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New to Slack? Here’s How You Can Use It to Work From Anywhere
Slack is your company’s virtual headquarters. It connects everyone in your business and supports the way people naturally work together — in real-time or not, in-person and remote, structured and informal.
It’s where conversations come together, information can easily be found, collaboration is seamless, and your team’s favourite apps are connected in one place. Slack encourages knowledge sharing across the organisation and gives everyone direct and instant involvement with ideas — and the people who have them.
With Slack, collaboration is just the beginning. Like LIKE.TG, Slack is a platform with almost limitless potential for custom integrations, automated workflows, and solutions. In short, Slack is where the future works.
Why is it called Slack?
What does Slack have in common with lasers and scuba diving? For one thing, you might not know that the name is an acronym: it stands for Searchable Log of All Conversations and Knowledge.
That name should give you a pretty good idea of what Slack is all about, but let’s take a look at some of the features that make Slack a great tool for our work-from-anywhere world.
Channel your conversations
There are two main ways to communicate in Slack: channels and direct messages (DMs).
A channel is a conversation involving a group of people that focuses on a specific topic. Channels can be open (anyone can join) or private (only people who are invited can join). Channels are the key to productivity in Slack. When you have conversations in channels, you increase visibility and can easily make sure the right people are involved.
A channel is a conversation involving a group of people that focuses on a specific topic.
Use direct messages for conversations that don’t belong in channels. Say, for example, you need to reschedule a one-on-one with a coworker or have a question specifically for the project lead.
Communicate with panache
Slack also goes way beyond the basics of messaging. Emoji reactions, @mentions, and threads make communication in Slack that much more effective.
Use emoji reactions to simplify communication or acknowledge a message with just a few clicks. You can show someone you’ve seen their message with a tick emoji, or let someone know you’re looking into it with the eyes emoji.
Use @mentions to get someone’s attention in a channel. They’ll get a notification and everyone else in the channel can follow along with the conversation. If you have a message for everyone, use @here to notify everyone currently online in a channel.
Maybe you want to respond to a message in a channel without interrupting the flow of the conversation. In that case, respond in a thread. Here’s one more emoji-related tip: let people know to thread their replies with a thread emoji.
Find what you’re looking for
Use the search bar at the top of your Slack workspace to search for messages, files, channels, or people. Once you’ve entered a search term, you can narrow your search to a specific channel or conversation, then further filter your results by date, reactions, and more.
Search is useful for when you’re looking for something specific (like a project plan) or for context around a decision, client, or project that you’re getting up to speed on.
Make Slack work for you and your team
Slack fosters workplace connections, especially when your coworkers might be in different physical spaces with different time zones and varying schedules. Adding a profile picture and keeping your status up to date when you’re out of the office are just a couple of ways to bridge the gap between remote and in-person workers.
Use direct messages for conversations that don’t belong in channels.
After you’ve filled out your profile, take a few minutes to customise your preferences. You can, for example, decide how and when you get notifications and create a notification schedule.
Want to learn more? Visit Trailhead and earn the Slack Basics badge.
This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How To Create Connected Experiences Faster: MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021
Tracy Wang leads marketing at MuleSoft Asia, a LIKE.TG company that provides integration software for connecting applications, data, and devices. She reveals how MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021 will help businesses develop a winning API product strategy.
More businesses are turning to reusable Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). APIs are messengers that take requests and tell a system what a user wants it to do, then returns the response back to that user.
One benefit of APIs is that they give businesses better data visibility across many different sources. With good data visibility, businesses can make informed, data-driven decisions. This results in smoother business processes, as well as more connected experiences for customers, partners, and employees.
Learn how to achieve this and more at MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021, on 3 August at 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Singapore Standard Time).
What is MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021?
MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021 brings together IT and business thought leaders in Asia’s leading integration event of the year. The free 90-minute online event will reveal how to fast track API-led connectivity so you can create connected experiences faster.
MuleSoft executives will also demonstrate how you can accelerate your business outcomes using the latest innovations and trends in integration and API management.
Finally, hear from business leaders from some of the most successful companies across Asia, who will share their experiences in developing a winning API product strategy.
Why attend MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021?
MuleSoft helps organisations make better data-driven decisions by leveraging API-led connectivity.
The power of data depends on your ability to get it out of silos and integrate it into your daily business operations. Businesses collect, store, and use vast amounts of data across systems like LIKE.TG, Google Analytics, and MySQL. MuleSoft’s industry-leading full-lifecycle API management and iPaaS capabilities enable you to connect all that data together.
It’s a little like transforming your siloed data into composable LEGO® bricks. With an effective API integration strategy in place, you can use your data to build connected experiences across your organisation. This enables you to deliver digital initiatives faster, and drive bottom-line growth.
Who’s speaking at MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021?
MuleSoft CEO Brent Hayward will be there, along with Brian Kealey, VP Asia, and Shaun Clowes, SVP Product Management. They will demonstrate how MuleSoft is addressing the latest trends in integration, full-lifecycle API management, and automation.
You’ll also hear success stories from some of our customers across Asia:
Get insights into the lessons 7-Eleven learned from a recent MuleSoft deployment.
Learn how AstraZeneca leveraged API-led connectivity to transform their business operations and accelerate their COVID-19 vaccine innovation efforts.
Discover new use cases that big brands such as INSEAD and Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) have been able to support when it comes to integrating systems and data. They will also talk about the challenges they faced in their own integration journey, and share recommendations.
Find out how Singapore-based Starfish Digital is unlocking MuleSoft’s capabilities with no code integrations.
Uncover how Philippines-based Sonak Corporation executed their vision for connectivity in order to set up their ecommerce, retail, and loyalty program efforts.
Where and when is MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021?
MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021 will be held online on Tuesday, 3 August from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Singapore Standard Time). It is completely free and open for all to join. Closed caption language support will be provided for Thai and Traditional Chinese.
Whether you are getting started with APIs and integration, or a long-time MuleSoft customer, join MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021 to learn how to create connected experiences faster. Register today to secure your spot.
CITEM Takes Trade Promotions Online to Support Export Businesses in The Philippines
Prior to COVID-19, exports from the Philippines were on the rise and reached US$70.3billion in 2019. However, the country’s export market—like many others— was challenged by the pandemic. The trade shows, which typically boosted exports, were put on pause. This was a real dilemma for the Philippines’ Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM).
CITEM is the export promotions arm of the country’s Department of Trade and Industry. It is committed to developing, nurturing, and promoting globally-competitive micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), exporters, designers, and manufacturers. So when it became clear that events had to be cancelled, CITEM leapt into action to support these businesses in new ways.
Here’s a snapshot of how CITEM moved quickly to advance its digital strategy:
Digital tools evolve from an opportunity to a necessity
Even before the pandemic, CITEM viewed the move to digital as a powerful tool to build a community for its stakeholders. However, it became a necessity almost overnight, leading CITEM to engage a LIKE.TG consulting partner to digitalise trade promotions. This partner was Third Pillar, a Philippines-based consulting partner, which is now part of Globe Telecom, Inc.
“The trade show industry, globally, was caught unaware when the pandemic started so it was really difficult for everyone to digitalise and change their processes. However, CITEM had already started to look at putting together a digital trade and community platform,”
said Pauline Suaco-Juan, Executive Director at CITEM. “We did this primarily because we realised that sourcing preferences were beginning to change, with more and more people sourcing products through social media and websites.”
CITEM’s vision for digital engagement gave rise to FAME+, a digital platform that connects buyers and sellers within the Philippine home, fashion and lifestyle industries. It also tells the stories behind each product, brand, or designer found on the catalog to optimise their visibility with content creation and distribution.
CITEM’s main challenge in launching FAME+ was onboarding sellers. Many of these businesses were not yet using digital technologies; so it was up to CITEM to help them get started.
Automation and personalisation drive quick wins
Third Pillar has helped CITEM solve the challenge of onboarding sellers by using MarketingCloud to automate and streamline the process from end-to-end. For example, it has created an email journey which prompts sellers to register for FAME+ and to submit the information needed to build out their product listings.
Third Pillar has also enabled CITEM to promote these listings using personalised email journeys based on buyers’ browsing habits. These journeys have been successful in helping sellers reach new audiences and sustain their businesses—and jobs—at a critical time.
Additionally, the use of Marketing Cloud has created internal efficiencies for CITEM and trimmed the time it takes to produce campaigns.
“What we’ve done is apply LIKE.TG to automate those digital processes that typically take time, allowing the CITEM team to focus on what they do best, which is relationship-building and storytelling,” said Deanna Rubiano, Third Pillar Chief Marketing Officer.
Working with Third Pillar, CITEM has also adopted Social Studio to promote the businesses on FAME+ and enhance their digital presence. Social Studio will also allow CITEM to efficientlymanage social media, equipping just three people to handle 15 different channels. These include channels for CITEM’s sub-brands such as IFEX Philippines, CREATE Philippines, and the Sustainability Solutions Expo (SSX).
Social listening will be especially valuable in helping CITEM to understand and tap into industry trends so that it can continue to lift the profile of the Philippines’ export industry.
“CITEM team has worked closely with LIKE.TG and Third Pillar last year to equip ourselves with the necessary tools to take CITEM’s content marketing to greater heights,” Suaco-Juan said. “I’m certain that with all these CRM functions available to us, we will be able to seize every opportunity ahead of us in the digital sphere.”
Read more customer stories to find out how other businesses are transforming digitally with LIKE.TG.
7 Tips To Stay Productive and Be Well While Working From Home
Even as vaccination drives are well underway, and governments are easing COVID-19 restrictions, working from home is still the norm for many companies.
If you’re working from home, it never hurts to check in on yourself. Make sure you have steps in place to keep your mental health and productivity at its best.
Staying connected with people is one way to stay mentally strong. When it comes to colleagues, don’t just message them. Make time to talk to them, look at their faces during video conferencing, and ask them about what they’ve been up to outside work.
You can also make new connections by joining community groups. We recommend joining community user groups that exchange knowledge and expertise, like the ones we have over at Trailblazer Community Groups. With Trailhead, plus the help of the Trailblazer community, you can learn in-demand skills and earn LIKE.TG certifications.
Read the infographic below for more tips on staying connected, managing your work, keeping your motivation up, and more.
This post originally appeared on the A.U.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
Why Pardot Is the Right Marketing Automation Tool for Sales and Marketing Alignment in SMBs
With inputs from Rajesh Subramanian, Digital AE, Mid-market
Businesses all over the world are quickly digitising to stay relevant. For B2B businesses, the use of the right tools and technologies is particularly important to clinch new, bigger opportunities. This is because B2B selling involves multiple decision-makers, longer sales cycles, and the need for highly-targeted client communication.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often have limited resources. Hence, they are unable toto set up large, dedicated sales and marketing teams, equip them with premium automation tools, and incur capital expenditure (CAPEX) on setting up an elaborate IT infrastructure. But what if they had one powerful B2B marketing automation tool that could align and enhance their sales and marketing strategies without the need for extensive investment or large, specialised teams? They could then:
Create 1-to-1 engagements at scale with personalised emails
Attract more sales-ready prospects
Reconnect with inactive leads
Enable sales teams with complete marketing context to quickly move prospects through the pipeline
Drive data-backed marketing and sales campaigns to maximise ROI
How Pardot helps small businesses
LIKE.TGPardotticks all these boxes. It is a B2Bmarketing automation tool thatcan accelerate an SMB’s growth by integrating and enhancing the two most essential business functions: sales and marketing. Pardot automates critical marketing and sales activities, so sales and marketing can work as one team with one dream: to sell more effectively.
Here’s how Pardot can help small businesses find and win more customers:
Create beautiful, branded landing pages and forms with easy landing page templatesand drag-and-drop buildersto capture new leads
Display targeted offers on your websites and landing pages
Set forms to trigger notifications and score leads automatically, so you always have a steady flow of high-quality leads in your pipeline
Build rich profiles over time using engagement and social media data for progressive and social profiling
Better understand the customer journey by visually mapping out and testing every asset and touchpoint before launch
Use one powerful, flexible builder to create customised experiences through dynamic campaigns that adapt to customers’ buying signals
Automatelead managementusing Pardot’s blended lead scoring and grading system, so reps can identify and interact with the hottest leads first
Enablelead nurturingby automatically triggering emails and notifying the right reps based on prospect activity for prompt follow-ups
Give sales reps marketing powers by enabling them with marketing-approved mini-campaigns for their customers
Perfect marketing to sales handoffs with built-in business rules, real-time alerts, and assignment triggers, so sales reps never miss great opportunities
Automatically segment audiences based on specifications like age, location, industry, etc. and run targeted email campaigns at scale
Build personalised emails with an intuitive email editor, customisable signature, and dynamic content that resonates
A/B and spam test each email and dynamically change them based on each lead’s score, grade, industry, job title, etc.
Set triggers and autoresponders to automate email delivery based on prospect activity
Empower sales reps with visibility into customer engagement history, insights, and access to marketing-approved content to drive more relevant conversations
Leverage visual reporting and graphical dashboards to gain insights into the performance of every sales and marketing campaign
Identify the top performing emails and templates to maximise ROI
Use Engagement and Lifecycle reports to understand your sales cycle’s health and identify where in the sales funnel prospects are getting stuck
Enable marketers to successfully track and demonstrate marketing influence across sales cycle by using off-the rack attribution modules (first, last touch, even)
Pardot enables sales-marketing alignment
SMBs that wish to grow need to think long-term. They need to find customers and build meaningful relationships with them. But they also need quick wins and fast results for continuous cash flows.
Pardot is a simple and cost-effective marketing automation tool that SMBs can start using straight out of the box — no additional CAPEX or special skills needed. The tool is extremely intuitive and templatised, taking only a few minutes to become a part of your marketing and sales processes. With a single command centre, it seamlessly ties your marketing efforts with sales goals, resulting in higher revenue inflow.
Find a Pardot edition that suits your budget and needs.
This post originally appeared on the I.N.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
Why Marketers Need a Data Health Check
Chris Jordan is Director of Data, Personalisation and Marketing Intelligence, ASEAN. He consults with key strategic customers around the use of data and technology, specifically in the context of digital marketing. In the first of a two-part series on data, Chris discusses how marketers should adapt their data-driven marketing strategies in response to privacy updates from Google and Apple.
Thomas Kuhn, a brilliant philosopher, coined the term paradigm shift. He used it to describe the disorientation that people feel during times of social change. As marketers, we are most certainly going through a phase of social bewilderment, as we revolutionise the way we think about digital and data.
Third-party cookies are on the way out
Consumers have spoken up about privacy and security, and the big players are listening.
In January 2020, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, announced that it plans to eliminate the third-party cookie. This is a key tool that marketers have used for years to track customers’ online activities and deliver personalised ads. Google’s cookie alternative, called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), is still in the works.
Meanwhile, Apple rolled out AppTrackingTransparency this year. This new feature requires apps to ask users for permission to track their activities across other companies’ apps and websites.
So, how do we manage data-driven marketing and the personalised experiences that consumers have come to expect? This is challenging in a world where locked off data in big consumer platforms like Google and Facebook is only increasing, and governments are curtailing marketers’ data collection processes.
Healthy and not-so-healthy data
I like to think of data as an ecosystem, much like the human body.
We fuel our body with a healthy balanced diet, and in return, our body operates at maximum capacity. Data is much the same, hence the age-old IT saying, ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’.
So, how can we marketers learn from diet? Well, much like diet, data is based on quantity and quality. Eat too much of the bad stuff, and your health will suffer. Consume the right amount of the good stuff, and your health will prosper. We all know that cookies are not good for our health, but sometimes we can’t help ourselves.
Here’s what a healthy data diet looks like:
Fresh: Much like produce, new data trumps old data. We need the data we collect to be recent and relevant.
Clean: Organic food has proven to be healthier, and much like this, those nasty additives are not going to make for a healthy data ecosystem. We need clean, de-duped first party data.
Trusted: When we know where food is made and what went into it, we trust it. Data is much the same, we need permission to collect and use it with total transparency.
The value exchange between businesses and customers
The trick to long-term health success is typically ‘balance’, and the same will apply to our evolving data strategies.
Whilst AppTrackingTransparency is new and Google’s action plan is still up in the air, right now the best bet is balance. Think about how to collect fresh, clean, and trusted first party data.
This starts by asking your customers or prospects for their permission. Explain in non-legal language that providing this data, explicit consent, and preferences will create personalised and relevant experiences across any channel.
Once collected, we need to connect the data, across ecosystems and internal silos. The idea sounds simple but can create incredible complexity. This exact challenge has given rise to a new MarTech category: Customer Data Platforms (CDP). Martin Kihn, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy for Marketing Cloud, explains what a CDP is and why it matters, in his insightful article.
Once this data has been captured and connected, we can use it to master the next big thing in marketing. Seth Godin, who spoke in the LIKE.TG Live: Asia marketing episode, noted that this big thing is already here:
To quote Adam Grant’s latest hit book, we need to ‘Think Again’, and reframe how we think about the constitution of healthy data. Keep your eyes peeled for part two, in which we dig into ‘activating healthy data’.
To learn more about future marketing trends from thought leaders like Seth Godin, watch the marketing Trailblazers episode ofLIKE.TG Live: Asia.
How Brands Deliver Delightful Customer Experiences Consistently
Retail and consumer brands responded to the challenges of 2020 with admirable resilience, agility, and innovation. In a short time, they launched a variety of new services and customer experiences. These included options to buy-online-pickup-in-store, virtual appointments, flexible payment options, and livestream ecommerce.
As a result, customer expectations for what makes a great digital experience have increased. In fact, more than 80% of B2B and B2C customers now believe the experience provided by a company is as important as its products or services.
Delightful retail experiences help to drive brand loyalty and create lifelong customer connections. This can have a significant impact on the bottom line over the long-term.
All that energy and innovation around the customer experience has changed retail and consumer brands forever. Now the challenge is to continue this spirit of innovation and deliver delightful customer experiences consistently.
Meeting the demand for more personalised experiences
In a recent webinar, Matt Marcotte, LIKE.TG Global Head of Retail and Consumer Goods Industry Advisors, shared his advice on how to deliver exceptional customer experiences. He said it comes down to three things:
Actionable customer data
The ability to personalise customer experiences
Optimisation of consumer engagement and experience
Getting to a single source of truth for customer data is the ultimate goal, particularly for retail and consumer brands. Solutions like LIKE.TG Customer 360 bring sales, marketing, commerce, and service together around a single view of customer data on an integrated platform.
Customer data needs to be collected, consolidated, and stored securely in a place where teams can access it as needed. When teams have a shared understanding of the customer, they can work together to create more personalised customer experiences.
“Finding technologies that really make the collection of data, the creation of the single source of truth, the ability to talk across systems and departments easily, is really something that all companies should be striving to do,” Matt says.
One great tool for this purpose is Tableau. It can help analyse your customer data and provide a deeper understanding of customers. These insights help to identify further opportunities for personalisation and uncover customer trends within your data.
“Personalisation doesn’t need to be as complicated as it sounds to implement,” Matt says.
“It all starts with intent and a relentless focus on putting the customer at the centre of everything that you do as a brand. Then, find ways to use technology and data to get to know them better.”
Creating consistency across platforms
The ability to connect your planning and execution within the same platform is critical for personalising and optimising your consumer engagement. Matt says this helps brands to create a holistic view of the customer that lets them:
Unlock growth
Improve program execution
Build better pricing strategies
Develop more effective promotional activities and channel incentives
Luxasia, the leading omni-channel partner for luxury beauty and lifestyle brands in the Asia-Pacific region, is a great example of this in action. They develop personalised beauty experiences and connected customer journeys for customers online, offline, or in-store.
The Luxasia team knows that they are selling emotional connections as much as physical products. They use feedback and customer data to help them make beauty more personalised through relevant product recommendations.
Consistent, excellent experiences like these develop stronger relationships with customers and drive loyalty over the long term.
“Consumers make decisions based on how they feel. As brands, part of getting to know customers is building relationships, and relationships are emotional,” Matt says.
This is reflected in LIKE.TG’s most recent State of the Connected Customer report. It found that 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations.
“So, in a world of increasingly endless choices and commoditised products, the experience the consumer has with the brand is really important,” Matt says.
As retail and consumer brands optimise these experiences, we will see the impact this can have on building loyalty and lifetime relationships. With LIKE.TG as a partner, retail and consumer brands can deliver exceptional customer experiences and build their customer base.
Find out how retail and consumer goods brands are enhancing customer experiences with LIKE.TG. Tune in to watch the webinar on-demand.
6 Ways Toys“R”Us Is Bringing the Magic of Its Stores to Online Shoppers
The shift from physical to digital commerce has been enormous in the past year, with the pandemic driving both businesses and consumers online. For retailers like Toys”R”Us with a large physical presence, this presents a unique challenge. It wanted to provide an experience that offers customers the best of both worlds.
Tim Halaska, Regional General Manager of Digital Strategy for Toys”R”Us Asia, shared how the retailer has responded to this challenge and is fuelling imagination in Asia.
As Asia’s leading retailer of toys, education, and baby products, Toys”R”Us is a well-loved destination for kids of all ages. Here are six ways it’s capturing the magic of its in-store experience and taking it online.
1. Creating efficiencies in digital commerce
As a first step in its online transformation, Toys”R”Us partnered with eWAVE, a global commerce services specialist, to centralise ecommerce with Commerce Cloud. Launched across seven markets in Asia, Commerce Cloud provides Toys”R”Us with a single platform to power more seamless and personalised shopping experiences for its customers.
Commerce Cloud also provides economies of scale so that Toys”R”Us can provide equally compelling experiences to each market, no matter its size.
2. Tailoring sites to local needs
One of the benefits of Commerce Cloud is that it simplifies merchandising across multiple sites, multiple languages, and multiple currencies. It also supports localisation of sites. Working with eWave, Toys”R”Us has integrated Commerce Cloud with local payment options and enabled shoppers to log in from social media sites popular in their markets.
Toys”R”Us has also used Commerce Cloud to centralise activities like site maintenance. This frees up local teams to focus on driving sales locally. For example, they can spend time identifying what products or offers are most popular in their markets and promote these online and in-store.
3. Creating mobile-first experiences
Toys”R”Us has launched new websites in seven markets across Asia in the past twelve months. Commerce Cloud’s Storefront Reference Architecture provided a blueprint to speed up site development and embed mobile design best practices to help convert today’s mobile shoppers. These include a seamless checkout flow with as few taps as possible.
4. Delivering consistency across channels
In transforming the shopper experience, Toys”R”Us has ensured that whether a customer shops online or in-store, they can find the same products and enjoy the same deals.
“One of the things we’ve really focused on is the customer journey and creating alignment between the online and offline experience. So now when an email goes out about a promotion in-store, the customer can also purchase that product online straight away,” said Halaska.
5. Personalising product recommendations
Personalisation provides retailers with the chance to turn every interaction into a positive customer experience. It can also lead to increased conversion and cart size.
Toys”R”Us is reaping these benefits by using Einstein to provide customers with product recommendations based on their browsing and purchase histories.
6. Rewarding shopper loyalty
Now, when customers make purchases on a Toys”R”Us website, they are instantly enrolled into the retailer’s Star Card Loyalty Program. The program allows customers to earn points in-store and online and provides them with access to exclusive offers and events. In exchange, Toys”R”Us is able to track and understand its customers’ behaviour and provide more personalised experiences.
“We can now see the customer’s journey from in-store to online. We’re excited to delve into that further and use those insights to connect with customers in new ways,” said Halaska.
Learn more about how Toys”R”Us is using Commerce Cloud to provide a unified retail experience.
How AFDigital Tracks Wellness & Improves Employee Experience With Data
Business leaders across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are prioritising employee wellness. According to a recent report by Willis Towers Watson, supporting employees’ physical and emotional health is a top priority for companies throughout the region.
Two in five APAC employers said they plan to enhance mental health services and stress management. Forty percent of employers want to improve employee wellbeing programmes.
Notably, more organisations in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and India, are prioritising employee wellbeing programmes than other APAC regions.
AFDigital is one such company that is making a strong commitment to improving employee wellness. Founded in the Philippines in 2012, AFDigital specialises in social media marketing, customer journey automation, training, and digital marketing operations. They work with a wide range of enterprise customers and small and medium-sized businesses across the region.
Understanding employees better
Pauline Pangan, Founder and Managing Director at AFDigital, says COVID-19 was a catalyst for her company’s renewed focus on employee wellness.
“We realised that we need to be proactive in improving our employee’s wellbeing now more than ever,” she explains. “We are so far away from each other because everyone is working remotely, and it’s stressful because of the uncertainty about what’s going to happen.”
Before Pangan and her team could improve employee wellbeing, they had to understand the health and wellbeing challenges her people are facing. To do this, AFDigital has taken a data-driven approach with monthly employee wellness surveys delivered through the LIKE.TG CRM. AFDigital is now able to see survey results in a wellness dashboard.
“In the beginning we didn’t have awareness about what our employees were experiencing, because they wouldn’t necessarily come to us and say they’re struggling,” she says. “The survey is a safe, anonymised platform our employees can use to share their challenges.”
Focusing on the individual
Pangan says the wellness surveys help identify where employees are starting to feel challenged, and the impact this is having on their mental, emotional, physical, financial, and developmental wellbeing.
“We started to notice mental health becoming a challenge,” says Robin Leonard, Co-Founder and CEO at AFDigital. “People were saying they were burnt out, and had meeting after meeting with no gaps. That’s where we started seeing that while it’s great we were productive, it was not sustainable.”
Leonard explains that personalised insights from the wellness surveys are helping the company take a more individualised approach to improving employee wellness. This was particularly useful during the height of the pandemic.
“We were finding people who were struggling with their work because their household was struggling,” he says. “For example, we could identify if our people had no space to work from home and rent them a small nearby workspace so they could safely work away from their home.”
“Employee wellness has to be very one-to-one. The individualised insights coming from the wellness survey enable us to take that approach.”
Redefining human experiences
While Pangan says it’s certainly true that happy employees are productive employees, boosting productivity is not necessarily the top priority.
“We are prioritising wellness as a business not just because we care about productivity. But because we want our team to be the best humans they can be,” she explains. “When they are given the tools and awareness to nourish themselves and increase their wellbeing, that’s when they are able to do their best work in service to our customers. This hopefully creates a ripple effect in the community.”
Focusing on the human-side of the equation comes with another key benefit — fostering genuine human connections between employees. This, says Pangan, has in turn helped to create more authentic customer engagements.
“We don’t employ machines, we employ human beings. And they are servicing human beings,” she says. “It’s a very intimate type of business engagement. That’s the reason why we changed our mission statement to ‘redefining human experiences’.”
Finding the bliss point
Pangan says that balancing data-driven decision making with a human approach has been critical to the company’s employee wellness strategy.
“We have amazing technology that enables us to make data-driven business decisions”, she explains. “It affords flexibility to make human emotion-based decisions, which allows us to achieve the bliss point balance of a tech-based, human-focused business.”
Pangan adds that recognising increased employee vulnerability throughout the pandemic has helped to build deeper connections.
“COVID-19 has opened this conversation for us,” she says. “It feels like we can see each other now. We need to bring each other together and be more connected. As employers, we need to make everyone feel that we belong and care about each other.”
Human capital is our greatest asset as a business. We need to bring out the best in them to get the best from them,” Pangan concludes. “When our employees are happy, that’s when they do their best work.”
Hyper-Personalisation: Key to the Future of Digital Banking
As today’s digital-first, ecosystem-driven businesses shoulder their way into the financial services sector, they bring with them a history of revolutionising customer experiences through personalisation. That makes it imperative for traditional financial services companies to up their game. As they go head-to-head with today’s digital-first, ecosystem-driven businesses, their success to a large extent will be determined by how well they understand each customer’s unique needs and are able to deliver hyper-personalised solutions, services, and content.
Customer expectations have changed
Today’s customers want experiences and recommendations that are tailored to their needs. They expect personalised services that are seamless across multiple channels. They want to be treated with empathy and to have their queries resolved as quickly as possible.
Financial services companies are finding innovative ways to meet these expectations. Some are using behavioural analytics and advanced machine learning to capture deep insights on the customer. These companies know their customers’ next move, can guide customers to where they want to go, and recommend the most relevant products, content, and categories.
Other companies are building a 360-degree view of the customer across sales, service, and marketing teams. This makes it easier for them to visualise important events and milestones in their customer’s life and drive more meaningful, personalised conversations. When employees have a single, shared view of the customer, they will also be able to deliver consistent interactions and seamless service across departments.
Working smarter
Digital tools offer exciting opportunities for financial services companies to not only personalise customer engagements, but also improve productivity. Workflow automation frees up employees to focus completely on the customer and their needs, rather than searching for information or performing mundane tasks. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence can provide predictive guidance and recommended actions to strengthen customer engagement. It can also enable teams to quickly search knowledge repositories for the most relevant information to personalise service.
Find out more
Hyper-personalisation is an opportunity to build enriching and rewarding relationships with customers. It also represents a strong competitive advantage in an increasingly crowded landscape.
Find out more in our latest e-book, Hyper-personalisation: Key to the Future of Digital Banking in ASEAN.
How To Use Slack for Customer Service To Boost Satisfaction
In our work-from-anywhere world, team collaboration is every contact center manager’s top priority. But the reality is that support teams are often siloed from important departments, expertise, and technology. Service agents toggle between too many tools while managers lack a complete view into workloads and performance. This prevents teams from delivering fast, quality customer support.
There has to be a more human,collaborativeway.
That’s where Slack for customer service comes in. It’s designed to connect teams and mobilise the entire organisation to better serve your customer. The result is faster case resolutions, higher agent productivity, increased customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), and a transformed customer experience. Here’s how it works:
Slack is more than a messaging tool
It integrates withService Cloudto bring service teams a collaboration platform where they access valuable customer data, key information, and cross-functional partners for faster resolutions.
“With Slack for customer service, we’re now able to connect customer service across an entire company —from customer support agents to product engineering, DevOps, security teams, and other departments,” said Clara Shih, CEO of Service Cloud. “In today’s remote and hybrid work reality, customer-facing teams need to be able to easily communicate and collaborate with operations and incident management functions to rapidly problem-solve, resolve complex issues, and unleash the full productivity of the organisation.”
Consider these four ways to use Slack for customer service:
1. Quickly help customers with an AI-powered knowledge base
The majority of service agents (63%) still struggle to balance speed and quality, according to our latestState of Servicereport. One key reason: most work across multiple systems to access experts and knowledge.
With Slack, agents tap into a collective knowledge base, without having to work across multiple screens. Work in Slack happens in channels, a home for all the messages and files related to a specific team or topic. As teams work through complex issues together, a searchable knowledge base grows.
The predictive search function usesartificial intelligence (AI)to show the most relevant and helpful content to resolve cases, including knowledge base articles, logged files, and past resolved tickets. Over time, AI and machine learning (ML) understand the types of searches that your service agents perform to provide the most helpful information.
2. Provide personalised service to key business-to-business accounts with Slack
Impersonal, one-size-fits-all service no longer meets customer expectations. Just like in our consumer lives, today’s business customers expect service to be tailored to their needs. But business-to-business (B2B) issues are more complex and may require an entire ecosystem of internal and external partners to resolve.
Quick collaboration between all these parties is often a challenge. With Slack, you can transform the way you work by moving out of siloed conversations. Rather than having to chase down contacts and answers, the service team loops in the right experts — other departments, as well as external partners and vendors — in a single, shared, secure place. Customers can bring their tools, documents, and people with them, creating a new avenue for stronger customer relationships.
For example, take the case of a vending machine company. A corporate customer calls the company to report that one type of candy bar keeps getting stuck. Nothing changed with the vending machine, nor did the customer change their candy offering. The agent brings an expert from the candy company into a channel inSlack Connect— a place for connecting with people outside your company — to figure out what’s going on.
The partner explains that the company recently changed the packaging size of that particular candy bar. Next, the partner shares recommendations for similar products that would easily fit the vending machine. The agent relays this information back to the customer. Then, the agent documents the steps to help other agents handle similar requests. The agent goes one step further to help customers who may face similar issues by proactively alerting them to the packaging change and replacement options.
3. Provide proactive service during incident management
The unexpected happens. Whether it’s a security breach or power outage, service teams need to handle large-scale incidents on the fly.
Slack provides a single place for service agents, engineers, and whoever is analysing the root cause of the incident to come together. In Slack, everyone has the information and tools they need to take action as quickly as possible so customers get answers fast. That moves service from reactive (answering customer questions when they reach out) toproactive, which involves sharing key information with customers before they realise that they need it.
“Using Slack unlocks proactive service — teams swarming and problem-solving on Slack are seamlessly connected with customer-facing teams who can view real-time status of issues and resolutions. This helps businesses proactively inform affected customersbeforethey call in,” said Shih.
4. Solve tough issues by case swarming with Slack for customer service
Seventy-seven percent of service agents say their role ismore strategic than it was two years ago. This includes handling more complex cases. However, the answers to complex issues are not always available in your knowledge base.
Slack connects your service console with the rest of your business so that experts come together to solve problems in real time. This sets off thecase swarmingprocess (also referred to asintelligent swarming, or incident swarming).
Say a high-value business customer has a complicated request to split the shipment of a large order to multiple locations over time. The service agent pushes a request into a Slack channel for cross-functional partners, subject matter experts, and managers to swarm the case. They set up a quick discussion to get on the same page and document the steps to resolve the case. When teams take a collaborative approach like this on Slack, the customer has a faster, better experience.
One of the unexpected benefits of case swarming is accelerated agent training. This is especially important in a remote work environment, where agents can’t huddle in person at the office. Less experienced service agents and highly-skilled experts come together to solve cases in real-time. Service agents access previously siloed expertise and acquire new skills on the job.
How to get started with Slack for customer service
Slack for customer service makes your support tools even more valuable by bridging the gap between service and the rest of your company. Instead of jumping to different systems and losing valuable time tracking down the right expert, service agents focus on what matters: your customers.
See how to give your customers an all-digital, end-to-end experience they will love with Service Cloud and Slack. Find out more about Slack for customer service, and learn how to build end-to-end engagement from anywhere.
This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How SMEs Can Achieve Business Growth With One Unified CRM
Many Singapore-based small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are using digital transformation to achieve business growth, and overcome declining revenues due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions. According to the Survey on Impact of Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) Measures on Businesses*, 53% of respondents expect their overall business revenues to decline by more than 25%.
This is largely due to demand uncertainty. SBF’s National Business Survey 2020/21 revealed that uncertain demand for business services or products is the leading challenge for 59% of Singapore SMEs.
How SMEs can future-proof their business models and processes
Digital transformation is the key to overcoming these challenges.
Today, customers expect to be able to engage with brands digitally. They want personalised online experiences and expect consistent interactions no matter which department they talk to. SMEs will therefore have to adapt accordingly and acquire digital capabilities.
In fact, the effective use of technology can be a differentiator for SMEs. According to our Small and Medium Business Trends Report, 51% of growing SMEs say technology drives the growth of their customer bases.
SBF’s National Business survey revealed that 84% of businesses have accelerated their digital transformation by an average of two years. Streamlining business and operational processes will also be the priority for 19% of Singapore businesses as they seek to overcome challenges associated with COVID-19 over the next 12 months.
One unified view: the core enabler of digital transformation
Fifty-six percent of SMEs worldwide use a customer relationship management (CRM) system, according to our Small and Medium Business Trends Report. That’s a 24% increase from 2019 to 2020. With a CRM system, SMEs reap benefits like delivering faster customer service and having a unified view of the customer.
Customer 360 delivers these benefits and more. With Customer 360, every team — sales, service, marketing, commerce, and beyond — can have a single, shared view of customers on an integrated CRM platform. This single source of truth enables employees to work together to build lasting, trusted relationships and deliver the intelligent, personalised experiences their customers expect.
Technologies like CRM can seem daunting to SMEs that are starting their digital transformation journeys for the first time. To help SMEs succeed, SBF and LIKE.TG will be hosting our first joint webinar: How SMEs Can Reimagine and Pivot Your Business Growth With One Unified CRM.
Join the webinar and accelerate your digital transformation
In this webinar, LIKE.TG and SBF experts will share how SMEs can kickstart their digital transformation plans by using a single platform tailored to the needs of SMEs. You’ll learn how to:
Automate your business processes across cross-functional departments, allowing you and your team to scale for the future of work
Connect your tools and systems in one platform to get a complete view of your business and a single view of your customer
Find more customers, win more deals, and keep customers happy with loyalty
Aside from LIKE.TG and SBF experts, we have also invited a LIKE.TG customer to share their digital transformation experiences. Justin Choo, Founder and CEO of Knorex, will share how the cloud marketing platform provider embraced rapid digital transformation and grew despite the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Justin will also talk about how Knorex used the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) to help fund up to 80% of the company’s Salesforce-enabled transformation.
Digital transformation is helping Singapore SMEs grow in spite of COVID-19 restrictions. But you need the right technology to power your digital transformation.
LIKE.TG brings companies closer to their customers in the digital age, while SBF supports Singapore SMEs in their recovery and growth journey. Join us for the webinar on 26 August, 10.30am SGT and be the next game-changer for your business.
Note: This webinar is most suitable for Singapore companies with up to 200 employees. LIKE.TG is a pre-approved IT vendor for the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) under the SMEs Go Digital program.
*Survey on Impact of Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) Measures on Businesses conducted by the Singapore Business Federation, Singapore Manufacturing Federation, American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore, British Chamber of Commerce Singapore and European Chamber of Commerce in Singapore
84% of Marketers Say Customer Priorities Shift Their Digital Strategy
Digital transformation isn’t just a buzzworthy phrase — it has quickly become the reality for marketing organisations around the world.
Eighty-four percent of marketers surveyed in our latestState of Marketingreport said customer expectations are changing their digital strategies. As that transformation continues, they also indicated their jobs have become more important. Seventy-seven percent of marketers surveyed said they feel their work adds more value than it did a year ago.
This year’s State of Marketing report, now in its seventh edition, is our largest-ever pulse check on global marketing trends, with insights from more than 8,200 respondents across 37 countries. Representative of marketing roles from the event marketer to the CMO, this survey taps into what has inspired and challenged marketers over the past year, and what they’re expecting in the times ahead.
For instance,working from anywhere is here to stay. Eighty-two percent of marketers say their company is adopting new policies around remote work. Despite the harsh challenges of the past year, marketers have found innovative ways to connect with their customers — and each other. Yet 69% of marketers still say collaboration is tougher than before the pandemic. How do marketers grapple with our new reality as we emerge from one year of transformation into the next?
Read on for five key takeaways from the report.
1. Collaboration is now a top priority and challenge
Some of marketers’ top priorities and challenges are evergreen — innovation and real-time customer engagement, for example. It’s what’s new to the list that paints a vivid picture of what marketers are excited about — and concerned by.
Top priorities and challenges of marketers in Southeast Asia. Visit Tableau to learn more.
We’ll start by talking about what’s new to both marketers’ top priorities and top challenges lists — collaboration. During the shift to remote-first work, marketers may feel like they’ve lost touch with their colleagues. Givenemployees’ and companies’ interestin continuing flexible and remote work, marketers will likely continue to use an evolving set of technologies, such as video conferencing and messaging platforms.
Marketers had two other new priorities in their top five this year — creating a cohesive customer journey across channels and devices, and improving marketing ROI and attribution. Collaboration is essential to achieving both of these. Collaboration within the marketing org — and with sales and service departments — is the only way marketers can deliver a cohesive experience at every customer touch point. It’s no wonder that 78% of marketing organisations have adopted new work-collaboration technology due to the pandemic. Coordination across marketing campaigns and activities (as well as solid digital savvy) will help marketers find new, innovative ways to measure marketing ROI. Since only 31% of marketers are completely satisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI and performance, leaders should make a concerted effort to improve their measurement capabilities.
Aside from collaboration, there was another new challenge in marketers’ top five this year: insufficient organisational structures and processes. It’s natural for marketers to feel unprepared for the rapid pace of business transformation that they experienced over the past year. But now is the time to step back and look at how to improve processes to better serve customers, operate internally, and drive growth.
2. Innovation and resilience help marketers deliver on customer demands in digital
Since the start of the pandemic,60% of consumer interactions with companies have been digital, compared to 42% pre-pandemic.
Although pursuing digital innovation can be daunting due to the overwhelming amount of new channels and technologies in the market, marketers are leaning in. Even digital channels we might have classified as “emerging” recently are seeing widespread adoption, such as podcasts and streaming (OTT) ads.
Marketing organisations in Southeast Asia use these media channels. Visit Tableau to learn more.
In the end, it’s innovation and resilience that separates those digital marketers who are best prepared for the digital long-haul from the competition. Forty-eight percent of underperforming marketers — those moderately or less satisfied with their overall performance and investment outcomes — say they struggle to innovate their marketing strategies, tactics, and technology. That’s compared to just 31% of high performers — those completely satisfied — who say the same.
3. More data doesn’t mean better data or smarter data decisions
Marketers are planning to use 75% more data sources on average by 2022 than they did in 2020. Yet only 33% of marketers are completely satisfied with their ability to use data to create more relevant customer experiences.
Parsing that out between high-performing marketing organisations and underperformers reveals another striking statistic. Compared to 47% of high performers, only 8% of underperformers were completely satisfied with their use of data to craft relevant customer experiences.
There’s a clear problem in the world of customer data. How do we fix it?
Marketers must know that more data sources doesn’t necessarily mean richer customer insights. In fact, marketers felt that across the board, their data quality left much to be desired.
Percentage of marketers in Southeast Asia who are completely satisfied with various aspects of their customer data. Visit Tableau to learn more.
Marketing leaders can take advantage of the opportunity to improve their data management by becoming data champions within their organisation and by boosting the data literacy of their teams. Data literacy will help marketing leaders improve on things like data quality by being purposeful in choosing data sources, and data integration by being fluent enough to partner closely with IT.
The future of marketing strategy is data-driven, so improving our data practice is an investment in long-term success.
4. Account-based marketing soars — with caveats
Last year’s State of Marketing reportfound that account-based marketing (ABM) programs had rapidly gained in popularity. This year, 79% of B2B marketers said they’re using an ABM platform, and account-based marketing comprised an average of 16% of B2B and B2B2C marketing budgets. B2B buyers expect the same level of empathy and personalisation that B2C consumers have come to enjoy, especially during the pandemic-era shift to digital-first B2B selling — a trend that ABM programs address.
How marketers in Southeast Asia feel about various aspects of their ABM programmes. Visit Tableau to learn more.
Despite the resources being dedicated to ABM, fewer than half of marketers are completely satisfied with any one element of their account-based marketing programs — including technology, measurement, personalisation capabilities, and the identification of target accounts. Where’s the disconnect?
Although ABM programs are relatively new to the B2B marketers’ toolkit, marketers shouldn’t be complacent when adopting these strategies. They require dedication to coordinating with sales teams, as well as digital and technology skills that evolve as quickly as the market does.
We’ll continue to see ABM in B2B marketers’ toolboxes. But marketers should make plans now to improve the requisite digital skill sets and internal sales and service processes thatmake account-based marketing programs successful.
5. Marketers need relevant training to prepare for the future
There are two main approaches to improving a marketing team’s skills: Hiring to fill knowledge gaps and upskilling or reskilling current staff members to keep up with the pace of change. What’s the best option to future-proof a team’s success?
It may depend on the quality of the internal training resources at hand. Unfortunately, that’s a cause for concern for many teams: only 44% of marketers rate the employee training they receive as excellent.
Even marketers’ top-requested skills training is falling short. The No. 1 skill marketers said they want to improve is creativity, yet only 44% of companies offer training in that area. Even critical data analytics skills that are in high demand are falling behind, with only 39% of companies offering analytics training.
So marketing leaders must make the choice: Do I rely on the quality of the reskilling resources I have, or do I look elsewhere?
The choice starts with making the conscious decision to be proactive. Marketing leaders should take a hard look at their existing training resources to decide whether they are enough to prepare teams for the future of marketing strategy. Having the right skills on your team means marketers can react to dynamic market conditions and embrace new trends in what customers want and need.
For marketers around the world, future-proofing success can feel unattainable given the rapid pace of transformation across all industries. But preparation, and being willing to look outside the box forresources to upskill your teams, can be the solution marketers need.
This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
9 Ways LIKE.TG Brings Companies and Customers Together
As the world’s #1 CRM, LIKE.TG brings companies and customers together.
This is possible through LIKE.TG Customer 360. It’s an integrated, AI-powered customer relationship management (CRM) platform that unites departments and gives them a single view of your customer. This enables your teams to create connected, personal customer experiences that build stronger relationships.
LIKE.TG Customer 360 is designed to be tailored to the needs of every business. We have specialised solutions to support the capabilities you need to thrive and grow. We also have an extensive network of ecosystem partners offering apps and guidance to help you craft a truly customised experience.
Read the infographic below to learn about the various LIKE.TG Customer 360 solutions and apps. These include: sales, service, marketing, IT (platform), commerce, Tableau analytics, data integration (MuleSoft), and partners (AppExchange).
No matter your business type, LIKE.TG Customer 360 helps your teams come together, serve customers better, and grow your business.
For details on this infographic, please click here.
Is Your Marketing Personalisation Strategy Where It Needs To Be?
I’ve been on the hunt for a house lately. This involves me sending out a lot of emails, and calling real estate agents about properties.
In doing so, the real estate agents capture my contact details. Even though I hadn’t opted-in for it, I started receiving at least weekly emails from dozens of different real estate agents. They made numerous marketing personalisation sins:
Their list of properties seem to be the real estate’s inventory. Not a curated list of properties in my price range, in the suburbs I’m looking at, with the features I want.
All of the properties link to the real estate agent’s website, rather than my preferred real estate listings site
Each email contains a handful of properties (rarely good ones I might add). All linking to the real estate agent’s website (rather than my preferred real estate listings website).
The email tends to get lost among all the other property-related emails in my inbox.
BUT their emails did start with “Hi Dan”, so everything’s great right?
Email isn’t my personal favourite channel. But there’s no denying that email is asuperstar when it comes to ROI. Companies of all shapes and sizes will benefit from investing in strong email personalisation capabilities. However, for too many marketers, the real estate example is actually the best personalisation they’re doing today.
Digital advertising? Ask the media agency. SMS? Too expensive, just send more emails. Website personalisation? There are several country specific websites, but they’re identical.
Not good enough.
The sad reality is that too few marketers invest in the infrastructure and resources needed to deliver truly relevant and consistent messaging across every channel.
Why marketers need to embrace continuous improvement
People, in general, are uncomfortable with change. We like the known, the familiar. Yet, technologies and trends are always evolving. For example, customer data platforms are transforming the way pizza companies engage with their customers. Some brands have gone beyond personalisation to deliver hyper-personalised experiences: one-to-one conversations with each customer across all channels. Faced with such major changes, it’s natural for people to retreat to what’s familiar.
However, over the past year, brands have done the impossible. They have accelerated their digital transformation and compressed years of marketing development into a few months. This cannot be a one-time thing. Marketers need to adopt a philosophy of continuous improvement. There’s a reason business schools all around the world teach students the story ofToyota. Toyota’s kaizen philosophy is one of the key lessons that every successful business, regardless of country or industry, should take to heart.
Ask yourself if your company is doing everything they can in these areas:
Data strategy: how is data collected and managed? Is it used to its full potential?
Integration: is your data stuck in silos or unified in one easily accessible place?
Data hygiene: is your database regularly cleansed, standardised, and de-duplicated?
ID management: do you have unique customer IDs across channels that allow for omnichannel engagement?
Reporting and analytics: is data used to drive marketing decisions? How automated is your reporting?
Start small, but start today
It’s a challenging time to be in marketing.
The remit of marketing has expanded beyond branding to encompass business growth and return on investment. There has been an explosive growth of marketing technology solutions over the years. As of April 2020, there are 8,000 marketing technology solutions. Digital skills training in the Asia-Pacific region needs to keep up with technological advances. For example, Singapore will need 1.2 million more digital workers by 2025 to remain competitive.
Don’t get overwhelmed with re-thinking your entire approach to marketing personalisation. It’s crucial to remember that perfect should never be the enemy of good.
Start small, but never stop moving forward. Seek continuous improvement. You can start by revamping your email newsletter, so that it is relevant to your audience. Then, you might sync your customer data to Facebook, so you aren’t advertising to people who actually look at your emails. Building on success, you can implement one-to-one engagement across all touchpoints, using real-time personalisation and interaction management solutions.
Know that you don’t have to do all of this on your own. The right partner can help to build and grow successful businesses. Take the team at Verticurl, a LIKE.TG partner, for example. They are experts on marketing technology and how marketers can make the most out of their marketing data. For example, how the deprecation of third party cookies will impact marketers and their personalisation efforts.
If you’re wondering where the gaps in your personalisation strategy are, check out Verticurl’s Database Maturity Assessment to see where there’s room for improvement.
Bridging APAC’s Digital Skills Gap: 4 Key Insights From Industry and Government Luminaries
The past year and a half have seen a decade’s worth of digital change. Everything we do—from communication to commerce and consumption—has been transformed by digital technologies.
These advancements can unlock tremendous value for our societies. But they can also reinforce and exacerbate inequalities, unless webridge the digital skills gap—starting with the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
A recent report from AlphaBeta (commissioned by Amazon Web Services) found that by 2025, the number of APAC workers requiring digital skills will grow over five-fold. The average worker will need to learn seven new digital skills. This will call for about 5.7 billion digital skill trainings.
How do we get to this point? What can businesses and governments in the APAC region do to improve access to digital skills training?
To find some answers, LIKE.TG hosted a panel discussion on ‘Bridging the digital skills gap in the APAC region’. The panel featured several industry thought leaders and government luminaries:
Terence Chia: Cluster Director, Human Capital Cluster, Digital Industry and Talent Group, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), Singapore
Ved Mani Tiwari: COO, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), India
Patrick Kidd: CEO, Digital Skills Organisation, Australia
William Sim: VP, Trailhead Academy (APAC), LIKE.TG
Here are a few key takeaways from the session that are particularly relevant to Singapore:
Gaps can be transformed into opportunities
To close the digital skills gap, we first need to understand what’s missing. Then, find a way to transform that gap into an opportunity. For example, as banking consumers moved increasingly away from in-person banking towards digital banking, DBS Bank proactively trained branch tellers in digital skills that would enable them to provide better service to customers, including as video-tellers. That way, DBS Bank engaged their employees as partners in the bank’s digital transformation journey.
Many solutions that fill digital gaps can be replicated across the economy. IMDA facilitates this through initiatives, like the Open Innovation Programme, that connect technology solution providers with companies that need such transformative solutions. Sharing and scaling up digital capabilities, techniques, and solutions can prepare our industries for a digital future.
“Let’s see the gaps as opportunities to do good.”
Terence Chia | Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), Singapore
The supply of digital skills must match the demand
There’s plenty of demand for digital skills. The LIKE.TG economy alone is expected to create 8,500 direct jobs and 17,000 indirect jobs in Singapore between 2019 and 2024.
To fill these jobs, we need skilled people, including Salesforce-qualified professionals and other skilled resources. That’s whyTrailhead is taking the initiative toempower students and aspiring professionals with the in-demand digital skills that will set them up for a successful career.
LIKE.TG strongly believes that access to quality training shouldn’t be based on an individual’s propensity to pay for it, but simply their propensity to learn. Therefore, all Trailhead courses are free.
The end goal isn’t just to train or upskill individuals, but to place them within LIKE.TG’s global ecosystem of customers and partners. It’s a win-win for everyone. Aspirants can connect to exciting job opportunities within the LIKE.TG economy. In turn, LIKE.TG’s customers and partners gain access to a range of skilled professionals.
“Through our digital skilling programs, we want people to achieve better jobs, better living standards, and a better future.”
William Sim | Trailhead Academy (APAC), LIKE.TG
Both public and private sectors have a role to play
The Singapore government runs surveys every year to assess digital inclusion and skills. They also rely on the private sector for industry feedback and information. Both parties must work together to generate a positive impact at every level of the ‘digital skills stack’.
The lowest level, base skilling, is about ensuring that every Singaporean has basic digital literacy skills. Schools already train children to understand the fundamentals of software coding. The private sector can support these efforts by, for example, funding student laptops and providing basic IT skills training.
The next level, cross-skilling, is about recognising that digital skills are crucial not just for software programmers or data scientists, but also for marketers, service reps, and other professionals. Therefore, digital skills training should be an integral part of academic courses at the university level. The private sector can help by ensuring that academic curricula are aligned with industry demands.
The last level, upskilling, is about making sure that digital skills evolve at the same pace as industry opportunities. This is where the private sector can play the largest role. For example, LIKE.TG’s Trailhead Academy has partnered with Workforce Singapore to run the LIKE.TG Professional Conversion Program (PCP). The program equips working professionals for new career opportunities with LIKE.TG customers.
More public-private partnerships like these can help unlock Singapore’s true growth potential.
“Let’s simplify, align, and collaborate. Then we can exert influence.”
Patrick Kidd | Digital Skills Organisation, Australia
Digital skills development must be holistic
In the digital age, technical skills like software programming and data science will continue to be important. But as AI and automation take over more tasks, soft skills like thinking critically and communicating well will also become essential. A truly effective digital skills program will hone both hard and soft skills.
Digital now pervades every industry—including those that were traditionally non-tech. Logistics, for example, uses sensors, robotics, and even self-driving trucks to transport goods faster. The education sector is experimenting with gamification, smart boards, and chatbots to make learning more engaging.
Even skills training programs are using augmented and virtual reality tools to help professionals upskill remotely.
All of this goes to show that digital is the future. The faster we close the skills gap, the better positioned we will be to thrive in an all-digital, work-from-anywhere world.
“Since the pandemic, digital skills have become survival skills.”
Ved Mani Tiwari | National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), India
Visit the LIKE.TG Professional Conversion Programme page to learn how you can improve your digital skills and employability in the Infocomm Technology sector.
Why Customer Service Is the New Sales Engine
Sales and service experts share how these two teams can work together to deliver great customer experiences and build brand loyalty.
The global pandemic has changed the sales landscape forever. Sales teams that were used to meeting face-to-face have had to rapidly switch to virtual selling. Consumers started engaging with businesses online in record numbers, with some shopping online for the first time.
Alongside this shift in buying habits, customers’ ideas about how organisations should behave have changed. More than ever, they expect the businesses they deal with to have values that extend beyond the traditional pursuit of profit. Eighty-nine percent of customers expect companies to clearly state their values, and 90% expect them to clearly demonstrate those values.
Customer experience is also more important than ever. Eighty percent of customers say the experience a company provides is just as important as its product or services.
The role of customer service teams is evolving to help meet these growing expectations. Service has changed from a ‘repair and recovery’ function to become a trusted advisor and custodian of customer care.
The influence of service departments on the sales process is growing, too. By sharing data between departments, service teams can contribute to better sales experiences and improve sales performance. Read the infographic to find out how.
For details on this infographic, please click here.
Machine Learning: 6 Real-World Examples
Machine learning is a modern innovation that has enhanced many industrial and professional processes as well as our daily lives. It’s a subset of artificial intelligence (AI), which focuses on using statistical techniques to build intelligent computer systems to learn from available databases.
With machine learning, computer systems can take all the customer data and utilise it. It operates on what’s been programmed while also adjusting to new conditions or changes. Algorithms adapt to data, developing behaviours that were not programmed in advance.
Learning to read and recognise context means a digital assistant could scan emails and extract the essential information. Inherent in this learning is the ability to make predictions about future customer behaviours. This helps you understand your customers more intimately and not just be responsive, but proactive.
Deep learning is a segment of machine learning. In essence, it’s an artificial neural network with three or more layers. Neural networks with only one layer can make estimated predictions. The addition of more layers can assist with increasing optimisation and accuracy.
Machine learning is relevant in many fields and industries, and has the capability to grow over time. Here are six real-life examples of how machine learning is being used.
1. Image recognition
Image recognition is a well-known and widespread example of machine learning in the real world. It can identify an object as a digital image, based on the intensity of the pixels in black and white images or colour images.
Real-world examples of image recognition:
Label an x-ray as cancerous or not
Assign a name to a photographed face (aka “tagging” on social media)
Recognise handwriting by segmenting a single letter into smaller images
Machine learning is also frequently used for facial recognition within an image. Using a database of people, the system can identify commonalities and match them to faces. This is often used in law enforcement.
2. Speech recognition
Machine learning can translate speech into text. Certain software applications can convert live voice and recorded speech into a text file. The speech can be segmented by intensities on time-frequency bands as well.
Real-world examples of speech recognition:
Voice search
Voice dialling
Appliance control
Some of the most common uses of speech recognition software are devices like Google Home or Amazon Alexa.
3. Medical diagnosis
Machine learning can help with the diagnosis of diseases. Many physicians use chatbots with speech recognition capabilities to discern patterns in symptoms.
Real-world examples for medical diagnosis:
Assisting in formulating a diagnosis or recommending a treatment option
Oncology and pathology use machine learning to recognise cancerous tissue
Analyse bodily fluids
In the case of rare diseases, the joint use of facial recognition software and machine learning helps scan patient photos and identify phenotypes that correlate with rare genetic diseases.
4. Statistical arbitrage
Arbitrage is an automated trading strategy that’s used in finance to manage a large volume of securities. The strategy uses a trading algorithm to analyse a set of securities using economic variables and correlations.
Real-world examples of statistical arbitrage:
Algorithmic trading which analyses a market microstructure
Analyse large data sets
Identify real-time arbitrage opportunities
Machine learning optimises the arbitrage strategy to enhance results.
5. Predictive analytics
Machine learning can classify available data into groups, which are then defined by rules set by analysts. When the classification is complete, the analysts can calculate the probability of a fault.
Real-world examples of predictive analytics:
Predicting whether a transaction is fraudulent or legitimate
Improve prediction systems to calculate the possibility of fault
Predictive analytics is one of the most promising examples of machine learning. It’s applicable for everything; from product development to real estate pricing.
6. Extraction
Machine learning can extract structured information from unstructured data. Organisations amass huge volumes of data from customers. A machine learning algorithm automates the process of annotating datasets for predictive analytics tools.
Real-world examples of extraction:
Generate a model to predict vocal cord disorders
Develop methods to prevent, diagnose, and treat the disorders
Help physicians diagnose and treat problems quickly
Typically, these processes are tedious. But machine learning can track and extract information to obtain billions of data samples.
Machine learning in the future
Machine learning is a remarkable technology in the field of artificial intelligence. Even in its earliest uses, machine learning has already improved our daily lives and the future..
If you’re ready to apply machine learning to your business strategy and create customised experiences, check out the Personalisation Builder. Use the power of predictive analytics and modelling to understand each customer’s preferences!
Interested in artificial intelligence and how it’s affecting the global business landscape? Discover the benefits of AI for businesses in every industry.
The State of CRM Reveals Top Asia-Pacific Trends and Opportunities
Think back to your last online shopping experience. Perhaps it was your regular grocery order, or the latest activewear that you’ve had your eyes on. Maybe something a little more indulgent like that newest gaming console.
Whatever it was, it’s likely you had one of two types of experiences as a customer:
You browsed around, found just what you were looking for, perhaps even received a great discount, placed the order in a click or two, got told exactly when to expect it, received it, and even got a personalised follow-up with some great offers and tips. Seamless from start to finish!
Or, perhaps you had the other type of experience. You know, where the whole thing feels like a frustrating rollercoaster: clunky websites, broken transaction gateways, multiple online chats and phone calls with customer service, and marketing promotion that feels spammy at best. All these before your order was even processed, let alone delivered. Lesson learned: Not ordering from this shop again!
So, what differentiates the first type of experience from the second? Three words: customer relationship management (or CRM). CRM is a technology that helps businesses manage relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. The goal is simple: Improve business relationships (and, therefore, customer experience). A CRM system helps companies stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability.
In short, a good CRM can be the difference between an excellent customer experience and an average one.
The State of CRM in the Asia-Pacific
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a transformative impact on the way we live our lives, run our businesses, and engage with products and services as customers.
This impact manifests in distinct ways. Customers have become more digitally savvy and expect great experiences throughout their purchasing journeys. Yet, many businesses are still playing catch-up when it comes to delivering great digital experiences to their customers.
In fact, new research reveals that over one in two executives in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region have struggled to maintain good customer experience (CX) due to an accelerated transition to remote work.
Download the State of CRM research, featuring a special spotlight on APAC and all the global insights and trends.
The global State of CRM research from Forrester Consulting, commissioned by LIKE.TG, surveyed 795 executives and 1476 employees globally. These include 164 executives and 319 employees across APAC (Australia and New Zealand, India, and Singapore). This research aims to understand how their teams use CRM today, their key challenges, and opportunities for businesses to maximise their use of CRM to grow with resilience.
The challenge
Data, data everywhere
A vast majority (71%) of APAC executives report that customer data in their business originates from far too many sources. This means their teams struggle to make sense of it, access crucial customer insights in real time, or act on them to help deliver good CX.
While this a region-wide challenge, it manifests most prominently in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), with 75% of executives feeling this way.
Remote but not in control
The seismic shift to remote work has also created productivity and communication challenges among employees. This is due largely to the lack of a well-integrated and accessible CRM system. This has had a flow-on effect on CX. In fact, 60% of APAC executives note that they were unable to maintain their customer engagement levels during the shift to remote, a challenge also echoed by employees.
Singapore is the most impacted by this, with 61% of employees reporting communication and coordination issues while working remotely. Meanwhile, workers in India are almost 1.5 times more likely to report that they struggle with accessing their CRM system while working remotely.
Basic doesn’t cut it
A well-integrated, modern CRM can unite multiple teams — beyond just sales and service — to help deliver good CX. However, CRM use in APAC is still largely transactional and basic, with limited adoption of more advanced use cases like deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML). This limits how a business interacts with customers in smart ways, but also how well its employees and teams liaise with each other.
ANZ businesses, in particular, are lagging behind their peers in this regard — with only 25% augmenting employee processes with AI or machine learning (ML) recommendations. That’s compared to 36% and 39% for India and Singapore respectively.
The opportunity
However, these challenges coexist with the silver lining of opportunity.
Prioritising CX
Executives across APAC are intentional about making a change for the positive, with 79% affirming that a CRM system is instrumental in delivering a seamless customer experience. In fact, nearly half of them say that delivering a superior CX across multiple channels of engagement is a top priority for the next 12 months. In even more positive news, a staggering 81% of executives in the region expect CRM use to expand beyond sales and service/support over the next three to five years. This signals improved coordination between teams, as well as a better experience for customers.
This optimism is highest in Singapore at 87%, followed by 82% and 75% in India and ANZ respectively.
Driving efficiencies
While the current use case for CRM across APAC is basic, the research finds that by 2023, 73% of businesses will be using AI-powered automation to enable easier customer engagement. A further 80% will be using automation to relieve employees of repetitive day-to-day processes, allowing them to focus on work that truly matters.
Close to 40% of organisations in Singapore and India are already using AI-driven insights to augment employee processes. While ANZ (25%) is currently lagging, over half of executives there plan to add this capability within the next two years.
The upshot
Employees as changemakers
According to Brian Solis, LIKE.TG’s Global Innovation Evangelist, it’s important to remember that technology alone won’t solve business problems. People are the real changemakers, and they need to be empowered with the right tools and knowledge to achieve greatness. “Adoption, training, and change management are such critical pieces of any CRM deployment, and your overall employee experience (EX). When employees don’t know how to use the CRM, or understand the value CRM can bring to their daily workflows, success and ROI will always remain out of reach,” says Solis.
Security, flexibility, automation
APAC executives want to ensure that employees can access customer data, whenever and wherever they need to. Therefore trust and security come up as the top criteria that regional execs use when evaluating CRM systems. Work-from-anywhere connectivity and advanced capabilities such as AI insights and automation are close behind as the second and third most important priorities.
Integration, integration, integration
It comes as no surprise that customers have come to expect highly personal interactions. They expect any business they interact with to have a full understanding of who they are and where they are in their journey. Teams on the frontlines can’t serve customers by using CRM applications that are disjointed, or only support part of the customer lifecycle. Therefore, businesses need to unify CRM applications, and support role-based views to ensure that customers receive the experiences that they expect.
State of CRM research tells us that organisations that prioritise consistent usage of CRM systems across teams, better training for customer-facing employees, and enhanced automation maximise the power of their CRM to deliver greatest business value. This, therefore, makes them more resilient in the face of massive disruption or change.
5 Ways Marketing Is Changing in ASEAN Countries
Marketers are coming to terms with major changes like evolving customer expectations, advances in technology and tools, and new ways of working.
How is the profession adapting to face future challenges and seize opportunities?
According to the latest edition of our State of Marketing report, marketers are now focused on a future of innovation and real-time engagement. We surveyed over 8,200 marketing leaders from all over the world for this report. More than 1,700 participants came from Southeast Asia.
We have pulled out the insights specific to marketers in ASEAN countries. Some might be a surprise, and some are a call to action. Others show how marketing professionals in this region are staying ahead of the curve.
Read the infographic below to learn more: For details on this infographic, please click here.
How 3 Retailers in Asia Boost Customer Engagement with Marketing Tech
According to more than 8,000 marketers around the world, the single greatest challenge for the profession this year has been real-time customer engagement.
It’s no surprise, then, that the main priorities for marketers looking into the future all revolve around improving customer engagement and creating seamless experiences. The 2021 State of Marketing report, released this past month, reveals what has been top of mind for marketers as they adapt to new customer behaviours and expectations. At the top of the list of priorities are:
Innovating
Engaging with customers in real time
Creating a cohesive customer journey across channels and devices
Improving marketing ROI and attribution
Improving collaboration
There are already great examples of businesses that are nailing customer experience and engagement. They are doing it through the innovative use of technology and collaboration between marketing, sales, and service.
Here are three great examples:
1. Tokopedia
When growing, almost every business reaches a stage where increasing headcount is no longer enough to keep up with service demands.
With more than 100 million active users per month, Indonesia’s largest marketplace platform Tokopedia had to create new ways to deliver trust at scale. The solution came with the optimisation of channels such as email, live chat, and self-service.
Tokopedia was able to implement its LIKE.TG solutions in four months and with zero downtime. Using LIKE.TG gave Tokopedia a 360-degree view of customers. The business achieved some great customer engagement outcomes as a result, including:
Seventy percent drop in repeated contacts
Ninety percent drop in the complaint-to-transaction ratio
Forty percent improvement in response times for customer care
Read more about Tokopedia’s success here.
2. Sendo
Sendo, one of Vietnam’s largest ecommerce businesses, connects more than 300,000 sellers to millions of buyers. Three years ago, their customer service team of just 20 agents had to scale quickly in a heavily siloed technological environment.
The solution involved integrating all data into a single system. This provided a single customer view as well as customer access across multiple channels. Service Cloud and Social Studio enabled this and more at Sendo, including real-time reporting to measure and improve KPIs such as call handling time.
Having all customer information in one place resulted in an increase in productivity by more than 30%. Customer satisfaction has increased 20%, and survey response rate has grown by a massive 150%.
Read more of Sendo’s story here.
3. Fisher Paykel
Premium appliance brand Fisher Paykel is on a mission to be the most human-centred appliance brand in the world. Accomplishing this requires a deep understanding of what people want and need from their products.
As the company sells directly to consumers as well as through a network of retailers, it’s critical that all tools and data are centralised for easy access by other areas of the business.
LIKE.TG solutions have helped Fisher Paykel break down silos and improve efficiencies. Marketing Cloud helps the company tailor communications to individual customer preferences based on previous behaviours. Builders, designers and retailers can make use of a dealer portal built on Experience Cloud that simplifies collaboration and order tracking. And integrating Service Cloud into Fisher Paykel’s call centre is helping service teams get instant insight into the customer at the other end of the phone.
Together, these measures have reduced transactional calls by 60%, and the time it takes to train new operators has shrunk from nine months to three weeks.
Get more insights into Fisher Paykel’s success here.
In 2021, business success involves a deep knowledge of customers as well as one-on-one communications. When all teams have a single and shared view of the customer, customer experience moves to an entirely new level.
Customers Want Connected Experiences. Data Integration Does Just That
It can take up to 35 pieces of data to create one personalised customer experience, according to MuleSoft. Yet, customers crave connected experiences. Customers volunteer information such as what they buy, where they buy it (online or at a store), if they contacted customer service, if they use a coupon, if they read your marketing emails, and on and on. Your customers never stop giving you valuable information about their preferences.
Now, customers want you to remember these interactions. For your brand to connect with them, now and in the future, with these preferences in mind. They want you to see them as individuals. They want you to provide them with the personalised experiences they prefer. According to the 4th Edition of the State of the Connected Customer report, 80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Customers feel so strongly about this, one in three would abandon a brand after only one negative experience.
Customer data increases exponentially
The amount of data organisations must connect, analyse, and act on continues to explode. Yet, only one-third of the average 900 applications enterprise organisations have is connected. It is no wonder nine in 10 IT leaders believe these data silos create unaddressed business challenges.
So, it’s time to ask: What if you could connect all those data points to power all aspects of your business?
This question is creating massive hurdles for many companies across every industry. But this isn’t something IT leaders can ignore if they want to stay competitive and meet evolving customer needs. Instead, a data-driven business should be a priority now — if it wasn’t before 2020. Seventy-two percent of those surveyed in a recent report say experimentation with and investment in digital technologies have played a key role in helping them navigate the crisis. Sixty-seven percent of those same respondents invested more than industry peers in digital-related capital expenditures.
You know there is a better way. Whether it is for your salespeople that spend two-thirds of their time not selling, or for your IT team who spends time on projects that aren’t business-critical. Maybe it is for the customer service people who spend time answering the same questions over and over again. Whomever it is for in your organisation, you know productivity and morale improvements are necessary. That data is the key.
Employee experience supports customer success
Not only should your technology bring you and your customers closer, but it should also support your employees in their work so they can be the glue to keep your customers close. You can useLIKE.TG Customer 360, the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, and Slack to ensure a superior employee experience. It’s time you discover what other innovative companies have: Better employee experiences lead to better customer service experiences. That all leads to business growth.
As businesses work to obtain their footing in a changing world, most (87%) IT and business leaders feel their alignment has improved over the past year. For example, INSEAD CIO Mr. Choo Tatt Saw knows increasing employee productivity means better customer service. “MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform’s API capabilities enabled us to implement automated scheduling and course bookings — improving the efficiency and productivity of our staff. Now, they can focus on higher value tasks instead of manual work.” Additionally, connecting systems through one integrated platform enabled INSEAD to provide a 360-degree view of their data, which in turn powered innovation and cut down on development time from three months to two days.
This type of flexible and secure technology should be at the heart of your digital transformation. As you evaluate solutions, it is crucial to get a trusted technology partner and platform capable of adjusting as your organisation and market needs it to.
Flexible technology is the answer
The MuleSoft Anypoint Platform provides this flexibility. It uses application programming interfaces (APIs) to connect the data from your LIKE.TG CRM to Tableau to visualise that data.It is possible to use Slack as a frontend interface that can enhance inter and intradepartmental communication.
The current business landscape is still evolving as the pandemic economy continues. Businesses that want to continue growing need a flexible platform that can respond quickly to the market. A recent study shows a correlation between those that have successfully navigated the ongoing pandemic and have invested, more than their peers, in experimentation in digital technologies. Whether that is the evolving market of today where coronavirus variants are now surging or the market on the horizon with the return to schools and hybrid work schedules.
What’s next?
The only way to prepare for the unimaginable is to do the best you can with the data you have now. Have reliable, secure, and flexible technology built for agility. Finally, prepare to look at novel business challenges with a “beginner’s mind” when the situation demands it.
Given everything that’s happened since March 2020, are you ready for the next step in your digital transformation? See how MuleSoft (with LIKE.TG, Slack, and Tableau) can provide your customers with the connected experiences they want — faster.
Go ahead, take the next step.
Meet Brandy the Fox, the Newest LIKE.TG Character
We are in a new digital-first world. Customer expectations are changing. We’re working from anywhere. With all of these complex challenges, what’s a marketer to do?
Call Brandy, the newest LIKE.TG character.
Wherever you are in your marketing, Brandy is here to help monitor pipeline, cultivate campaigns, tell stories with personalisation, adapt to trends, and more.
You’ll see her start to appear alongside our other characters — Astro, Codey, Appy, and all our favorite friends — in the coming weeks and months.
Here’s a little more about Brandy the marketer and some insights behind her creation.
The ideas behind our characters
Let’s back up. Why do we haveour LIKE.TG characters, anyway? In 1999, LIKE.TG changed the mindset of what enterprise software could be — easier to purchase, simpler to use, and more democratic without difficulties of installation, maintenance, and constant upgrades.
Left to right: Appy, Einstein, Brandy, Astro, and Cloudy
Our characters reflect this vision. While each of them has a specific job and purpose, every character shares our mission of making technology friendlier, more approachable, and accessible. They also embrace the fun side of our company and inspire our community to blaze new trails.
Fast forward to today and our introduction to Brandy the Marketer. We began by asking ourselves, “What inspires us about our Trailblazers?” To answer the question, we made a list of their best qualities. Then, we went looking for the perfect way to put that into a character’s personality, appearance, and places she’ll show up.
Marketers and foxes have more in common than you might think. Here are some details on Brandy, and why she’s a fox.
Adaptable:Foxes thrive in diverse habitats — from forests to grasslands, mountains, and deserts. They can scale hurdles and swim well. This makes Brandy a welcome companion to marketers navigating a unique landscape of their own — our all-digital, work-from-anywhere world.
Analytical:Foxes scan the field for data. Like marketers today, they have an analytical approach to everything they do. They have an “internal compass” to determine the distance to a goal, just like how marketers use their data to lead their strategy.
Adventurous:Foxes can cover a lot of ground. They’re excellent travelers, always headed toward the next horizon. That’s why Brandy loves planning journeys. She finds the magic in every stop — or customer interaction — along the way.
Approachable:Foxes are warm and friendly. Sometimes misunderstood or portrayed as mischievous, they’re actually quite lovable. Meet any of our Trailblazers, and you’ll walk away inspired and with a smile on your face.
Moment maker:With her camera and watch, Brandy helps marketers deliver amazing customer moments at the right place, at the right time. Moment by moment, she helps marketers build customer relationships that last.
A fox. A friend. A field guide.
With her brilliant mind only matched by her blazing fur coat — perfectly matching Marketing Cloud’s hallmark orange — Brandy truly is a natural fit to the LIKE.TG family.
Brandy is an on-the-go, work-from-anywhere marketer. She’s just like you.
But mainly, she’s just like you: a marketer who delivers unforgettable moments for their customers. See how those moments are being built over by marketers everywhere atMarketer Career Pathon Trailhead.
You’ll be able to:
Skill up in your marketing role.From email marketing to analytics, data science, and more, learn new in-demand marketing skills specific to your current role.
Network with fellow marketers.You don’t have to go it alone. Join a thriving community of marketers and get expert tips, talk strategy, learn about customer trends, and more.
Transform your career.Discover open positions, learn insights from industry leaders, and get inspired with stories of success from marketers just like you.
Grow your career, connect with fellow Trailblazers, and explore what’s possible with marketing. Join the #MomentMarketer community.
This post orginally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
Using Technology To Scale and Grow Small & Fast-Growing Businesses
Customer expectations have changed a lot since 2020. Finding the right technology to engage customers and grow relationships over the long term is now a top priority for small and fast-growing businesses.
According to our fourth Small Medium (SMB) Business Trends Report, more than three-quarters of SMB leaders said last year’s crises should be a catalyst for business improvement.
SMB leaders cite these three factors when it comes to the technology contributing to business success:
It drives my customer interactions (51%)
It influences my organisation’s ability to stay in business (46%)
It drives the growth of my customer base (42%)
SMB leaders are learning that technology can make a critical difference in the success and growth of their business.
To learn more about this critical connection, we spoke to a few fast-growing SMBs at LIKE.TG Live: Asia. Read the infographic below to learn what they said worked for them.
For details on this infographic, please click here.
How Government Generates Trust Through Digital Services in Singapore
A major global study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and LIKE.TG reveals the links between a government’s digital services and levels of trust for government.
It’s not news to anybody that the pandemic has driven people online in record numbers. More people than ever now live more of their lives within a digital realm.
What is fascinating is the effect this is having on customer expectations, and on trust in government.
Whether it’s shopping, working, learning, healthcare or government services, people are looking to the digital realm, first. As they do, they are having varying levels of experience.
Every time they have a wow moment, every time they’re delighted by a remarkable, personalised online interaction, their expectations are being shaped.
The trailblazing report The Global Trust Imperative from BCG and LIKE.TG offers a sharp focus on what those changing expectations mean for governments and their agencies. In particular, this report – developed from surveys with 24,500 people across 36 countries – reveals that 87 per cent of respondents globally believe that a great digital government customer experience would increase their degree of trust. This alone highlights the fact that there is a deep and powerful connection between digital government services and trust in that government.
In Singapore the report found 77 per cent of respondents say great digital experiences would have the highest positive impact on trust for the government. Importantly, almost as many say bad experiences decrease trust. There’s great risk involved in getting digital experience wrong, or not providing it at all.
Some of the findings are encouraging in terms of the positive impact digital upgrades have already had. For example, in Singapore, 54 per cent say their needs are being met by their government’s digital services.
There were several findings of interest to public sector leaders. For example, globally, 94 per cent of customers say they’re not happy with just any digital offering. Customers worldwide expect government digital services to be as good as or better than banks, telcos, leading tech firms or other leading governments. That’s high expectations, indeed.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
What customers want
To know how to best serve customers, first we need to understand what they don’t want. Globally, 70 per cent of customers say the last interaction they had with digital government services had at least one pain point. Although this number varied from country to country, even a leading country like Singapore found that 64 per cent of users faced some type of problem when accessing their digital service.
So what is it that they want? Where are governments falling short in the digital realm?
The most common problems were:
the length or difficulty of the process – 21 per cent
technical difficulties or issues completing their request – 20 per cent
no help available – 16 per cent
not having all the paperwork or information they needed – 16 per cent
Why is all of this important? Because customers are hesitant to share personal data with the government. The report tells us 41 per cent of customers feel they have little control over their data and 37 per cent don’t trust that their data won’t be used for additional purposes without their consent.
But here’s where it gets really interesting. More than half (52 per cent) of customers globally said if they could see how it would benefit themselves, they would be willing to provide personal data to the government.
In other words, the government can build enormous trust by communicating benefits more effectively.
How is this achieved?
In the public sector, spending is at an all-time high. However, budgets are still limited.
Transparency is an important goal – trust will convince customers to share more data. To effectively utilize that data, governments require a modern, agile and resilient technology engine that is fuelled by data.
Government also needs to be where the people are, digitally speaking. That’s not on desktop screens but instead on fully modular devices, the same ones being used by digital natives. If it wants to deliver the right messages and services to the right audiences/users at the right time, the government needs to be on smartphones and tablets.
And speaking of “the right messages” and “the right customers”, data must be utilised to personalise messaging and service. Personalisation further builds trust. It demonstrates interest and thoughtfulness. It streamlines processes. It removes many of the blocks, mentioned above, that make customers feel that the government is falling short in digital delivery.
Finally, the government must seek constant, real-time improvement to its services. For example, great government apps offer a simple choice of thumbs-up or thumbs-down after almost any online interaction. It’s immediate, real-time data that should lead to constant improvement of service.
Breed success by addressing data-sharing fears
The reality is that governments that experience greater trust from their online users deliver better online service. Better service delivery that meets or exceeds user expectations encourages more data to be shared. This drives even better service delivery. It’s a virtuous cycle.
In fact, The Global Trust Imperative tells us that roughly half of all respondents would share their personal information if it would benefit themselves (52 per cent) or the community (47 per cent). To encourage sharing information, governments will first need to address some universal fears. Globally, 1 in 3 users were afraid their personal information would be made public (36 per cent), not stored securely (36 per cent), or could be stolen by hackers (35 per cent).
Therefore, it’s worth putting some effort into the establishment of a data-sharing compact with users. The quality/trust benefits to users and to government agencies should be made clear and tangible.
What are the other high-value focus points to come out of the research?
The first is a recognition of the good work done so far, and the resulting gains in trust over the last few years. During the pandemic, digital projects were delivered at pace and under unprecedented conditions. They were often cross-agency and multi-disciplinary, representing best-practice digital delivery. There’s now a great opportunity to take this experience and trust forward to create ever greater gains.
What does the report make clear? First, digital services that deliver on users’ increasing expectations are critical to a functioning government.
Next, there is a clear connection between a government’s quality of digital services and the overall levels of trust people have in that government.
We know most users are still experiencing problems and challenges with online government services, and are hesitant to share data. We also know that if the personal benefits are clear and tangible, people will be more willing to share their personal data.
Finally, governments able to deliver a high quality of service delivery will achieve enhanced policy outcomes as trust will increase.
Never have technology and human sentiment been so aligned, meaning right now there is great opportunity for governments to innovate in an environment of increasing trust.
Download The Global Trust Imperative report here.
