Diane Berry, SVP of Coveo, discusses how companies can use customer data to align service, sales and marketing.
Q: Your company seems focused on trying to bridge the gap between customer service, marketing and sales. Is this possible across your clients’ entire enterprise? Why is bridging this gap important and how might it affect the role of the direct marketer?
A: 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 crowd source knowledge to serve customers better, build better products and sell more.
Q: How will data be used to drive these cross-enterprise interactions? What types of information should marketers be particularly cognizant of? Is demographics data enough? Should preference data be collected as well? And, as cliché as it may sound, should all data be treated equally?
A: 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.
Q: Other than a stellar product, what do you think most heavily factors into driving customer loyalty? Is it better service or is it a superior cross-channel experience?
A: A 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.
Q: It seems like privacy legislation is continually on the horizon. Do you envision a doomsday scenario? How will privacy legislation affect how your company serves clients? What can marketers to do ensure that they’re in-line with current and future privacy regulations?
A: 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.
