CX Decoded By CMSWire

Content is king... That was the saying marketers repeated to themselves for years. And while that sentiment still rings true, there's something more important brands must pay attention to, something that content ultimately feeds into: customer experience.

Modern consumers have high expectations, and brands go to great lengths to meet — and surpass — these expectations. But that task becomes more and more challenging as we continue to market in a VUCA environment — one that's volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

Kathleen Schaub, writer, advisor and CMSWire contributor, has some advice for leaders looking to navigate these rough waters and deliver exceptional CX. She caught up with CX Decoded's Dom Nicastro and Michelle Hawley to discuss navigating customer experience and marketing through constant change.

The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a survey of 500 CMOs and found that 86% of participants believed that they would own customer experience. Six years later, has it happened? Not quite. It hasn't exactly been a full takeover of customer experience by marketing leaders.

What has emerged is the concept of marketing-led customer experience. It's something Rhoan Morgan believes is and should happen in organizations. Morgan is the co-founder and CEO of DemandLab, an agency she launched in 2009. She's also a CMSWire contributor, and she caught up with CX Decoded to discuss marketing and CX leadership.

Google Analytics has more than 85% market share, according to numbers reported by W3Techs.com. However, it has not been without its controversy this year, and big changes are coming.

As of July 1, 2023, Google's Universal Analytics Platform properties will stop collecting data, and historic data will be deleted six months later. This forthcoming change has users all riled up.

CMSWire's CX Decoded caught up with Brian Clifton, co-founder of Verified Data, author and former head of analytics Europe, Middle East Africa for Google to provide perspective on the major changes and how to prepare. Clifton was the first head of Web Analytics for Google in Europe, and he helped launch the original Google Analytics in November of 2005.

According to the Marketing Technology Landscape 2022, marketers have nearly 10,000 solutions from which to choose. OK, so maybe that's not exactly how it works. Marketers won't be browsing 10 aisles with 1,000 solutions per aisle.

Fact is, though, there is an abundance of choice when it comes to deciding what powers your marketing and customer experience outcomes. Many marketers and customer experience professionals arrive at organizations when the stack's fully operational. Others have to buy pieces to fit their stack, and some even build from the ground up.

Chris O'Brien is one of those professionals who lives all these realities. He's the VP of digital marketing technology for M&T Bank. He sits at the intersection of marketing technology and customer experience within the financial services industry, which is a highly regulated industry. O'Brien caught up with CX Decoded to discuss the challenges of managing the marketing technology stack. He shares his thoughts on how the role of marketing technologists have evolved, how he keeps up with the pace of new technology and what's coming next.

"I really do work cross-functionally, cross-departmentally, as well as with a ton of external partners, whether they be, you know, system integrators, agencies, or some of these platform and data service vendors," O'Brien told CX Decoded hosts Rich Hein and Dom Nicastro of CMSWire. "So really trying to be kind of the hub that pulls all of that together into a cohesive roadmap and strategy for us."

The metaverse is certainly all the rage in 2022. Facebook changed its name to reflect this future of digital, after all, and all things digital starts with Facebook. Ok, maybe not so much.

Some are even talking trillions when considering the potential of the metaverse, where physical and digital worlds combine to support an alternate reality to life on the actual planet Earth. Instead, in this next iteration of the internet, life will exist in the world of augmented and virtual reality where dialogue, games, commerce and business is conducted in this alternate reality. The market opportunity for the metaverse ranges from $3.75 trillion to $12.46 trillion, depending on the share of the digital economy that shifts to the metaverse and market expansion, according to Statista reporting.

What does this all mean for the world of marketing and customer experience professionals? What are the opportunities for customer experience design and brands who want to stay connected to their customers — whether they live on the actual Earth or in the metaverse?

CX Decoded caught up with, Dirk Lueth, co-founder of Uplandme, Inc., a Metaverse provider. Lueth, an entrepreneur and early adopter of metaverse and blockchain technologies will share his thoughts on the Metaverse and where the potential opportunities lie.

According to Deloitte, 88% of senior executives think that blockchain technology will eventually achieve mainstream adoption. Worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is forecast to top $17.9 billion by 2024 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46.4%, according to data from IDC. With that said, we're seeing a lot of hype around the evolution of Web3 and how Web 2.0 will be a distant memory.

So how do you sort the truth from the hype?

In this episode of CX Decoded, Travis Wright, devout follower of blockchain, NFTs and the intersection of Web3 and marketing and the co-host of the Bad Crypto podcast join Dom and Rich to spotlight the practical applications of blockchain and Web3 as well as, what marketers need to understand, as we get ready to usher in Web3.

In 2021, 44.5% of organizations worldwide revealed that they perceive customer experience (CX) as a primary competitive differentiator. But are they really customer-centric? Are they building out experiences with that central focus on customers?

Debbie Qaqish watches these company trends in how they treat customer experience closely. The principal and chief strategy officer with the Pedowitz Group authored the book From Backroom To Boardroom: Earn Your Seat With Strategic Marketing Operations. She helps companies reimagine and rearchitect the role of marketing to drive revenue, growth, customer centricity and digital transformation.

Qaqish lays claim to the term "revenue marketing" in 2011 and six years ago, she shifted her focus to marketing operations as the enabler for how marketing gains that seat at the table.

CX Decoded Podcast co-hosts Rich Hein, CMSWire editor-in-chief, and Dom Nicastro, CMSWire managing editor, caught up with Qaqish to discuss customer-centricity in the latest edition of CX Decoded.

Sean Albertson, head of client experience measurement and analytics with Charles Schwab, began his CX journey on the front lines in contact centers in the mid-1990s. He managed service teams, quality and training programs, and created knowledge management tools early in his career.

Moving into this century, Albertson began to place a focus on surveys, analytics and market research. He continued to expand his influence through the early 2000s to improve customers' experiences in roles across marketing, product and pricing, and even spent some time in IT translating CX concepts into technology and digital solutions.

Albertson caught up with CMSWire Editor-in-Chief Rich Hein and Managing Editor Dom Nicastro of CMSWire's CX Decoded to discuss his approach to measuring CX success.

Customer experience professionals often turn to surveys to measure customer feedback. But what are your surveys telling you? Multiple-choice answers provide data, for sure, especially when scaling feedback from hundreds of customers.

But do you know how customers truly feel when they leave an interaction with your brand, no matter the channel? Luis Angel-Lalanne, vice president, Customer Voice for the Global Services Group at American Express, told CMSWire in the latest episode of CMSWire's CX Decoded podcast that his teams are undergoing a transformation in how they measure customer sentiment.

The gist: They've gone from transactional surveys to driven by modeled sentiment using Natural Language Processing and machine learning. Angel-Lalanne said this now serves as the scorecard metric for the financial giant's front-line care professionals.

Angel-Lalanne discussed this and other insights on how his teams at American Express view customer experience and Voice of the Customer (VoC). He joined CMSWire Editor-in-Chief Rich Hein and Managing Editor Dom Nicastro in this episode of CX Decoded.

According to the CMSWire State of Digital Customer Experience 2021 report, there is a growing body of research and anecdotal evidence to suggest the positive impact good employee experience (EX) has on customer experience, particularly in high-touch sectors.

Around three quarters of respondents view digital employee experience as being "very important" or "moderately important" for digital customer experience, but this rises significantly to 91% for respondents with tools "working well," according to CMSWire researchers.

Enter Katrina Taylor, who is living this reality day to day in her role as head of user experience and product design at Armoire, which provides shoppers with opportunities to rent clothes and personalized their closets from designer brands. Taylor is not only laser-focused on creating digital customer experiences for visitors seeking new outfits but also closely watches the connection between customer experience and employee experience.

CX Decoded hosts, Rich Hein and Dom Nicastro, caught up with Katrina to discuss this vision and how she and her teams apply it into a practical reality.