“Great products and services are obviously a prerequisite, but CX is the only path to sustainable growth,” says Chris Adlard who, being an award-winning CX leader, was invited to speak at Ignite 2018 on CX tactics.
Like many marketers, Chris was taught during his university degree that happy customers meant repeat business, recommendation and growth. However, his experiences didn’t reflect that lesson.
Let’s focus on the customer
Right from the start of his career, Chris realised that sales had the upper hand. Speaking about his first role at IBM 20 years ago, he says: “It was a product and sales-led era, where companies grew, in simple terms at least, by launching new products and convincing customers and prospects to buy them.”
But he believes things are changing, and that more importantly, marketers are in the right place at the right time to drive change across the organisation.
For those not lucky (or sensible) enough to be at Ignite where Chris will share his views on the CX revolution, here a few of his thoughts.
Time to drive change
Chiefly, says Chris, it’s all down to buying cycles. B2B clients need at least a year (if not years) to make big purchasing decisions. Yet this is at odds with the reality of a sales-led operation in which targets drive short-term goals. Furthermore, if salespeople don’t make their numbers, they often leave, disrupting the buyer’s experience.
“Customers want trusted partnerships with vendors, where the experience they receive from the vendor, across all functions, is as joined up and frictionless as possible,” says Chris. What they don’t want are transactional, short-term interactions, or fragmented relationships. “And guess what, they can smell a target-driven salesperson a mile off – whatever their title!” Chris adds.
We now firmly live in the customer-era – whether our company structures and operations are inline with that or not. It’s a reality we all have to address. But it’s also a great reality for marketers to live in.
“I believe that customer experience is arguably the most pressing and important topic for any business today,” says Chris. “Thankfully B2B marketers are in the right place at the right time to drive change across the organisation, above and beyond the traditional programmes and activities of a B2B marketing organisation.”
