Customer Engagement

• On the main stage at SiriusDecisions Summit 2017, Lisa Nakano and Megan Heuer introduced the Customer Engagement Model
• The model has three main components: drivers, indicators and scores
• The essential drivers of customer engagement that affect post-sale business goals are growth, advocacy, retention and engagement

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is a controversial and provocative topic that’s impacting many areas of business
• AI-based solutions are being used to “read” and score business content and make improvement recommendations
• A comprehensive content strategy should apply such solutions to all enterprise content to support brand consistency and quality

• Peer-to-peer selling is changing the dynamics of how to leverage customer advocates
• Customer advocacy management and reference platform tools have become invaluable to increase productivity and reach
• Customer advocacy management technologies help support important areas such as demand creation, retention and reputation management

Successful business leaders drive their organizations to create experiences that continually meet or exceed customer expectations. At our CX Forum in Sydney on May 9, Forrester thought leaders and a world-class roster of industry innovators will come together to explore the current and emerging best practices for the design and delivery of exceptional customer experiences […]

It’s no secret, company websites are a key implement in the B2B marketer’s toolbox.  B2B marketers rate websites as the second most effective demand management tactic for building awareness (behind events) in our 2016 Business Technographics marketing survey. B2B companies also expect more than half of their customers to buy online within three years.[i] These trends […]

• Customer advocacy is an increasingly popular tactic family supporting account-based marketing
• Customer advocacy helps protect and accelerate opportunities
• Advocacy technologies help source, monitor and amplify advocacy impact

• Thirty percent of financial services marketing leaders stated in our survey that creating a customer experience function is their top priority over the next two years
• The customer experience function represents the customer’s perspective with all customer-facing functions in the organization
• The five foundational elements of a successful customer experience function are useful insights, aligned strategy, lifecycle mapping, measurement and communication

• A marketing automation platform (MAP), combined with process definition, should enable buyer engagement at scale
• Marketing must ensure that business value and ROI are achieved from the MAP investment
• MAPs must contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing programs

• The targeted and personalized nature of B2B marketing underscores the need for a localization strategy
• Consistency in a localized customer experience is critical for success, and it requires cross-organizational support
• Localization includes every touchpoint in the buyer and customer lifecycle – in addition to the ways data is gathered, classified and analyzed

• When it comes to fueling marketing efforts, B2B organizations typically focus their energy on prospects and top-of-funnel content
• Increasingly, however, organizations recognize they must balance content across the entire buyer lifecycle, which includes post-purchase stages
• B2C organizations, such as PuppySpot.com, provide interesting examples of lifecycle content done right

• A recent Silicon Valley roundtable on the topic of content revealed that many content professionals are dealing with similar challenges
• Top-of-mind content improvement drivers discussed included cross-functional collaboration, corporate narratives and content ROI
• Key recommendations included sparking collaboration through quick wins, crafting clear responsibility matrices and linking content measurement to impact

• Mapping the customer journey is a foundational capability to improving customer experience
• New tools and technologies are available to help customer engagement practitioners map the customer journey for better organizational alignment
• Consideration of customer roles continues to be key in the retain/actualize stage

• The terms “customer engagement,” “customer experience,” “customer success” and “customer marketing” are often used interchangeably
• Customer engagement is a holistic approach that drives organizations to fulfill the brand promise through thoughtful strategy
• Customer marketing team focuses on nurturing and growing customer engagement, loyalty and growth

• Sixty-five percent of B2B content goes unused; one of the biggest reasons is lack of findability
• Many B2B organizations are looking at new asset management solutions to address findability and content management issues
• As so many tech vendors offer asset management capabilities, organizations must recognize differences and distinctions to find the right solution

• The SiriusDecisions 2016 Customer Experience Study shows how customers feel about how B2B organizations are delivering customer experience right now
• In the retain/actualize phase of the customer lifecycle, specific focus is required to ensure that customers continue along the path to advocacy
• Consideration of customer roles continues to be key in the retain/actualize phase

• People join communities for specific reasons – do you know why your customers would join yours?
• Each customer’s needs for joining must be aligned with the online platform chosen to fulfill those needs
• Public and private platforms promise different things, and combining them may not achieve the expected result

• A recent SiriusDecisions customer experience study shows how customers feel about how B2B organizations are delivering customer experience right now
• For the develop/participate phase of the customer lifecycle, it’s important to understand how the roles of executives and users evolve once the newness of the offering wears off
• Consideration of customer roles continues to be important post-onboarding and into the develop/participate lifecycle stage

• Accurate account and contact insights (that are acted upon) are required for ABM success; companies must use internal and external resources to gather/append
• Account-based display advertising and retargeting show promise – but practitioners are demanding more from vendors as the category matures
• Personalization and relevance across tactics ensures an account-based approach is taken and it’s not just marketing to a target group of accounts

• Digital transformation fails to produce results when the right content engine and infrastructure are not in place to support it
• Almost every B2B company needs to acknowledge the severity of its content ecosystem challenges and start working on fixing them
• A strong unified vision and commitment among cross-functional leadership teams are required to transform the content ecosystem