing analysis before they ever look at your sales or marketing website or products,” Ferrara says. “So what you need to do to be top of mind with your customers when they’re making buying decisions is inspire and educate them and become their trusted advisor.”
But, Boroff adds, scale can be tricky. You also have to build in the ability to follow a common style guide, maintain crystal-clear communication, and, even when you’re responding quickly, ensure it is accurately in the image of the brand.
In the end, overcoming the complexity is key to enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and even greater employee fulfillment when they’re integral to the core, customer-focused vision of the company.
“It boils down to something as simple as this,” Ferrara says. “A company brand is built on the promises it makes and the experiences that it delivers.”
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To learn more about how to make your customer experiences shine, check out the free hour-long VB Live event on demand now!
In this webinar you’ll:
- Understand what your customer wants and needs throughout the product lifecycle
- Learn strategies for rethinking the role of customer service within the organization
- Create a new process for empowering employees to retain a top-tier customer experience
- Identify potential obstacles that may be causing customer attrition
Speakers:
- Brian Boroff, Head of Customer Success and User Operations, Asana
- Jon Ferrara, CEO/Founder, Nimble
- Stewart Rogers, Director Marketing Technology, VentureBeat
Moderator:
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- Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat
This webinar is sponsored by Desk.com.