Q&A: Diane Berry, SVP of Coveo

Diane Berry, SVP, Coveo

Diane Berry, SVP of Coveo, a customer intelligence company, discusses how brands can align customer service, sales and marketing and how best to drive customer loyalty.

Direct Marketing News (DMN): Your company seems focused on trying to bridge the gap between customer service, marketing and sales. Why is this important?

Berry (Coveo): We look at bridging the gap between them as well as product development and engineering. Those are the heart of companies. They are the most concerned with customer interactions. We consolidate enterprise and crowdsource knowledge to serve customers better, build better products and sell more.

DMN: How will data be used to drive these interactions? What types of information should marketers be particularly cognizant of?

Berry: They should all be cognizant of information from and about customers regardless of channel, whether it happens on Twitter, customer communities, on the phone or in a chat session. If customers don't feel known they lose trust. Consumers are on the Internet. If they can find more information outside of your company than they can within your company they will lose trust in your organization and that will impact loyalty.

DMN: Other than a stellar product, what do you think most heavily factors into driving customer loyalty?

Berry: Fast response to customer issues is imperative. It's important to tie information together from all channels. How many times have you been on the phone with an organization and had to call them back and explain yourself all over again? And then if it takes awhile for resolution it reduces satisfaction. It's possible to tie in all channels. The diversity of unstructured information is overwhelming for companies today. It's very possible to pull it all together and in real-time.

DMN: Will privacy legislation affect how your company serves clients?

Berry: No. It's important for companies that the CRM database is structured correctly and has the right security. For us, we're not using individual data like social security or credit card numbers.