Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business. You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

How social data affects the CMO's decisions

The survey, which represented brands worth more than US$1 billion in annual revenues (56%) as well as smaller business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) brands, also found that CMOs are also pushing social data out beyond the marketing team, sharing it with other C-level executives (97.3%) and with corporate functions such as sales (36.8%) and product management and development (35.1%).

The 2012 Global IBM CEO Study found that customer centricity has become a priority for CMOs and CEOs alike, with 61% of CEOs saying that they must exhibit "ustomer obsession". And, against this backdrop, CMOs are continuing to invest rapidly in new technologies to help achieve that goal. In fact, according to a Gartner webinar in January 2012, "by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO."

As the business world re-centres itself on ways to serve and delight consumers, the study observed that CMOs are now seizing the opportunity to use social data to help transform their roles and organisations.

Among the key lessons learned from the study:

• Social data impacts decisions for nearly all CMOs. CMOs are turning to social data for insights into consumers, products, and brands that traditional market research and focus groups can't.
• Nearly all CMOs (89.4%) say social data has impacted at least some of their decisions. This includes 21.3% of CMOs who say social data affects at least one in every five decisions they make.
• Social data can also hint at future consumer sentiment and campaign success. Nearly half (47.3%) of all CMOs have used social data to make predictions or forecasts, most commonly to project sales.
• CMOs use social data to drive smarter decisions beyond the marketing function. While marketing teams and agencies most often extract the data, insights from it are often used in product development, customer experience management, sales, and C-level discussions.
• Agencies are most commonly responsible for reporting to CMOs on social data (50.9%), followed by marketing research (45.6%), and marketing communications (45.6%) teams.
• Brand management teams make the most use of social data, according to 59.6% of CMOs. Other teams that access the data marketing collects include sales (36.8%), customer experience and web design (36%), and product management and development (35.1%).
• Almost all CMOs (97.3%) share findings from social data with other C-level executives at least annually, and most (67%) report to the C-level on social insights at least monthly.
• CMOs believe that social data reveals consumer sentiment and improves brand awareness. CMOs also believe that social data reflects business trends and most use it to identify consumer traits and patterns that impact both brand loyalty and awareness.
• CMOs are most confident in social data's effectiveness in analysing consumer sentiment toward individual products and product lines, rating their confidence level 6.4 out of 10, on average.
• As a whole, 83.3% of CMOs believe that social data is at least somewhat effective in indicating discernible trends or patterns that may impact the business, and 77.9% find social data at least somewhat effective in analysing the influence of individuals or groups.
• Most CMOs (82.3%) are at least somewhat confident that their brands' social efforts have a measurable impact on brand awareness, while 81.5% are at least somewhat confident that their social initiatives have a measurable effect on brand loyalty.

"CMOs have historically been the closest to the customer, and they are now the ones who are leading the charge to use this data to evolve and elevate their brands and business," concluded Brett Hurt, CEO for Bazaarvoice. "With word of mouth being digital for the first time in history, CMOs can listen to their customers like never before and bring that insight to the entire company. This will change businesses by creating more customer-centric processes and companies."

Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business.

You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy. Grab this goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, technologies, research, suppliers and partners, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid CX strategy.

While most marketers could list maybe a dozen key points for improving their brand's Customer Experience (CX), the researchers and writers at The Marketing Factbook have identified FORTY main 'CX Keys' which will help you drive your customers to new levels of delight, loyalty, advocacy and profitability.

The areas in which customers have direct contact with your organization are perhaps the most obvious places in which CX improvements can be made, and this report addresses all 24 of these 'Direct CX Keys', applicable to offline and online businesses alike.

At the same time there are many other areas that indirectly affect CX (such as the supply chain, policies and processes) in which every business can make simple but far-reaching improvements. This report guides you through the problems and solutions for all 16 of these 'Indirect CX Keys', many of which are often forgotten or under-played even in the best CX strategies.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)