One on One Interviews

While many may still view Instagram as a great place to post pictures, more and more video is being consumed on the platform. According to Kati McGee, Instagram Lead for Facebook’s small and midsize (SMB) team, just in the past three months alone time spent watching video on Instagram has jumped 40%.

In a recent conversation with Kati during an event Facebook and Instagram held National Small Business Week, Kati shared how small businesses can use Instagram’s advertising platform to reach more targeted audiences with video. She also shares how many small businesses are using Instagram as a second storefront to complement the eCommerce efforts.

While many may still view Instagram as a great place to post pictures, more and more video is being consumed on the platform. According to Kati McGee, Instagram Lead for Facebook’s small and midsize (SMB) team, just in the past three months alone time spent watching video on Instagram has jumped 40%.

In a recent conversation with Kati during an event Facebook and Instagram held National Small Business Week, Kati shared how small businesses can use Instagram’s advertising platform to reach more targeted audiences with video. She also shares how many small businesses are using Instagram as a second storefront to complement the eCommerce efforts.

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a term that has gained a great deal of traction over the past twelve months, but many still aren’t familiar with what it is. Wiley Publishing has just released Account-Based Marketing for Dummies to help people understand how ABM can help drive more B2B sales. Sangram Vajre, CMO and cofounder of ABM platform Terminus, wrote the book and shares with us his thoughts on how ABM can help sales and marketing teams get on the same page in order to speed up the sales process and close more deals faster.

With next being National Small Business Week, Facebook is holding a small business event in Atlanta, GA. We caught up with Ciara Viehweg of Facebook’s SMB Community Engagement Team as she shares with us how small businesses are leveraging Facebook’s platform to build deeper relationships with customers and prospects to grow their businesses. Ciara also shares a few tools SMBs can use to get the most out of Facebook’s platform from a customer engagement perspective.

Lindsay Bayuk, head of Product for Pure Chat, shares how integrating chat capabilities into your website can help small businesses convert more site visits into transactions, email list signups, and other important conversions that allow you to create long-lasting relationships with more customers.

As the more data gets generated in less time – by more devices – it’s bringing more attention to how companies are using that information. Wilson Raj, Global Director of Customer Intelligence for marketing analytics platform provider SAS, discusses recent findings from the company’s study - Mobility, Vulnerability and the State of Data Privacy. Raj shares his thoughts on why millennials are both more concerned with and expect more from companies with respect to how they are using customer information. And why companies using information to impact customer lifestyles are more likely to find more success with digital natives, than with the Over 40 crowd.

Chad Kutting, General Manager of SalesforceIQ CRM, Salesforce.com’s targeted solution for SMBs, discusses how relationship intelligence can help create more efficient relationship building opportunities for small businesses. He also shares how more intelligence and automated data entry improves CRM adoption, and finally provides real incentives for sales people to use CRM.

Ryan Keeton, Carvana’s co-founder and Chief Brand Officer, shares with us how Amazon inspired the company to change the way people buy used cars, like Amazon did with books and everything else. And if you plan on being in the Atlanta area next Thursday (March 17th) you can hear more of the story from Carvana co-founder and CEO Eddie Garcia at ExCom 2016, a free day long event for small businesses focusing on the where technology is driving customer experience and commerce. And maybe pick up a coke and a used car from the vending machines while you’re hear.

Key findings in a recent Forrester Study on the benefits of using an omnichannel engagement center, commissioned by customer experience platform provider Genesys, include:

• 50% reduction in customer abandonment at key points in the customer journey 

• Over $1 million in increased revenue through increased e-commerce and voice conversions

While the study focused on customers using Genesys’ omnichannel engagement platform, it’s obvious that having a system to manage the different channels customer are using to engage with businesses today should help companies be more efficient and effective.

Lisa Abbott, Director of Product Marketing for Genesys, shares with us what omnichannel engagement is, and how it can provide better, more contextual experiences throughout the specific stages of the customer lifecycle.

It seems so logical. The best way to get and keep good customers is to respond quickly to them when they have an issue. But, even in 2016, more customer calls, emails, tweets and texts go unanswered than get responded to.

Jay Baer, customer experience expert and New York Times best-selling author, joins us to share a few key points from his upcoming book Hug Your Haters. He touches on why companies have to stop treating customer service as a spectator sport, why companies with a “call-center” mentality are doomed, and why seeking to increase the number of customer complaints is key to better understanding customers and lowering customer churn.