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What’s your Customer Experience Quotient?

Marketers are continually seeking opportunities to gain an edge. And in today’s hyper-competitive and commoditized marketplace, the one thing that sets marketers apart is their ability to deliver on the customer experience (CX) mandate.
 
As marketers ourselves, we’re fascinated by the concept of mastering the customer experience. In fact, it’s what drove Microsoft Advertising to conduct research into how modern marketers are becoming more customer-centric by using data. That research revealed why some marketers are more successful than others when it comes to engaging and converting buyers.
 
It also made clear that this opportunity is available to any marketer with the right guidance, prioritization of resources, and application of data and technology. That’s right — whether you’re a small business, a larger company or a boutique agency, you can drive better and measurable marketing results.

What defines a high CXQ marketer?

Among other things, the research yielded what we call the Customer Experience Quotient - CXQ, which speaks to the ability to understand the buyer journey and then improve marketing based on that understanding. The cream of the crop — the 20% of respondents who we deemed High CXQ Performers — call upon a blend of the right data strategy and advanced technologies like AI, machine learning and cloud solutions to unleash their creativity. Most importantly, these marketers increase their marketing ROI/ROAS by 45% or more!

Wondering how you compare? If you’re utilizing the following strategies, congratulations — you’re on your way to being a high CXQ performer! You should:
 
  • Have an employee focused on understanding the Customer Decision Journey (CDJ, i.e., the sum of all touchpoints with your customer).
  • Make it a priority to unify your first-, second- and third-party data.
  • Use one or more of the following AI technologies to engage customers: cognitive services, digital assistants, chatbots.
  • Apply machine learning in advanced ways, such as for predicting consumer behavior (including when a customer is most likely to purchase) and personalization.
 
High CXQ Performers leverage data and technology in ways that continually improve their marketing performance and customer engagement and help accelerate growth. 

Every marketer can become a high performer

If you are implementing only some of these strategies, you fall more in the Learner category.  You’re in good company — about 80% of marketers are still in the beginning stages of creating a better understanding of their CDJ and using that understanding to improve their marketing performance.  And most likely you’re only dabbling in applying AI technology and Machine Learning to improve your customer understanding and marketing performance.  But don’t worry — we have a blueprint to help you advance in your CXQ!
 
The first step is to get your data in order.  Creating a comprehensive view to better understand your customers’ behaviors, preferences and intent becomes first priority.  We highlight several strategies for developing that view including cloud solutions and leveraging partners like advertising agencies, Martech providers and data management platforms.  You also need to have a plan for leveraging second- and third-party data to complement your valuable first-party data.
 
Achieving a high CXQ is critical to successfully engage and guide your customers across multiple touchpoints in the journey. In turn, you’ll realize the benefits of the flywheel effect, where increasing the number of customer touchpoints delivers more insights from each engagement, which subsequently drives greater engagement, higher revenue and growth.
 
Visit microsoftadvertising.ai to download the blueprint for success eBook: Creating Smarter Customer Journeys.   
 
If you’re a smaller business, take a look at the SMB version.