Is customer experience cloud the future of Marketing?

Any great marketer is aware that there is a major shift going on, and that next to all big campaigns, big ideas and tools, traditional marketing silos offered by cloud companies, aren’t quite enough to answer to a customer-centric approach.

But it’s up to cloud companies to explore further what’s the core thing that is needed for outgrowing this problem.

Let’s face it, with prevalence of mobile computing, bandwidth and big data, customers today are demanding more than ever – they have enormous resources at their fingertips regardless of where they may be in the world. They’re specific about what kind of product they want, it’s price and they want overall great purchase experience.

In short – they’re empowered and changing the business world.

Today’s buyers are completely self-driven – they’re 60% down their journey before they engage with a brand or salesperson.

So, if it’s all about experience, isn’t the next best thing to do focusing all the technology around every customer touchpoint (advertisement, welcome letters, retail interaction, customer support…), and thus delivering awesome unified brand, product and service experiences? Because touchpoints are specific and precise.

Yes this is as challenging as it is important, but this is a well connected retail world so it can be done by using network’s strength.

Note: Social media is just a tool, not a strategy.

Brand engagement is a two-way street, and customer involvement isn’t going to happen if a company doesn’t have any marketing strategy and uses social media just to post about brand.

This does not mean that a company shouldn’t embrace social. It’s in company’s interest to use latest and greatest technology, and effective use of social media channels can be achieved with use of social media management solutions. This way a company can:

• Understand who their customers really are
• Listen to what they have to say about company’s service, brand, product
• Achieve better engagement with customers
• Enrich product development by integrating customer feedback
• and finally analyze the results of interactions and improve positive user experience.

Failing a way to success

Luckily, when experimenting with social media, testing and learning from failures are much more agile than they were with traditional media, and execution costs are almost insignificant. Therefore failures lead to more accurate determination of what campaign actually make impact and which ones should be improved or left behind.

Experience Cloud

The core idea of experience cloud is that the touchpoints are actually customer-focused, and customer experience is more personalized. Now, the social media management software companies are improving the “experience process” with a new concept of an “experience cloud.” It is supposed to help brands by providing them with optimized experience and the ability to identify and communicate with customers, regardless of the channel where customer touch points are being made.

Also it will prevent distancing from customer when communication between different marketing departments fails, or when marketing departments fail to communicate with customers.

Customer experience cloud means moving beyond performance marketing (clicks, leads etc.), and supporting customer’s logical behavior, giving them all the information needed to make a decision.

Sprinklr launched Experience Cloud ^TM and its essence is that it allows unified experience management across 23 different channels. The point is once again in the fact that customers demand that a company has put effort in getting to know and identify them, as well as to deliver the same treatment whether the interaction is realized through social media, emails, phone calls or chats.

Timing is everything

Another thing that customers highly appreciate is how quickly a brand can respond and provide them with information they’re looking for. If it takes quite a time for them to find what they’re looking for, they may simply be moving forward to company’s competitors.

This is also where brands can benefit from experience cloud, since the idea of just one central hub should allow improvement of response time.

Evolution of experience is expeditious so creating a customer-focused vision for the future of marketing strategies can help brands stay ahead, and from today’s perspective experience cloud seems like an ideal place for this to happen.