The future of customer experience involves more efficient and targeted sales enabled by technology while high-value interactions will still need human expertise. Here are 10 things organizations must do to survive seismic shifts in customer expectations.

In this episode we discuss:

• How do Sales & Marketing, Customer Experience and Customer Relationship Management relate to each other in the modern enterprise?
• How do traditional companies deliver on customer experience and how is that different from digital companies?
• What role does technology play in managing the customer?
• What is the future of push vs pull marketing and sales?
• What does the future of customer experience look like?

Key Highlights:

• Large organizations often have customer issues because different departments deal with customers but don’t communicate with each other. Customers rarely reach out to marketing. (00:03:08)
• Small companies focused on growth hacking don’t have the structure of front, middle and back offices. They use small, agile teams to quickly develop products and reach customers. (00:06:10)
• Some believe sales roles are going extinct due to the shift from push to pull marketing where customers seek out information themselves when needed rather than salespeople pushing products. (00:13:16)
• Sales roles will evolve but not become extinct. There will still be need for salespeople as trusted advisors for complicated, high-value transactions. (00:27:15)
• For large organizations with lots of data, AI chatbots handle more routine customer inquiries but still struggle with complex conversations. (00:29:11)
• Technology will enable small, specialized sales teams to efficiently communicate value propositions rather than big, broad product portfolios. (00:32:28)
• Future sales will happen via smaller, more focused teams targeting interested customers rather than cold calls. Tech bots may replace some human interactions. (00:38:32)
• To survive, organizations must digitize knowledge about themselves and control the information shared through owned channels vs handing out brochures. (00:40:02)

10 Takeaways:

1. Customer experience requires collaboration between all customer-facing functions like sales, marketing, service. Silos create disjointed journeys. 
2. Sales messaging must have consistency across mediums and client interactions to avoid brand dilution. Digital tools help enable this.
3. Balance personalized sales interactions with standardized core messaging. Adapt language but not meaning.
4. Marketing automation will reduce but not eliminate the need for human sales concierges, especially for complex B2B sales.
5. Leverage data and automation to enhance interactions, but allow for human connection. Poorly executed automation frustrates customers. 
6. Improve collaboration between sales, marketing, product teams to align messaging and meet customer expectations
7. Shift to smaller, specialized sales teams focused on individual products rather than large teams selling wide portfolios
8. Make sales more efficient, move away from high-volume cold calls, focus on responding to buying signals
9. Leverage technology like bots for automating repetitive sales tasks, but high-value sales need human interaction
10. Transition knowledge, expertise and marketing from print/analog to digital channels you control, like your website

Jim Sevier specializes in delivering “Sales as a Service” to companies of all size, coaching and directing their sales forces to maximize results.

He has also written and discussed the problem of the Digital Divide. See his TEDx talk on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzokRz1pgb0

Check out the Audio-only version of this episode!
Episode 06 – Audio Only