Why CMOs Need to Rely on Technology to Succeed in 2022

Modern businesses fully embrace technology and invest time and effort into building the right stack. The technology must provide internal collaboration and communication and support the customer experience. CMOs (chief marketing officers) have been leaning into technology for years, and success is inevitable when it’s a good match. So, what’s the link between CMOs and technology?

Why CMOs Should Care About the Entire Company’s Tech Stack

CMOs have domain over marketing analytics, automation, and content platforms. Outside of this, CMOs should have a voice as well. Two of those are unified communications (UC) and contact center software. While these aren’t marketing tools, CMOs should be in the discussion. They bring value to it by ensuring seamless collaboration and understanding customers. So, what solutions should fall into this bucket?

CMOs Can Learn from Contact Center Data

Contact center data learnings are valuable to marketing efforts. Deep analysis of this information can deliver many insights, including:

• Preferred channels for customer interaction: With this knowledge, marketing tactics can ensure customers are aware of the options.
• Changes in customer sentiment: Historical reporting provides trends on why people contact a business. Marketing can glean possible emerging complaints or problems and devise campaigns to improve them, avoiding disasters.
• The overall customer experience: Data directly from customers on satisfaction combined with information about call times and holds can provide a clear picture of customer experience and where the gaps are. Marketing should be aware of this and have a role in working on strategies to improve it.

Customer Feedback Spurs Innovation and Drives Customer Centricity

This connection to the customer and feedback loop could aid CMOs in an area they find challenging — innovation and implementation of new ideas and strategies. A Deloitte report found that 57.8 percent of CMOs struggle with this. Data drives better decision-making to launch such initiatives, and they’ll need technology to make it happen at scale.

Ultimately, CMOs should be able to rely on this technology to drive customer centricity. Such a company prioritizes customer experience and voice, often leading to more significant growth and customer retention. In fact, customer-centric companies were 60 percent more profitable than competitors.

Customer Interactions Improve with Empowered Users

Those employees who are customer-facing build relationships and trust. They can’t do that well with lackluster technology. They’ll feel more confident in being able to provide excellent experiences if they have faith in their technology. CMOs want to encourage that and prioritize more robust contact center software.

CMOs can strengthen those strategies with communication and collaboration tools, too.

UC Solutions: More Technology CMOs Should Prioritize

UC platforms consolidate voice, video, messaging, and file storage and sharing. All these things are critical for internal collaboration and communication. Easy access to them enables a more connected business versus one that has silos and fragmentation.

Marketing is a team effort and often includes the input of many other team members — sales, customer service, product managers, and other stakeholders. To facilitate consistent communication, your users need relevant tools.

Here’s the CMO and technology link regarding UC:

• Everyone is more productive with better technology: Efficient teams, of course, work smarter, which means processes accelerate. That’s typically a win for all parties. Additionally, staff may be more engaged and fulfilled with robust communication tools.
• Data is transparent and visible: Any tech tool delivers data based on its usage. The critical information that will drive future decisions is accessible and complements other systems like CRM (customer relationship management) and marketing platforms.
• Content and document organization is consistent: With a file-sharing repository, employees don’t have to waste time hunting for it. It also eliminates back-and-forth changes via email and confusion around versions. The document stays in one secure spot, while users can edit simultaneously.
• Video conferencing stability is critical for customer engagement: The video aspect of the tool is essential to CMOs for two reasons. First, it’s the place to host webinars, which are excellent formats to collect leads and delight customers. Second, video conferencing is the channel for marketing meetings with customers, so it needs to be reliable and provide a positive user experience.
• Cloud-based UC platforms offer access from wherever: Another valuable part of this technology is its accessibility element. Hybrid work and being mobile rely upon technology that lets them work from wherever. It provides a big boost to collaboration. It also ensures that customers can reach employees when they need them.
• Chat channels provide spaces for updates and more: Marketing teams can create special chat channels for specific topics, audiences, products, and projects. It can become a repository for delivering information and working out challenges. It’s much more practical than email chains.

CMOs and Technology: Powering the Future of Customer and Employee Experience

CMOs believe in and invest in technology. They realize how critical it is to growth, improving operations, understanding customers, and fostering communication and collaboration. These tools can help any company find success.

As a CMO, you should be involved in technology solution adoption, working with IT, customer success, and others. If you’re ready to replace legacy systems with one cloud-based platform, consider Intermedia Unite. It has the capabilities, reliability, and security you need to ensure high performance. Explore Unite today!