The role of the modern CMO: A whole different ball game

Customer experience (CX) was identified as one of the top three capabilities in the 2019 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, with CMOs stating that CX is vital to their marketing strategies in the coming eighteen months.

With, on average, 18% of marketing budgets allocated towards CX initiatives, organisations are increasingly spending both time and money to ensure that customers have favourable brand impressions – a feat crucial in today’s digital economy.

And as marketers demand data-driven insights to ensure positive CX, marketing technology also continues to evolve. Technology has placed marketing at the centre of business growth by enabling advanced measurements of CX that help guide initiatives and identify drivers specific to a brand. But with great insight comes great responsibility; the success of marketing campaigns and initiatives is now determined by the data that follows.

Access to machine learning and artificial intelligence, for example, offers marketers new opportunities to deliver CX that exceeds expectations and provide real-time data to prove it. One forward looking example is event-driven analytics through facial recognition, which enables automatic registration of known attendees and monitors attendee sentiment and activities, all through an event venue. The added insights on attendee interaction, demographics, and sentiment help event managers place their focus where it is needed to ensure an ROI.

It’s all about ease

Customers have numerous digital channels at their disposal, with the expectation that no matter how they interact, it will be a singular and seamless experience. With every digital touchpoint comes the responsibility to prioritize ease-of-use that will generate positive customer feedback.