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Accelerate Your Career With the LIKE.TG ASEAN Developer Challenge
As a LIKE.TG App Developer, you get to work with Customer 360, gain access to a wide range of learning opportunities, and be part of the inclusive LIKE.TG community.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), by 2024, LIKE.TG and its ecosystem of partners may create 8,500 direct and 17,000 indirect jobs in Singapore alone. This is driven in large part by increased demand for cloud solutions and services.
The ASEAN Developer Challenge introduces you to the LIKE.TG ecosystem. Think of it as an opportunity to learn, earn, and connect. Register for the challenge and see how easy it is to begin building enterprise apps on the LIKE.TG Platform. Eventually, you will also get an opportunity to showcase your app-building skills to LIKE.TG customers and partners at an official LIKE.TG Demo Day.
LIKE.TG Developer Advocates will guide you through the challenge, and help you convert your enterprise app idea into a marketable asset. It’s also a great way to get LIKE.TG certified for free, says Joey Chan, a LIKE.TG MVP based in the Philippines.
“Starting as a LIKE.TG Developer is the best decision I’ve made for my career,” he says. “I have joined programming competitions since my university days to hone my skills. This is a great opportunity for everyone in the region to learn and get certified for free!”
How to join the ASEAN Developer Challenge
Participating in the challenge couldn’t be easier. All you need to do is follow these three simple steps:
First, sign up for a free Trailblazer.me account and register for the challenge. Don’t forget to read the program terms.
Next, register for our three training webinars. Complete the Trails on Trailhead that we’ll share with you after each webinar. The first webinar will be held at 1:30 p.m. SGT on September 1, 2021.
Finally, build an app and submit it by 6:30 p.m. SGT on Sunday, October 17, 2021
What happens next?
We’ll feature your app on our Developer community blog. You’ll also reveal your app to LIKE.TG customers and partners at an official LIKE.TG Demo Day at 11:00 a.m. SGT on Wednesday, October 27, 2021.
All participants who complete the required Trails on Trailhead will receive a US$200 Certification Voucher. All participants who attend the Demo Day will receive a US$400 Certification Voucher.
Get your ticket to the LIKE.TG community
Your LIKE.TG journey doesn’t end on Demo Day. As a certified LIKE.TG Developer, you’ll be a valued member of the LIKE.TG community.
Johan Yu, a LIKE.TG MVP based in Singapore, says the challenge is a great way for ASEAN developers to showcase their talent, build their careers, and become an integral part of the growing LIKE.TG ecosystem.
“It’s great to see such programs for the ASEAN community,” he says. “It will help to showcase our expertise, the power of the LIKE.TG platform, and build networks within the community.
“I’d like to ask all ASEAN developers to join this program and use it to get LIKE.TG certified. I’m excited to see what our developers build!”
Start your LIKE.TG App Developer journey and register for the ASEAN Developer Challenge now.
Three Sales Lessons We Can Learn from 2021
Over the past year, your business probably faced its fair share of disruption, resilience, and change. This may be a good time to reflect on the things you have learned and celebrate what you accomplished in the last nine months.
It’s important to take a moment and see how far you’ve come and what you’ve been able to achieve. Learn what you can from 2021, so you can end it on a high, and kick 2022 off to a flying start.
Here are our top three ways to set your teams up for sales success in the year ahead, inspired by our ASEAN 50 Pro Sales Tips guide for 2021:
1. Review your plans
It’s good to review your plans and reflect on what has worked and what hasn’t. After all, good planning is only as effective as your team’s ability to implement it.
Having teams in clear alignment across a business is a guaranteed way to get closer to achieving your goals and targets. One way to help make that happen is to introduce new methodologies into your planning cycle.
One of the tools we use for planning success at LIKE.TG is our V2MOM, which stands for Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures. It’s a robust planning framework for businesses of any size.
The reason the V2MOM works so well is that it helps to align teams around the overall direction of the business. It brings everyone together, from the CEO through to senior managers and sales teams. This provides clarity and momentum around key business objectives.
Sujith Abraham is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of LIKE.TG in Asia. He is a big believer in bringing teams together in alignment.
“The world, customer needs, and workplace operations have changed. You need to build a sales culture that adapts to the new and constantly changing business reality. Now, more than ever, sales leaders need to motivate teams and align representatives to common objectives,” says Abraham.
Jovy Hernandez, Senior Vice President and Head, Enterprise Business at PLDT, advises leaders to “have a vision and purpose for your organisation. Create a sales culture that gives meaning and reason to your day-to-day activities.”
When teams are clear on their purpose and the business objectives, they can start to focus on what matters most. This helps to remove distractions and builds energy across the teams for collaborating on common goals.
2. Empower your teams
So your teams are aligned and you’ve pointed them in the right direction. If you give them the right tools and access to the right data, you can unlock a powerful combination.
Start by empowering your teams and reskilling them, making sure they know how to make the most of any new tools. Cecily Ng is the LIKE.TG Area Vice President and General Manager of Singapore. She suggests fostering a love for learning across your teams.
“To succeed in the new normal, you need to build a resilient sales culture. Reskilling and retraining are critical,” says Ng. “Encourage people to have a mindset for learning, as doing so will drive innovation and growth for your business, now and in the future.”
A customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Customer 360 revolutionises the way your teams communicate with leads. It will allow them to choose the most appropriate time, format, and content for their conversation.
For Avis Easteal, Regional Head of Consumer at Luxasia, timing is everything and applies to all teams across the business.
“Try to understand where the client is in their annual budget and planning process,” she says. “When negotiating, timing can be the difference between success and ‘I can’t right now’. Do your research.”
3. Nurture your relationships
According to a recent State of Sales report, 89% of high-performing sales reps believe there is an increased need to build trust before a sale. Showing empathy for customers during challenging times is one way to build that trust.
“Nurture your contacts. Not everyone is ready to buy straight away, as much as we’d like them to,” says Jimmy Storrier, CEO and Managing Director of Aquient in Singapore. “Take the time to interact with people and check in with them regularly by sharing articles and insights, or a virtual coffee! This builds trust and a solid foundation to grow from.”
Another way to be relevant to your customers is to be active across social media channels and interact with them in helpful ways when appropriate. With 3.78 billion people on earth using social media, this form of social selling continues to rise in popularity.
Tiffani Bova, Global Growth Evangelist for LIKE.TG, believes that social selling has come of age. She says that “social selling should be your default method to connect and engage with customers.”
Whether social selling or interacting with empathy, these are just some of the ways salespeople can nurture their leads and build a pipeline of sales.
Learn from 2021 and accelerate into 2022
By aligning your plans, and giving your teams the tools and training they need, you can elevate their ability to nurture their leads. Don’t forget to keep them motivated and celebrate their wins.
These will set up your sales teams for success and get 2022 off to a great start.
Be inspired by the ASEAN 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2021 with insights and tips from more than 30 industry leaders. Download the e-book and get inspired.
Hyper-personalisation Made Easy With LIKE.TG and MuleSoft
Customers want hyper-personalised experiences. They expect businesses to anticipate their needs. They also want personalised micro moments across their preferred channels.
To achieve this, organisations need a single source of truth that pulls in data from multiple sources to create a 360-degree view of the customer. Together with LIKE.TG Customer 360, MuleSoft can help businesses achieve this vision.
The data integration challenge
LIKE.TG’s State of the Connected Customer report shows 80% of customers say the experience a business provides is as important as its products or services. For business buyers, that figure increases to 85%. Add that to the fact that 52% of customers expect personalised offers every time, and you’ll start to see how much data you need.
Providing hyper-personalised experiences depends on being able to access a single source of truth. Data comes from multiple sources. For a real-time 360-degree view of the customer, all that data needs to be integrated into your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
It’s a big ask. MuleSoft’s Connectivity Benchmark report shows the average enterprise-level organisation runs 843 individual applications . Yet, the surveyed respondents said only 29% of those applications on average are integrated.
Two major hurdles to data integration
Siloed data and legacy IT infrastructure remain the two major stumbling blocks to successful digital transformation.
Siloed sources of critical information undermine your operations by preventing a 360-degree view of the customer. Customers, too, are frustrated as they feel like they are dealing with separate departments, not one company. In fact, 65% of customers say they often have to repeat or re-explain information to different representatives.
MuleSoft’s research reveals that legacy IT infrastructure is an obstacle to many digital initiatives, with 34% of organisations reporting that it presents the main challenge to digital transformation.
While most organisations recognise the importance of data integration then, only 18% say they integrate end-user experiences across all channels.
How MuleSoft Composer delivers API integrations for LIKE.TG
MuleSoft Composer supercharges your CRM by bringing in data from other applications and making it available inside LIKE.TG Customer 360 — no coding involved. With its straightforward click and drag functionionality, MuleSoft Composer can defeat the challenges associated with siloed information.
Inefficiencies associated with disparate systems and manual processes cause slowdown for sales teams. Organisations could be taking orders in Google Sheets, using Netsuite for inventory, invoicing in Xero, and accepting payments via Paypal. But the data from each application is recorded separately, which makes it almost impossible to get a real-time picture of a purchase. This makes it difficult to provide efficient, personalised customer service.
MuleSoft Composer streamlines operations by integrating invoicing, orders, payments, and inventory applications. Once you have all that data in one place, it’s so much easier to get a 360-degree view of your customer.
Every team can benefit from MuleSoft Composer
It’s not just sales teams that benefit. By having all your data accessible, customer service teams can work faster to close tickets. Agents can access all the customer’s information straight away, instead of spending valuable time digging through different apps.
MuleSoft Composer can also connect with your Slack or Microsoft Teams apps. This allows you to set up triggers for other teams. For example, once the accounts team receives a payment, an alert can be sent to the fulfilment team to pack and send an order. By integrating your inventory apps, the team can act with confidence, knowing that they have real-time insight into stock availability.
The advantages go beyond your organisation. Set up automated notifications about their orders, and customers feel the benefits too. Your marketing teams can get in on the action as well. All your automated messages can carry personalised offers to encourage repeat purchases.
Customer expectations are changing
Customers are purchasing online more than ever before and expect quick turnarounds on orders and deliveries. The State of the Connected Customer report reveals that 58% of consumers expect to do more online shopping after the pandemic than before. Eighty percent of business buyers expect to conduct more business online.
Furthermore, 88% of customers expect companies to accelerate digital initiatives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That makes the drive to create hyper-personalised experiences for customers even more compelling
Create integrations with clicks, not code
Because no coding is required to operate MuleSoft Composer, IT teams are free to focus on other tasks. Research shows that IT teams have to deliver 30% more projects on budgets that are growing by less than 10%. Everything you do to make digital transformation simpler is a step in the right direction.
Since MuleSoft Composer can integrate legacy applications into the LIKE.TG platform, an overhaul of an existing tech stack isn’t required. Instead, MuleSoft can work with the IT infrastructure the organisation already has in place.
Customer experience is a driving force behind business success. To deliver hyper-personalised customer experiences, you need a 360-degree view of your customer. To get that view, your data needs to be integrated into one system. MuleSoft Composer brings data into your LIKE.TG CRM simply and powerfully, providing your entire organisation with data they can rely on.
Tune in to the webinar to hear Amy McDonnell, Head of MuleSoft Composer, in conversation with Vijay Iyer, Director, Solution Engineering, at LIKE.TG. They discuss the challenges that are facing enterprise organisations and how LIKE.TG and MuleSoft Composer can help meet them.
Dreamforce 2021 Is Coming: Here’s What You Need To Know
You saw Dreamforce reimagined in 2020 when we hosted the event completely virtual for the first time. A live-streamed keynote, personalised content, four days of digital learning, and 140 million views later, and you can bet our virtual experience game has never been better.
This time, prepare to take another leap as LIKE.TG takes Dreamforce 2021 global in exciting new ways on September 22–24 (Asia-Pacific timezones).
San Francisco remains the heart of Dreamforce, but in 2021 there will be plenty of innovation, inspiration, and customer success from across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Think of it as having a front-row seat to all of the Dreamforce action — no matter where in the world you are.
Screentime never looked so good: introducing LIKE.TG+
Attending online has never been easier or more fun. This year, we’re thrilled to introduce LIKE.TG+. It’s designed so that anyone can experience live LIKE.TG broadcasts from anywhere in the world and stream original content series on demand. As the world changed the way they consume content, so did we.
We’ve got four channels ready for Dreamforce, delivering more than 100 hours of innovative and inspiring content:
Prime Time: This is where to go for the best of Dreamforce, live from around the globe. Think LIKE.TG executives, global leaders, and changemakers.
Trailblazer: Tune in to hear from Trailblazing pioneers, innovators, and lifelong learners. You can also discover how to use LIKE.TG to do well and do good in your career, company, and community. Curious about the latest Customer 360 product innovations? This is where you can see them come to life and get sneak peeks at the LIKE.TG product roadmap.
Customer 360: Immerse yourself in success stories from Trailblazers, and get behind-the-scenes content highlighting innovations from the LIKE.TG experts who created them.
Industries: Switch to this channel for stories on how industry innovators are driving growth and reimagining their industries for an all-digital, work-from-anywhere world.
The details — with more to come
When: September 22–24, 2021. Join the APAC Takeover as we count down to the Dreamforce Main Show from 11 a.m. SGT/HKT, 22 September, 2021.
Where: Everywhere! You can find a schedule of events and experiences happening in the APAC region here.
What: Think expert-led demos, top tips from LIKE.TG leaders from across APAC, unmissable insights from innovative Trailblazers such as Singapore Airlines, Telstra, Titan, and Toys“R”Us, and more.
Who is in on the APAC Dreamforce action: Our lips are sealed — for the moment. But LIKE.TG APAC is very excited about the two major business partners we have on board for Dreamforce. They are experts at keeping everyone connected and making the digital world a fun one to inhabit. Register for the latest updates.
Where do I start: Sign up for a free LIKE.TG+ membership today so you’re ready for when the action starts in September.
This post originally appeared on the A.U.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
5 Ways a CRM Can Help Financial Services Close the Personalisation Gap
Digital transformation has been an imperative for financial services institutions over the course of the pandemic. The LIKE.TG Trends in Financial Services report shows that as customer demand for advanced digital capabilities soared, the financial services industry prioritised implementing new technologies over improving customer experience. However, this has left only 27% of customers feeling the financial services industry is customer-centric.
Rather than replacing customer experience with the implementation of new technologies, there is an opportunity here for both of these priorities to work hand-in-hand. Indeed, new technologies, including customer relationship management (CRM) tools, can help create the personalised experiences customers demand from their banks and insurers.
1. Enabling a seamless omni-channel experience
Digital-first fintechs are already offering digitised personalisation. This inspires traditional banks and insurers to digitally transform as well.
With face-to-face meetings with customers becoming less common, it’s essential for financial services institutions to offer innovative alternatives. Using a CRM for financial services can help.
By bringing together real-time customer data from multiple sources and channels, a conversation can move seamlessly from chat bot to Messenger to email to phone call and back again. Given that 65% of customers say they often have to repeat information to different representatives, this kind of continuity is essential to providing personalised service. Digital engagement is built into the LIKE.TG Financial Services Cloud platform, giving companies a 360-degree view of the customer. This interaction never falters as information from one encounter is carried through to the next in a timely, collaborative way.
Banks and insurers often grapple with multiple systems, processes, and teams in an effort to create connected experiences for their customers. MuleSoft can integrate multiple systems to support the omni-channel experience that customers desire.
2. Making every communication count
Meeting the digital transformation imperative doesn’t mean bombarding the customer with emails and messages just because you can. Rather, it’s about using technology to offer relevant communications to the right customer at the right time. The State of the Connected Customer report showed that 52% of customers expect offers to always be personalised.
Financial Services Cloud can facilitate personalised interactions with client profiles centred on personal goals, pivotal life events, and business milestones. It can help businesses nurture deeper relationships by staying in touch with proactive tracking and event alerts to remind you to reach out when a customer needs you most.
Tools like Email Studio segment audiences so banks and insurers can filter profiles rapidly and make relevant offerings to the customers most likely to respond.
Journey Builder can expand on personalised communications by helping banks and insurers to deliver the right information to customers not just via email, but across web landing pages, ads, and apps. Instead of getting one-size-fits all solutions, customers are guided through a journey that adapts to real-time events like purchases, app downloads, or service cases.
3. Predicting needs with artificial intelligence
Key to solving a customer’s problem is knowing the customer. With CRM providing a single source of truth, the information needed to address an issue is always at hand.
A CRM tool that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI) can take that customer knowledge and personalisation to the next level. With Einstein, banking and insurance representatives can get deeper insights into their customers. Have they bought a new house or had a baby? Were they made redundant during the pandemic? Did they buy a new car?
It’s the kind of knowledge that allows banks and insurers to engage more proactively with their customers and more accurately forecast problems and opportunities. Einstein Discovery, together with Tableau and Financial Services Cloud, allows banks and insurers to prescribe corrective actions to help minimise client churn and maximise opportunities to grow account assets.
Einstein Relationship Insights (ERI) brings critical insights from disparate sources (including the web, news, and internal and external documents) to uncover the most relevant information for every customer and reveal new leads.
AI capabilities can also help banking and insurance representatives engage with more empathy. This quality is in increasingly high demand, and one that represents a valuable competitive advantage. LIKE.TG research shows that 68% of customers expect the companies they engage with to demonstrate empathy, but only 37% say this actually happens.
Transparency and regulatory compliance around how personal information is gathered and accessed is crucial. With consumers more aware of digital privacy regulations, having a clear data protection policy presents an opportunity to nurture a relationship of trust with the customer.
4. Supporting collaboration
Integrated with LIKE.TG Financial Services Cloud, Slack is a powerful tool for collaboration that ultimately helps improve the customer experience. Slack enables banking and insurance representatives to pull in the right people and the right data for a conversation in the context of a specific opportunity, case, or campaign.
Case swarming is a collaborative approach to customer service. Service agents can resolve issues by calling upon expertise from other teams, while simultaneously guiding the customer. Slack’s integration with CRM gives a 360-degree view of the customer, while the channel format allows the representative to gain input at speed.
In corporate and investment banking, Slack integrates with Financial Services Cloud to offer dedicated deal rooms. These rooms are where all the parties involved in a complex sale can stay on top of the ebb and flow of account activities.
For investment banking and advisory teams competing to win more deal mandates, Slack and Financial Services Cloud are now purpose-built for deal teams. Together, both can help fuel productivity with actionable insights and research, a deeper understanding of clients, and built-in compliance to collaborate and share sensitive information throughout the lifecycle of a deal.
5. Using automation for efficiency and personalisation
Automation has a key role to play in improving efficiencies and the customer experience in financial services.
Whether it’s opening a new bank account, applying for a loan, updating an insurance policy, or reporting a stolen card, customers expect a seamless digital process. CRM can help achieve this by automating as much of the process as possible. That could include forms that are automatically populated with the customer’s data or automating a series of personalised emails that take the customer through the loan application process.
Digital Process Automation (DPA) can extend the power of Financial Services Cloud by providing click-based configuration and integration tools that simplify the creation and delivery of branded, automated customer experiences.
As autonomous finance emerges across the banking and insurance sectors, automating tasks such as account transfers or claims processing will further leverage the power of AI to deliver optimised, personalised customer experiences.
Discover six strategies for using a CRM to deliver the personalised experiences customers want. Download our e-book, Hyper-personalisation: Key to the Future of Digital Banking in ASEAN, here.
How to Build an Integrated Real Estate CRM for Tenant Management
COVID-19 is reshaping the office property market as businesses move to decentralised and work-from-home models in the mid to long term. This has implications for Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and their investors as falling demand threatens to drive down the value of CBD office space. In Singapore, for example, the vacancy rate of office space rose to 11% with office rents falling by 0.8%, and prices down 4%.
That makes it more important than ever for REITs to work smarter. Some are turning to technology like CRM platforms to generate deeper insights and drive better decision making. Additionally, as businesses change the way they use traditional work spaces, REITs can assist tenants transition to alternative real estate offerings buoyed by the need for collaboration.
To be effective in this climate, REITs need a 360-degree view of tenants. But lack of integration between real estate management software platforms can create data silos. This leaves the leasing rep without transparency into lead generation, deal progression, and tenant relationships.
LIKE.TG can solve this problem. REITs and real estate agencies can use LIKE.TG to build an integrated CRM for real estate.
From integrating legacy systems to marketing automation on the platform, and empowering all this data with AI, a LIKE.TG CRM can provide a single source of truth for leasing reps. Portals can enable collaboration with brokers and tenants. Lastly, help your tenants return to work with ongoing health checks and safety protocols in the new normal.
Here’s how to use LIKE.TG to build an integrated real estate CRM for REITs and leasing reps in five steps:
Step 1: Set up a CRM platform
Sales Cloud in the Customer 360 suite is the core of your CRM for REIT and real estate. This is where you build a lead-to-lease pipeline to give leasing reps visibility into deal progression across the entire tenant journey.
Leasing reps can follow tenant journeys through each of the opportunity stages — from new lead to deal closure. They can also use LIKE.TG’s point-and-click approval process to enable seamless and transparent negotiations and discount approvals, and create custom objects in Sales Cloud to give leasing reps seamless access to lease information and property inventory data.
AppExchange enables you to integrate relevant apps into Sales Cloud to add specific functionality. For example, Conga is a document generation app that gives leasing reps access to a range of templates they can use to instantly create key documents like a Letter of Intent.
Step 2: Add marketing automation
Leasing reps need a constant flow of leads funneling into the Sales Cloud pipeline. This is easy with a simple Pardot integration.
Pardot is a marketing automation solution that helps you to generate and nurture leads, and seamlessly pass them onto leasing reps without the need for integration. This combines the benefits of marketing and CRM in one platform.
Lead transfer can be automated to save time, and leads can be placed straight into an automation journey. This will help leasing reps nurture leads through opportunity stages from project announcements to site visits and leasing discussions.
Pardot also has a range of lead generation tools for marketing managers. For example, Pardot enables marketing teams to build web forms to capture prospect information, and build email templates that drive prospects to Pardot landing pages. Built-in marketing analytics enable smart campaign performance monitoring and show the return on investment of each campaign.
Step 3: Integrate Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) data
To create a single 360-degree tenant view, Sales Cloud may need to call on data from various sources including your ERP, broker CRMs, and other legacy platforms. MuleSoft makes this process seamless with easy data integration between systems.
MuleSoft connects multiple applications together. It enables simple data syncing between various sources including inventory applications and popular ERPs like SAP and Oracle. For less well-known platforms, MuleSoft uses a point-and-click methodology to create APIs capable of syncing data with Sales Cloud from just about any software platform.
With all tenant data brought together from multiple platforms into a single view on Sales Cloud, the leasing rep no longer has to juggle multiple systems to find basic data like contract terms, contract expiry dates, and lease renewal dates. They can access all relevant data and get a 360-degree view of each and every tenant within Sales Cloud.
Step 4: Build partner and tenant portals
In REITs and large real estate agencies, selling is not a single person play. It often requires collaboration between leasing reps and property brokers. For example, brokers may be responsible for matching prospects to properties and scheduling site visits. To do so, brokers often need to exchange information with leasing reps.
Experience Cloud can be used to build a partner portal that boosts collaboration between leasing reps and brokers. Both can use the portal to access key tenant and inventory data. Leasing reps and brokers can also communicate inside the portal with web-based communication tools such as Chatter or Slack.
Tenant portals hosted in Experience Cloud can also be used to improve communication between leasing reps and tenants, and enable tenant self-service to ease leasing reps’ workloads. For example, tenants can log in to a tenant portal to view contract information, book meeting rooms, and raise customer service tickets without help from their leasing reps.
Step 5: Leverage artificial intelligence
Leasing reps can work smarter with artificial intelligence (AI) built into your LIKE.TG real estate management solution.
Einstein is LIKE.TG’s AI technology that helps customers sell smarter, deepen customer relationships, scale customer support, and personalise experiences. It is embedded in Sales Cloud to provide leasing reps with critical insights on deal progression, identify upsell opportunities, and complete property evaluations based on existing data.
Einstein can also use AI insights to identify important emails based on keyword scans, and help leasing reps prioritise their inbox around high-value tasks.
Step 6: Manage Employee Health, Safety and Security
REITs and property managers can help tenant companies deploy solutions like Work.com to support safe return-to-work protocols, and ongoing health and safety checks in the new normal.
With Work.com your tenant companies can manage health-related interactions and workplace planning on a single platform. This enables companies to boost healthcare and community responsiveness now, and for future crises.
Your tenant companies can use the Workplace Command Centre to take swift action on employee wellness, and help their employees adapt to new ways of working with myTrailhead. You and your tenants can also track the latest independent public health data through the Tableau COVID-19 Data Hub.
LIKE.TG helps busy leasing reps work smarter, smashes data silos, and creates a single source of truth. Leasing reps get the visibility and insights they need to progress deals, manage tenant relationships, and improve performance across the board.
4 Ways To Ensure Your Experience Metrics Stay Customer-Centric
Customer experience and service have shifted from being viewed as a cost-centre to a value-add for businesses. It’s much more cost-effective to retain existing customers than it is to acquire new ones. Service teams are central to creating the customer experiences that drive retention.
A customer relationship management (CRM) system empowers service teams to deliver a compelling customer experience. Having a CRM that captures every touchpoint means service teams can fuel customer engagement, improve loyalty, and transform customers into advocates.
LIKE.TG research shows 79% of executives across the Asia-Pacific agree that a CRM system is instrumental in delivering seamless customer experiences. Fifty percent of those surveyed said delivering outstanding customer experience over multiple channels of engagement is a top priority for the next 12 months.
But your CRM should be viewed as always evolving. It is not set-and-forget or focused purely on vanity metrics. It’s essential that leaders measure the success of their CRM solutions against customer experience expectations. This will ensure that value is maximised, and that customer needs are truly at the heart of service delivery.
Here are four tips for service leaders to keep in mind when they are measuring the success of CRM for service teams.
1. Take a customer-centric approach to agent productivity and speed of resolution
The standard metrics of customer service agent productivity and efficiency are still important. But at the same time service teams are looking at how fast they can close a critical incident, so too can they focus on a holistic approach to the customer experience.
As soon as the focus becomes just about hitting a certain call resolution time or a certain number of cases closed, then the organisation comes across as prioritising internal service KPIs over the customer.
Knowledge articles, which are a core capability of Service Cloud, are critical to empowering service agents. With the relevant information immediately at hand, agents can get a quicker time to close with the best possible outcome for the customer.
Workplace messaging system Slack is also a useful tool for working efficiently and keeping the customer front and centre. Integrated with Service Cloud, Slack enables a collaborative platform for service teams to access customer data.
We use it for case swarming,whereby a case is elevated into a Slack case form and taps into the wisdom of the wider team to get a faster resolution.
So, yes, measuring efficiency is important. But only as long as it’s done through the lens of customer experience.
2. Make your customer feedback count
Customer engagement, loyalty, and advocacy are built on connected, seamless customer experience. Getting feedback about that experience is a powerful way to improve or to make necessary adjustments.
How do you get feedback? One way is to ask for it with customer experience and satisfaction metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). Another way is to make it a fully automated process in the service workflow so that each case concludes with a solicitation. Were you satisfied with your experience? How can we do better? That information is then gathered into your CRM for service dashboard so teams can track feedback.
It’s important, however, to be mindful of the Cobra Effectwhen gathering quantitative data. This happens when you superficially meet a target, but in the process you undermine your larger goal. For example, a customer service officer might think, “If I hurry the interaction with this customer, then my turnaround time is quick and that will improve our efficiency KPIs”. Technically, they’re right. But the more important goal of creating positive customer experience gets undermined along the way.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) embedded in Service Cloud can help take measuring feedback to the next level by delivering more qualitative, nuanced data about customer sentiment. Whether it’s a fully digital encounter with a chatbot, or a personal encounter with a service agent, AI can uncover trends and analyse sentiment we couldn’t otherwise surface. It might, for example, pick out keywords like ‘disappointed’ or ‘frustrated’ that indicate a customer service response is needed.
3. Build a 360-degree customer view in your CRM with integration and collaboration
With Service Cloud, businesses can eliminate the silos that have traditionally interrupted customer experience. Customers don’t want to feel like they’re dealing with disconnected departments. They want to engage with a single, unified organisation.
For example, if a customer has an open service case, we can exclude them from a marketing audience so they are not targeted with the wrong messaging while their case is being addressed. This way, marketing and service are on the same page.
It comes back to how CRM for service can deliver a 360-degree view of the customer. Every touchpoint, every communication, and every conversation is visible in real time to everyone in the organisation. No matter what channel a customer chooses to interact with you, the conversation can pick up from where they left off. A seamless, omni-channel experience can only occur when systems are integrated and teams collaborate.
4. Don’t make upselling just about selling
Speaking of better integration between teams, upsell is a perfect example because it’s a shared metric. Service teams can place a customer into a marketing journey, or pass them directly on to a sales person.
But upselling can be an extension of outstanding customer experience — not just pushing more products in order to meet sales targets. Upselling plays into the trust your customers have in the organisation. Service agents have an important role in nurturing that trust and in creating starting points for sales and marketing to introduce new campaigns to receptive customers.
Just as customer experience is everyone’s job, so too does upselling depend on every department working together.
Learn more about how a CRM for service can take customer experience to the next level. Watch the Service Cloud demo and try it for yourself.
Dreamforce Asia Pacific Takeover: Here’s What You Don’t Want to Miss
Mark your calendars because Dreamforce 2021 is almost here. This annual global event is a chance for LIKE.TG customers, partners, employees, and the wider community to come together. We gather in the spirit of sharing innovation, insights, and success stories.
In just two days, sessions featuring industry leaders, innovative companies, and LIKE.TG experts will be streaming right to your device exclusively through LIKE.TG+, our brand new streaming platform. You can sign up for free today, ready for the launch of Dreamforce.
Kicking off such an anticipated global event deserves its own countdown and region-specific Trailblazers to celebrate.
That is why LIKE.TG Pacific is taking over Dreamforce.
Why you should tune in to the Asia Pacific Dreamforce Takeover
If you want to hear from local Trailblazers or deep dive into region-specific topics, then the Asia Pacific Takeover should be your starting point for your 2021 Dreamforce experience.
You’ll have the chance to learn firsthand from inspiring customers and local experts. Singapore Airlines, Toys”R”Us, Telstra, and Titan Company are ready to share how they use technology to innovate and make an impact in their communities.
Our regional leaders will be there to offer insights around customer experience, people, and purpose. The line-up includes:
Sujith Abraham, SVP and ASEAN GM
DiDi Wong, Regional VP and Geo Leader Hong Kong and Taiwan
Arundhati Bhattacharya, India CEO
Pip Marlow, ANZ and ASEAN CEO
Inspiring local stories and future vision from thought-leaders are all things that come to mind when we think of Dreamforce. Plus, the must-see global keynote featuring Marc Benioff, our Chair and CEO will be broadcast during the Asia Pacific Takeover.
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The Asia-Pacific Takeover has even more to offer, with multi-award winning chef Kelvin Cheung revealing his mouth-watering tips and tricks to creating diverse and distinct cuisines. Also, don’t miss live entertainment from Charlie Lim, Benny Dayal, and Guy Sebastian.
The Dreamforce global broadcast has an exciting line-up of well-known and inspiring speakers. Be inspired by innovative thinkers who are challenging the status quo and leading by example. We’re definitely going to tune in to hear from actor and musician Will Smith, activist Jane Fonda, and Amref Global Ambassador Nice Nailantei Leng’ete.
Where and when to tune in
When: 22 September 2021, 11 a.m. SGT/ 10 a.m. ICT
Where: Sign in to LIKE.TG+. We will be broadcasting on the Primetime Channel
How: Register for a free LIKE.TG+ membership today so you don’t miss the best of Dreamforce.
If one afternoon of content isn’t enough for you, many of the global Dreamforce sessions will be available to view on-demand 24 hours after they run. There’s truly something for everyone, but some sessions that we’re excited about are:
How Slack is helping sales teams accelerate growth
How Tableau can help businesses unlock the power of their data
New strategies for customer-centric commerce
Ways automation can bring speed and scale to business operations
And more, including a rocking performance from the Foo Fighters at the Dreamforce Opening Celebration
So, that leaves us with one last question: Where will you be watching the Dreamforce Asia Pacific Takeover from?
How To Create Impactful Customer Experiences With Ethical AI
Rob Newell is Vice President, Solution Engineering and Cloud Sales, at LIKE.TG. He’s passionate about helping organisations throughout the Asia Pacific region surpass their business objectives by employing ethical AI and enterprise cloud technology.
The challenges around ethics, trust, and artificial intelligence (AI) are real. They can have a significant impact on customer experience and on the market’s perception of brands and businesses. Fortunately, there’s plenty businesses can do to create AI experiences that enhance trust and have a positive impact on customer experience.
We know from LIKE.TG research that top performing sales teams are 2.7 times more likely to use AI to determine what action to take next. Compared to underperforming organisations, they’re also 2.4 times more likely to use AI to prioritise leads and 1.9 times more likely to use AI to manage admin tasks.
At the same time, there’s a crisis of trust in AI.
Why is this? Whenever AI delivers flawed outcomes, customers and employees lose trust. AI will deliver erroneous outcomes as a result of one of three main things:
Bias in the data
Bias in the algorithms
Teams responsible for managing the data and algorithms lack diversity within their ranks
LIKE.TG and ethical AI
At LIKE.TG, trust is our number one value, and we consider it our responsibility to develop ethical AI. We must also help guide organisations on the principles of building a trusted AI capability that enhances customer experience and enables customer success.
This begins with purpose and values, and covers five key areas. AI that builds trust must be:
Responsible: by safeguarding human rights and protecting the customer data the business has been entrusted with.
Accountable: by seeking and leveraging feedback from stakeholders — including customers, regulators, employees, and communities — to constantly evolve and improve the AI.
Transparent: by being clear about how the technology arrived at its predictions or recommendations, as well as how and what data was used to drive the outcome.
Empowering: by adding positively to the lives and economies of customers, communities, and societies.
Inclusive: by ensuring all teams and stakeholders bring a variety of perspectives.
AI drives impactful customer experiences. That’s something we all understand. To build trust with customers still wary of AI, businesses need to be transparent about how they use customer data to create seamless and personalised experiences.
Make AI ingredients clear
Independent bodies test new cars and give them safety ratings so customers can understand exactly what they’re paying for in terms of protection. Food products on supermarket shelves contain nutrition information to help the customer make healthy choices. Why shouldn’t AI engines that drive various customer outcomes be treated with the same level of transparency?
Now, at LIKE.TG, they are.
One of the developments driven by our Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology is what we call ‘Model Cards’. They communicate the critical information from customers or prospects that we’re using to build a specific model. It might be information around the training data we use, the ethical considerations, or the performance metrics.
We publish this information so customers can clearly see how a particular piece of AI capability thinks and works. They can see how it was built and what they can expect as a customer. It’s a simple and effective way of driving transparency.
This sets a standard for the way our business wants to operate in the realms of AI. Being a leader in technology, we have an ability to influence the market around us. This is part of our vision for transparency and the ethical use of AI.
The danger of ignoring challenges around AI ethics
There are numerous influences around ethical behaviour with AI. They’re driven by various forces, including employee activism, increased regulation, increased expectations from customers, and more.
When these influences are not enabled and enacted, various serious issues can arise.
First and foremost is privacy violations. If you’re not clear with a customer as to why you’re collecting data, how you’re using that data, or the benefits you expect to derive from it, that in itself is a privacy violation. It erodes trust very quickly.
Second, you’ll find there will be bias in the data, which could come from originally using an incorrect or undiversified training data set.
Third, you’ll see inequality. Your AI will not be pervasive and available to everyone, or it will treat certain individuals or groups differently.
This will bring the business to a point where it doesn’t have the desired level of loyalty from the customers. Those customers will churn more quickly.
How do businesses ensure this doesn’t happen? They must be clear on what their purpose is and put purpose at the centre of everything they do. Customers want businesses to look beyond profit generation. They want to know what impact a business is having on society. If a business has a purpose, all of its actions will flow from that, including ethics in their AI models and their correct execution.
Next, it’s about the cultivation of an ethical mindset throughout the business. That involves putting the customer at the core of everything the business does and ensuring absolute transparency. This might involve the creation of diversity advisory boards and the like, which helps to drive accountability.
Finally, it involves the diversification of technology via the diversity of the teams that build technology.
Any technological advancement or transformation intended to create seamless, personalised customer experiences must contain these ingredients. Those that do will be well rewarded by the market.
Learn more about how businesses like yours are using ethical AI in the real world. Check out our customer success stories here.
New Research Reveals How SMBs Are Meeting Today’s Challenges and Building Resilience for the Future
Since the start of the pandemic, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across Asia have found creative and innovative ways to keep pace with evolving customer expectations and drive business growth. In the face of great upheaval, the characteristic grit and resourcefulness of SMBs has been on full display.
Eighteen months on from the start of the pandemic, what will be the new mandate for business transformation?
We are excited to launch the fifth edition of the Small and Medium Business Trends Report. The report reveals how SMB owners are adapting to an ever-shifting business landscape and preparing for the future. It surveys over 2,500 SMB owners and leaders worldwide, including from Singapore and Thailand.
Here are four key takeaways from the report:
1. Support goes both ways as communities step up and SMBs respond to customer needs
Globally, two-thirds of SMB leaders say community support has been important to their company’s survival during the pandemic.
In Singapore and Thailand, that community support has been even more critical, with 78% of SMB leaders saying it has helped their businesses survive. For the retail sector, that figure jumps to 85%.
That much-needed support hasn’t gone without a response. SMB leaders have stepped up to cater to customer needs and build trust during the pandemic. In Singapore and Thailand, 66% of SMBs are offering their customers more flexibility. Fifty-six percent have expanded ways for their customers to reach them. Omni-channel, personalised engagements, quick and seamless customer service, and connected customer experience have built trust and loyalty when it’s most needed.
2. Growing SMBs prioritise employee engagement
As remote working has scattered employees far and wide, keeping staff engaged and supporting their wellbeing over the past 18 months has been crucial to the success of growing SMBs.
Meeting employee expectations for flexible schedules, remote work, and COVID-safe workplaces has been imperative for successful SMBs. The report reveals that SMB leaders have created trusted relationships with employees by responding to their needs, asking for feedback, and allowing autonomy.
3. Growing SMBs accelerate investment in digital
All SMB leaders surveyed in Singapore and Thailand have moved a portion of their operations online in the past year, with almost half moving between 51% and 100% of their operations online. This will help them cater to the new digital imperative in customer service and enable a safer remote working environment. Many leaders are making these changes permanently, which will continue to benefit them in the long term.
This is a crucial step to building resilience in SMBs. The latest State of the Connected Customer report shows 68% of customers say they’re online more often than not and nearly two-thirds say they expect to be online more after the pandemic than before.
Most growing SMBs (71%) say their business survived the pandemic because of digitisation. In Singapore and Thailand, 68% are accelerating their investment in customer service to manage customers’ expectations and deepen customer relationships in the evolving digital landscape. This has proved that a focus on customer experience is even more of a differentiator for growth in the digital-world. It also makes it clear that the right technology can help SMBs build relationships with their customers and establish a good foundation for growth.
What kinds of technology are growing SMBs investing in? The findings show that growing SMBs have moved the majority of their operations online, prioritising customer service, sales, marketing, and IT operations. The types of software that growing SMBs use include customer service software, email marketing software, and ecommerce software. The research also shows that even the majority of stagnant/declining SMBs are investing in these four areas.
LIKE.TG helps small businesses find more customers, win their business, and keep them happy so you can scale and succeed. Learn more about our small business CRM solutions.
4. Growing SMBs look to the future and learn from the past
After an extended period of uncertainty, many SMBs are finding the steps they’ve taken to survive the impact of the pandemic have made them more efficient. In Singapore and Thailand, 91% of SMB owners feel the operational shifts they’ve made over the last year will benefit their businesses going forward. In Singapore, 88% of growing SMBs have created scenario plans to prepare for future crises. In Thailand, the number is 96%.
Implementing digital solutions to deal with the demands of a socially distanced customer base has set SMBs up well to cope with future consumer trends. Ninety-two percent of Thai and Singapore-based SMBs plan to make contactless services available permanently. Secure digital payments, digital customer service, and ecommerce are set to become the standard ingredients of a contactless shopping experience.
Agility and innovation are necessary for long-term growth
The past 18 months have been a rollercoaster ride for SMBs. For many, the dips have far outweighed the peaks. However, this latest research demonstrates that the reputation SMBs have for being agile in the face of change and resilient in the face of challenge is well deserved.
As savvy SMBs prioritise solutions and relationships that fortify their businesses, they will be well equipped to weather whatever may come their way. Now is the time to take inspiration from businesses that have thrived and use the lessons learned during the pandemic. Last but not least, it’s time to leverage the latest research insights to help you build resilience for the future.
Read thethe fifth edition of theSmall and Medium Business Trends Reportto learn how small and fast-growing businesseshave adapted their operations for success.
The Winter ’22 Release Preview Is Here
At LIKE.TG,we are constantly innovatingto help you connect with your customers. After October 11, you will have access to hundreds of globally available products and features.Preview the latest Winter ’22 innovations today!
How can you get started exploring? First, get a slide-by-slide view of the newest features withRelease In a Box, and earn a new badge with theHighlights Trail. Next,cozy up with the Innovation Spotlights, two integrated product journeys showcasing the latest products and features across the Customer 360:
Improve employee performance and grow your business. In this video, you’ll see how a bank analyses sales calls to train reps more efficiently withEinstein Conversation Insights Enhancements, simplifies document workflows withDigital Process Automation, and quickly builds personalised chatbots withEinstein Bots Enhancements.
See how Cumulus Bank maximises employee performance with Customer 360.
Engage with your customers. Watch how a manufacturing company utilises out-of-the-box templates to build fast-loading landing pages and event sites withMicrosites, supercharges campaign analytics withDatorama ReportsforMarketing Cloud— Advanced, and modernises the post-purchase experience withLIKE.TG Order Managementfor B2B.
See how Badger engages with customers using the Winter ’22 Release.
Don’t miss out on the latest news about Slack, ourrecent acquisition. WithSlack-First Customer 360, it’s easier than ever to connect customers, employees, and partners with the conversations, apps, and data that power digital workflows for an all-new way to work.
Learn more about innovation at LIKE.TG and the Winter ’22 Release atLIKE.TG/releases.
This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
LIKE.TG Brings the Power of Hyperforce to Singapore
Businesses in Singapore will soon be able to accelerate their digital transformation journey with Hyperforce, a reimagination of LIKE.TG’s trusted platform architecture built to reliably deliver the LIKE.TG Customer 360, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Industries, and more, on major public clouds.
Expected to become generally available in Singapore in December 2021, Hyperforce will help empower LIKE.TG’s global customer base to quickly and easily deploy LIKE.TG apps and services in new regions by leveraging the scale and agility of public cloud computing.
Why is Hyperforce important for the ASEAN region?
Delivered through LIKE.TG’s strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hyperforce has been built to reliably deliver the LIKE.TG Customer 360, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Industries and more, on major public clouds.
“Organisations across Southeast Asia are putting unprecedented levels of focus on digitisation to maintain meaningful relationships with customers and to provide flexibility for their employees in an increasingly unpredictable environment. Hyperforce creates flexibility by unlocking the ability to host data locally in Singapore, and it does so with the scalability of the public cloud — accessing compute capacity flexibly and efficiently as and when they need to,” said Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ASEAN, LIKE.TG. “With Hyperforce, we are proud and excited to be able to accelerate our customers’ digital transformation journeys, helping them remain agile as they grow and pursue innovation.”
What does Hyperforce deliver?
The key features of Hyperforce include:
Performance at B2B and B2C scale. With the elasticity of the public cloud, customers can more easily access compute capacity as required to be more flexible and efficient. Hyperforce allows resources to be deployed in the public cloud quickly and easily — reducing implementation time from months to just weeks or even days.
Built-in Trust. Hyperforce’s security architecture provides the ability to control or limit user access levels to help protect data. Encryption, at rest and in transit, comes standard, helping to protect the privacy and the security of data.
Local Data Storage. Through Hyperforce, customers around the world can choose to store data in a particular location to support compliance with regulations specific to their company, industry, and region
Backwards Compatibility. Every LIKE.TG app, customisation, and integration, regardless of cloud, will run on Hyperforce.
How can I get Hyperforce?
Customers interested in onboarding to Hyperforce in Singapore can get started today with the Early Adopter Program. Simply reach out to your LIKE.TG Account Executive if you would like more information about how to become a Hyperforce Early Adopter or contact LIKE.TG here.
Hyperforce has been tried and tested in several global markets, and is currently available in India, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the US.
In December 2021, Hyperforce will be launched in Singapore, Brazil, Germany, and France.
Learn more about Hyperforce, and how you can run your business with the power and scale of Hyperforce.
Data Makes Business Conversations Better, New Tableau Survey Reveals
The COVID-19 pandemic has catalysed major organisational changes, especially in the ways we work and communicate.
Just think: When was the last time you bumped into a colleague by the watercooler? What about the last time you gave your teammate a literal pat on the back for coming up with a brilliant business idea? Those days seem like a lifetime ago.
The truth is that remote and hybrid work is here to stay. With less opportunities for face-to-face interactions, business leaders are concerned about how the new ways of working will affect business conversations and culture.
How can leaders communicate effectively with teams and maintain business partnerships?
Data drives better conversations
Despite the challenges, many leaders have taken the bull by its horns and transformed business conversations for the better. Unexpectedly, many leaders in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region reported that changes associated with the pandemic had actually improved business conversations.
These were the findings from a recent YouGov survey commissioned by Tableau with more than 650 business leaders across Singapore, Japan, Australia. We sought to examine how business leaders had adapted decision making and employee engagement strategies since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Each country had their own unique take. Singaporean leaders noticed a flattening of workplace hierarchies. In Japan, younger leaders adapted better to change than their older counterparts. Australian leaders adopted a more egalitarian approach to leadership.
The positive changes experienced by these leaders all bore a common denominator: the use of data.
In fact, APJ leaders were almost two times more likely than their counterparts elsewhere in the world to use data to improve workplace decision making and communication. By the same token, those who increased their data use were more than twice as likely to report these positive changes, compared to those that hadn’t.
What the transformative power of data looks like
Take Southeast Asia’s latest unicorn, CARRO, for instance. CARRO is an online marketplace where users can buy, sell, or lease pre-owned and new cars. Not only did CARRO keep their car marketplace business afloat, but they even managed to bag new funds in spite of the pandemic.
Credit goes to CARRO’s leaders, who value the ability to curate, explore, and share data with teams across the region. CARRO uses data across all aspects of its business: to level the playing field for employees, remove bias during brainstorms, and improve accountability and transparency during performance reviews.
Meanwhile, at retailer Levi Strauss Co., data enabled the personalisation of customer journeys and helped the business anticipate market and inventory changes.
Therein lies the transformative power of data. When it is at the centre of all conversations, everyone in the team can come together as equals, and make decisions based on fact and not gut feel.
The importance of leaders in building data cultures
Unlike CARRO or Levi Strauss Co., not every leader is as tuned in to working with data. Many leaders are still ‘works-in-progress’ as they navigate their way in a data-driven world.
Although many regional leaders recognise that data insights are important and critical in decision-making, they aren’t deliberate and purposeful in weaving data into the fabric of their organisational cultures. There is a strong correlation between leaders who personally use data on a weekly basis at minimum and overall business adoption. Yet, only 16% of these leaders use analytics daily. Worryingly, just 19% of these businesses empower everyone with data. The frequency and scale of data use is not there yet.
This is where data-driven leadership comes in. If employees don’t see their executives making decisions with data, how can we expect the wider business to do the same? At the end of the day, it’s not data that makes the decisions, it’s people who make decisions based on data.
Leaders must push the envelope to drive data adoption across their organisations. They must ask themselves: Am I setting a good example for my team? Have I established a healthy culture where people are comfortable working with data? What can I do to empower my team with the skills they need to succeed?
At Phoon Huat, one of Singapore’s leading food suppliers, data is front and centre across conversations. The leadership team has been deliberate about instilling a digital-first mindset in all their employees. Everyone is equipped with the data skills they need to dig deep into a situation and question findings. This proved pivotal during a time of inflection for the business, when Phoon Huat decided to expand their brick-and-mortar presence online during the pandemic.
Three key steps for creating data cultures
When looking to create a data culture, business leaders need to consider three important areas:
Make a commitment to lead by example
Shift mindsets about how people think and behave around data
Develop skills by hiring and training employees to use data instinctively
What will remain true is that data and quality conversation will continue to be the bedrock upon which successful leadership is built.
Learn more about how business conversations are changing and how business leaders can become more data-driven. Explore the results of the report here.
Why It’s Time To Redefine Customer Experience in Financial Services
Over the past 18 months, financial services organisations have experienced massive change on all fronts. Many have responded with great grit and innovation, while some are still calibrating to the new normal. Whatever the case might be, there’s now a clear path to a new kind of success: the customer-centric model.
What do I mean by customer-centric model? In simple terms, it’s a matter of stopping at nothing to understand the individual customer and their needs like never before. Companies are discovering that seamless, personalised, and omni-channel customer experiences yield great outcomes.
LIKE.TG’s Trends in Financial Services report supports this shift in focus, while highlighting the need for companies to catch up. Our research found that 68% of customers say recent challenges have elevated their expectations for digital-first solutions. Yet, only 27% feel the financial services industry is customer-centric.
In other words, a gap exists between company offerings and customer needs. The good news is that there are provable ways and means to close it.
Defining evolving customer needs
I often make a joke that contains a nugget of truth. I say that pre-pandemic, I flew 250,000 miles per year. Since the pandemic began, I’ve had 250,000 Zoom meetings.
Whether or not the figure is an exaggeration (and I’m not sure it is), it speaks to the changing face of all industries. People now expect that most, if not all of what occured face-to-face, is now possible from the comfort of their own homes. Regardless of when everything reopens, this expectation is here to stay.
The financial services industry is no exception. Where there was once a defined line between what transactions happen in a bank or insurance branch and what happens online, we’re now seeing a blended model. Institutions with their fingers on the pulse are migrating all in-person activities to the digital space.
This is changing the dynamics of how we engage with the financial world. Customers now expect easy, end-to-end processes that allow them to open an account, apply for a loan, or secure a mortgage without having to leave their desks.
Hyper-personalisation: so much more than a buzzword
While it’s human nature to want quick and hassle-free experiences, we also need those experiences to feel personal. Customers now expect companies to understand them and their unique desires and goals, even when face-to-face interaction is at a minimum. Enter hyper-personalisation.
Companies that are experiencing significant growth have one thing in common. They are not only able to address any question, query, or concern with immediacy, but are also able to predict what a customer needs and when.
Hyper-personalisation is an extension of customer centricity. It’s a means of leveraging technology and integrating data to get a 360-degree view of an individual customer, and making the most of every interaction to enrich that view.
Companies can do all of the above without ever forgetting that in-person interactions can complement digital experiences.
Share of mind, time, and trust
If we are to put the toughness of recent years to the side for a moment, now’s a very exciting time to be alive. The customer-centric model, coupled with the powerful platforms that enable it, offers a clarity of purpose, and —perhaps ironically— level of intimacy that industry has never before experienced.
Financial services companies that successfully place the customer at the centre of everything now own a disproportionate share of mind, time, and trust. What I mean by that is when a company meets customer needs through seamless, personalised, and omni-channel experiences, customers feel like their time and efforts are respected.
Achieving customer-centricity takes commitment and effort. But once it is achieved, growth increases exponentially alongside customer satisfaction. The more we open the conversation and bridge the gap between company and customer, the more both parties are rewarded.
How to achieve customer centricity
It’s no coincidence that higher levels of customer centricity are reached through organisational unification. The more a company is able to streamline and integrate data and processes, the more they are able to get a clear view of the individual customer.
That is why LIKE.TG’s Customer 360 and its CRM for financial services exist: to satisfy the unmet needs of both business and consumer.
For a business, a CRM unifies all teams so that they are seeing through the same lens. The customer benefits from being seen from one shared view. The relationship between the two is now bound by a single source of truth.
For the financial services industry, this unification is imperative. After working in banking for 25 years, I know that most companies are dealing with oceans of customer data siloed off in different formats. When integrating Customer 360 with Financial Services Cloud, not only can a company bring all that customer data together, but they can gain insights that make it actionable.
For the business, this means radical spikes in efficiency and precision, as well as a direct line to increased customer loyalty and revenue growth.
Inspiring case study: Union Bank of the Philippines
Before lockdown, Union Bank of the Philippines had made the decision to make customer care its number one priority. They engaged LIKE.TG and set up a command centre that facilitated immediate and seamless omni-channel service for customers.
Thanks to the scalability and reliability of Service Cloud, they were able to satisfy the large uptick in customer interactions during the first lockdown (tens of thousands in March 2021 alone), while offering new end-to-end services such as account activation. Such a feat would have been deemed unthinkable only 18 months previously.
Companies like UnionBank realised that the pandemic challenged the old ways of working, and the only way forward was to keep customer experience at the centre of every decision.
Financial wellness in the new normal requires ecosystems that engage the customer and their evolving needs in an instant, and it’s an inspiring evolution.
The Dreamforce 2021 Magic Lives On — On LIKE.TG+
Dreamforce 2021 was filled to the brim with insights from industry experts, Trailblazer stories, product demos, inspiring keynotes, and entertainment.
We enjoyed bringing this event to life and streaming it to screens around the world. But the fun doesn’t have to end. The sessions from Dreamforce 2021 are now available to watch on demand through LIKE.TG+.
You can search for episodes by role, industry, and topic, so it’s easy to find the insights that are most relevant to you. Here are some of the event’s top moments that we think everyone should see:
Marc Benioff makes the case for becoming a Trusted Enterprise
One of Dreamforce’s can’t-miss sessions is the keynote address from LIKE.TG Founder and CEO Marc Benioff.
Now more than ever, customers want to engage with businesses that are trustworthy, responsible, and good corporate citizens. Today’s businesses need to look beyond profit and think more about impact, Benioff says.
He devoted his keynote to how businesses can meet these expectations and help the world address major crises like trust, inequality, workforce shifts, and sustainability. The Trailblazer community is key to finding solutions — so much so that Benioff referred to them as ‘Trustblazers’.
How can businesses be the greatest platform for change? Learn more about the Trusted Enterprise from Marc Benioff here.
LIKE.TG leaders shed light on the future of work in Asia Pacific
During the Dreamforce Asia Pacific Takeover, top LIKE.TG leaders from the region gathered for a panel discussion. The group discussed the evolution of customer experience, how businesses in the region have adapted to the changes of the past two years, and the digital transformation imperative.
“ASEAN has always been a growth region that is powered by the millions of local and international businesses we have here. COVID has impacted all of them in different ways, and each one continues to find different ways to emerge stronger after the pandemic. One thing is for certain, though: every company is facing a digital imperative. Our customers have realised they’re going to need digital transformation if they’re going to survive,” said Sujith Abraham, SVP and ASEAN GM.
Although panelists joined from a variety of locations and spoke to local experiences, common themes emerged. They shared how businesses across the region accelerated their digital transformation agenda in order to keep customers and employees connected through work-from-home orders and lockdowns. Now that some countries are nearing vaccination milestones, the panel also shared how this transformation can continue to evolve for a work-from-anywhere world.
As we look ahead to ‘The Great Reopening’ of businesses post-COVID, Abraham suggested that businesses in the region should see the lead up to reopening as an opportunity. He suggested businesses put in place strategies that support employee wellbeing and forge stronger connections between teams. All while supporting customers and exceeding their expectations.
“For us, doing good is part of being a good business. And if you look at the research, it’s shown that strong corporate social responsibility practices not only improve business performance, but increase commitment, affinity and engagement of your employees. This in turn enhances job performance, increases productivity, and lowers attrition. And value creates value,” Abraham said.
“That said, organisations need to find ways to maintain or reestablish their culture so their workforce has the ability to weather the disconnection that might come from working remotely.”
The Asia Pacific Trailblazer community also came together for a virtual game show hosted by Leandro Perez, VP Asia Pacific Marketing. More than 100 Trailblazers from across the region shared their strategies for scoring Trailhead badges and celebrated their years of dedication to gaining new skills. Fun fact: Some participants have been part of the Trailblazer community for more than 10 years!
Watch the Asia Pacific takeover here.
ASEAN Trailblazers gave an inside look into their success
The travel industry faced some of the most challenging disruptions over the past 18 months. Through it all, Singapore Airlines focused on how they could pivot to meet those challenges and keep innovating.
Cecily Ng, AVP and GM, LIKE.TG Singapore, spoke with George Wang, SVP Information Technology, Singapore Airlines, about how the airline adapted to address customer expectations. Digital initiatives played a key role, allowing the company to implement contactless travel solutions to keep customers and employees safe during every stage of travel. Wang also shared how Singapore Airlines continues to innovate with its revamped member rewards platform and duty-free shopping experiences.You can view the full Singapore Airlines interview here.
Retail was another industry that has undergone major changes in order to stay connected to customers. Tim Halaska, Regional General Manager, Digital Strategy, Toys“R”Us Asia, shared the experience of creating a digital strategy to better focus on its ecommerce platforms.
Halaska shared that by bringing all sites onto the LIKE.TG platform, Toys“R”Us has been able to quickly scale up smaller markets online while having a consistent experience across locations. This has lowered barriers to entry and made integrating partners easier.
Watch more Trailblazer stories over at LIKE.TG+.
The public sector stepped into the spotlight
For those working in the public sector, there are sessions available on-demand that reveal how governments and other public institutions can use technology and innovation to build strong and thriving communities.
Using a digital-first approach, public sector organisations are realising new levels of success faster than ever. The session “Public Sector Success: Building Trust Through Transformation” reveals new public sector specific solutions being built. Public sector leaders from across the globe also made appearances at Dreamforce to share insights and expertise.
This past year, all levels of government were challenged to meet evolving mission needs. The session “How Governments Are Building Thriving Communities Globally” dives deep into stories from public sector Trailblazers worldwide, including from the Asia Pacific. Tune in to learn best practices on how to adapt fast, respond, and serve.
You can watch the full Asia Pacific Takeover and more Dreamforce highlights on demand at LIKE.TG+. Click here to learn more.
How To Scale Your Customer Service With Chatbots
When customers reach out to a company for service, they expect fast response times and resolutions, no matter what channel they use. Agents, however, can only handle so many cases at a time. How do you scale support?
Enter customer service chatbots.
These chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to answer common customer questions. They help customers quickly resolve simple questions and concerns and free up agents for complex, human interactions.
How to create customer service chatbots
Customer service chatbots tackle simple, repetitive tasks that don’t require the soft skills and experience of an agent. For example, if a customer asks how to reset a password or wants to know an estimated delivery time, a customer service chatbot quickly answers the question by accessing relevant information automatically. At the same time, your agents stay focused on solving complex problems and building relationships with customers.
If your company is just beginning to invest in a chatbot, your first objective is to identify the most common tasks and customer requests to determine what to automate. Keep the following six tips in mind when designing your initial AI-powered chatbot:
1. Personalise every greeting
You train customer service agents to be friendly, greet customers by name, and recognise their status or tier of service. Your AI interface can do the same things within your chatbot. Program chatbots to pull in values like “First Name” for customers who are already logged in, to ensure chatbots greet them in a natural way.
2. Move from static to conversational
Most customers don’t want to fill out a form online and then wait 24 hours to get a response. An AI customer service chatbot that dynamically asks different questions based on customer inputs is more engaging. It also helps resolve the customer’s concern faster. Even if an agent ultimately steps in to help, they will already have the information collected by the chatbot available in their console.
3. Create interactive FAQs
Instead of prompting customers to visit your FAQ page, have chatbots bring the answers to your customers. Load your top-level FAQ questions — including any follow-up questions and their corresponding answers — into your AI interface. With natural language processing (NLP), chatbots recognise language as it’s used in everyday interactions, making it easy for your customers to get the answers they seek.
4. Deploy chatbots to additional channels
You’ve likely enabled service across a few digital channels — like mobile messaging, web chat, and social — so your customers can reach out in the way they prefer. But the average customer now uses nine different channels to communicate with companies. That means there are plenty of opportunities to evolve customer service to meet ever-changing expectations. Start by digging into your analytics to find the channel that gets the most traffic for your business, then find the top ten most common requests on that channel. Save time for your agents by programming your chatbot to answer those requests.
5. Engage customers with rich text and content
Basic text is good for answering simple questions, but rich text — including boldface, italics, fonts, font sizes, and font colors — delivers the wow factor. Imagine being able to insert images or even interactive menus into a chat conversation. Based on customer questions, your chatbot shows a menu of products, a selection of knowledge articles, or more options for customer support, all within the chat.
6. Embed process automation in chatbots
Empower customers to help themselves with guided, step-by-step directions right there in the chat. Ask your team which tasks would be easy for customers to complete on their own. These are the ones your agents could execute with their eyes closed (like replacing a lost credit card). Once you’ve identified a few simple tasks, program chatbots to guide customers from start to finish. In the case of complex issues, the chatbot may still have to hand off the conversation to an agent. But the agent is well-primed because chatbots collect information that helps them resolve each case quickly.
Scale customer service with chatbots
Your customers will appreciate how customer service chatbots provide quick, efficient resolutions to their questions and concerns. Meanwhile, your agents will stay focused on complex customer service challenges instead of answering frequently asked questions. That’s how your business can easily scale support to handle any surge in cases, whenever they come your way.
Learn how AI-powered customer service chatbots can:
Streamline service
Scale support
Satisfy customers
Find out more about scaling your customer service with chatbots.
This post originally appeared in the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
In Conversation With: Simon Sinek
I have long been a fan of the global best selling author, speaker, and visionary thinker, Simon Sinek. Simon is an unshakeable optimist. He believes in a bright future, and in our ability to build it together.
We need that kind of optimism now more than ever. I believe his most recent book, The Infinite Game, is more compelling now than when he first wrote it.
In the book, Simon sets out why leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, and more inspiring organisations. That’s an important message, and one of the reasons why I was honoured to sit down with Simon for an exclusive session featured in our annual Dreamforce event.
Finite versus infinite games
Sujith Abraham: What do you mean by finite versus infinite games, and what is an infinite-minded leader?
Simon Sinek: A finite game is defined as having known players, fixed rules, and an agreed upon objective. There’s always a beginning, a middle, and an end. And if there’s a winner, there has to be a loser.
Infinite games, however, are defined as having known and unknown players, the rules are changeable, and the objective is to perpetuate the game for as long as possible. We play infinite games every day of our lives. However, leaders often don’t recognise the game they are playing.
There is no single winner in infinite games. Take the business world, for example. No single person, or company, ‘wins’ business. But so many leaders talk in terms of beating their competition and playing to win a game that has no finish line.
Finite-minded companies tend to suffer a decline in trust, cooperation, and innovation. Infinite-minded companies, on the other hand, typically outperform and out innovate their competitors.
Success is not about trying to beat the competition
Sujith: It seems to me that when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game, we make decisions that sabotage our own ambitions. We may have quarterly metrics but are trying to deliver a long-term plan. What is your perspective on this?
Simon: This is a symptom of organisations that are competitor-focused rather than customer-focused. Finite-minded companies are obsessed with beating their competition. Infinite-minded companies are focused on their own vision, and how to get there.
For example, your company may have a better product than your competitor. But then your competitor innovates and releases a new product that makes all previous products — including yours — obsolete. This happens often in the tech space.
Succeeding is not about trying to beat your competitor. It’s about trying to out-do yourself. Finite-minded companies only think about what their competitors are doing. Infinite-minded companies innovate and change the game.
What leadership courage looks like
Sujith: At LIKE.TG, we talk to customers all the time that want to innovate and change their industries over the long term. How can companies create space to manage short-term pressures while they focus on the infinite game?
Simon: It comes down to leadership courage. Effective, infinite-minded leaders must have the courage to withstand short-term pressures while they stay focused on delivering their long-term vision.
This is not easy. Short-term pressure comes from many sources, maybe even from your own investors. Some shareholders will push you to make decisions that are good for short-term profits, but will hurt the company in the long-term.
Other shareholders will support you to do the right thing for the company, even when it may mean suffering short-term losses. This is the group you want to listen to and lean on.
Have the courage to tell the first group that they either believe in your team and your long-term vision, or they don’t. You want investors who are going to support your long-term vision.
The difference between stable companies and resilient companies
Sujith: We all find ourselves in difficult times. Can you explain the distinction between building a company for stability versus building a company for resilience?
Simon: Stability and resilience are two very different things. Stable companies tend to be immobile. They are able to make it through difficult times, but they are just surviving. They tend not to innovate through challenges, and therefore don’t come out stronger.
Resilient companies have a different mindset. They are able to adapt and adjust to changing market conditions. They identify the residual value in their products or services. Then they find innovative methods to deliver them to their customers in ways that are relevant to the new conditions. That’s how resilient companies can come out of difficult times stronger than when they went in.
Sujith: At LIKE.TG, we often find ourselves helping organisations unlock information and drive entrepreneurialism. However, we find that when some organisations become stable, they get risk averse. Do you believe resilient companies are more risk prone?
Simon: Companies built for stability are typically more conservative because they don’t want to risk their stability. Finite-minded leaders tend to favour short-termism because they fear uncertainty. Companies built for stability often exercise control over very short time frames, and are less focused on their long-term vision.
Companies built for resilience, on the other hand, must be entrepreneurial by nature. They see opportunity in uncertainty, and find ways to adapt and prosper under new circumstances.
We’ve seen this played out during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finite-minded companies have a tendency to panic and retreat into self-preservation mode. However, infinite-minded companies stay focused on their customers. They embrace new technologies, new ways to sell, and new customer habits.
Sujith: On behalf of LIKE.TG, thank you Simon for joining us at Dreamforce. As always, your valuable insights cast new light on how we can build better businesses that embrace the opportunities of today, and tomorrow.
You can watch Dreamforce and other inspiring content on LIKE.TG+, or learn more from other regional thought leaders, here.
Three Sales Trends You Can Leverage To Inspire Your Team
With the last 18 months changing the sales landscape in ways no-one could have predicted, it’s time to pause and think about the future. A successful sales organisation needs a defined vision, a skilled team, and an obsession with the customer.
We have drawn statistics from the latest State of Sales report, and paired them with advice from leading LIKE.TG experts. You can find more from these leaders in their fields in our 50 Pro Sales Tips e-book.
Here are three insights into how to supercharge your sales organisation:
For details on this infographic, please click here.
Introducing the Last Guide You’ll Ever Need on How To Sell
We are excited to introduce the updated How to Sell Guide for ASEAN — now with advice from local sales specialists!
We’ll walk you through the sales process, from prospecting all the way to the all-important close. With advice from Trailblazers and LIKE.TG experts, this will be the last sales guide you’ll ever need.
The guide consists of five comprehensive chapters. To get an idea of the kinds of insights you’ll get, read on for a brief introduction, including samples of the kinds of advice you’ll find:
The sales process
There’s more to a sales process than simply ticking off items on a to-do list. You need to make sure that you create a connection with your prospects and customers. From the very beginning, when you are prospecting for customers, you should be asking yourself how you can solve your prospects’ problems.
As Annette Male, CEO of Wunderman Thompson, says, “focus not on what you want to sell, but on what the customer wants to buy. For this, you have to understand how the client makes money and runs their business. You have to live and breathe the client’s business, not just yours.”
Our guide to the sales process will answer these questions:
What is the sales process?
What are the main sales process steps?
What are common sales process mistakes?
What’s the difference between a sales process and a sales methodology?
Want to know more? Read Chapter 1: How to Build A Sales Process That Lands Deals Every Time.
Sales prospecting
Like seeds that grow into fruit-filled trees, your prospects might turn into lucrative deals. Not every seed will bloom, though, so you need to make sure you plant a lot of them.
Sales teams use prospecting to grow the size of their potential customer bases. By reaching out to leads, and nurturing them into opportunities, you can ensure that your sales pipeline is strong enough to carry you through to hitting your targets. If you lay strong foundations with your prospecting process, you can give yourself the best chance of converting leads into loyal customers.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, you have to know where to start. How do you find prospects? According to Dr. Ruth Protpakorn, Regional Sales Director, Customer Experience at LIKE.TG, the answer lies online: “There are lots of social networks out there, but think of LinkedIn as your first priority for finding new prospects,” she says.
Our guide to prospecting asks these questions:
What are the stages of the sales prospecting process?
How do I find new sales prospects?
How has the sales prospect changed?
How can I approach this new sales prospect?
How do I qualify a sales prospect?
How can I move sales prospects to the next stage in the sales cycle?
How can I keep the conversation moving?
To get the answers, read Chapter 2: How to Do Sales Prospecting the Right Way.
The sales pipeline
Selling isn’t just about closing — there’s a lot of work to do before you get there. You’ll need to nurture your prospects through several stages before it’s time to sign on the dotted line.
Managing a sales pipeline can be difficult. A study from Harvard Business Review found that 61% of executives think their sales managers are not properly trained in pipeline management. Our guide is here to help you get started.
The pipeline can extend beyond the sale, too. “With the increased competition and greater product and service complexity of today’s marketplace, there is a need to adopt a relationship strategy that emphasises the lifetime customer,” says Tom Abbott, Sales Optimisation Expert and Keynote Speaker, Soco/Sales Training. “Instead of viewing prospects as transactional customers that you sell to once, you view them as partners in a long-term selling relationship.”
This chapter covers:
What is a sales pipeline?
What are the stages of a sales pipeline?
How do you build a healthy sales pipeline?
How do you evaluate a sales pipeline?
How do you work with reps to improve the sales pipeline?
To get a deeper understanding of the sales pipeline, read Chapter 3: How to Get Your Sales Pipeline to Flow And Grow.
The sales call
You’ve done your research, you’ve qualified your leads. Are you ready to make that vital sales call? This is one of the most important stages of the sales process. Getting it right will set you up for success when it comes to closing.
Ironically, the sales call can sometimes be more about listening than talking. “Do your best to understand what the customer wants and let them make their own decisions. Don’t do it for them,” says Vu Anh Nguyen, General Manager at BAYA in Vietnam. “If you listen carefully and focus on the small details you will soon see why they make certain choices and how to influence their sales journey.”
To get the best out of that sales call, you’ll need to know the following:
What is a sales call?
How do you prepare for a sales call?
Thirteen tips for making a successful sales call.
It’s nearly time to make that call, but only after reading Chapter 4: How to Get the Most Out of a Sales Call.
Closing techniques
The thrill you get from closing a sale can be hard to describe, but it’s what we’re all working towards. It’s a great moment when you know that you’ve helped your customer, and built a relationship that will be mutually beneficial for years to come.
If you’ve done the proper preparation, closing should be simple: “Closing the deal only comes after many successful steps leading up to it — it should be the easiest part of the process,” says Tahsin Alam, Vice President GM Indonesia Philippines at LIKE.TG. “The groundwork has already been done — closing just adds the finishing touches.”
But watch out. It’s easy to mess up a close, and spoil all of the hard work that came before.
This final chapter of our guide will tell you:
What is sales closing and why is it important?
What are the most common sales closing techniques?
How do you improve at sales closing?
What are sales closing pitfalls you should avoid?
Read all about the power of a strong close in Chapter 5: How to Close Sales Like an Absolute Pro.
This was just a taste of the kinds of tips and advice you can find in our comprehensive How to Sell Guide. With advice from our Trailblazers, and experts across LIKE.TG, you’ll never need another sales guide.
Start learning how to sell successfully today.
How IT Leaders Can Automate CRM Reports and Drive Innovation
IT leaders are constantly encouraged to drive innovation across their organisations. For IT to fulfill its potential, you need to enable all teams to succeed.
One simple way to manage this is to use customer relationship management (CRM) data to create automated dashboards and reports. These can help to provide essential insights for sales and marketing colleagues, such as opportunities they might have missed. They also free up time by eliminating manual processes that can slow down service delivery — time that can then be used to improve customer experience.
What IT needs to know to create CRM reports that add value
To create automated dashboards that will help your colleagues meet their goals, start with a clear picture of what the business is looking for. Before jumping straight to KPIs, try asking:
What insights do you want?
What value do you hope to gain from these reports?
What metrics do you need to understand your business and measure success?
For a service organisation, for example, customer satisfaction surveys or the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) will be a critical metric in a CRM dashboard. Not only does it provide a quantitative assessment of customer satisfaction, but it also allows you to measure that metric in the context of quarterly or annual targets. It can even be benchmarked against the performance of sales or service representatives, or against other organisations.
Consider a Software as a Service company, where continued use of the product is a good measure of satisfaction. Additionally, you can assess a customer’s satisfaction by measuring the licenses they purchase, how many times they renew their contract, and how often they buy add-ons. If data related to upgrades, renewals, and repurchases can be delivered automatically to a service representative’s dashboard, they have a complete 360-degree view of the customer. From there, forecasting opportunities can be made more accurately and the data can be shared with sales reps who can take action on those opportunities.
Reporting on opportunities is a fundamental function of the LIKE.TG platform and is critical to all organisations. There are many ways of reporting on both quantity and quality of opportunities:
How are lead-generation campaigns progressing?
How fast are deals moving?
What’s the conversion rate?
Where does the organisation stand in relation to its competitors?
How much time or money is spent on moving deals forward?
These insights can be surfaced through automated dashboards, using a company’s CRM data.
How IT can track the value of its own CRM reporting
The success of IT depends on its ability to meet the needs of the business. Sometimes, that involves looking at the IT function through the lens of serving its internal customers.
How well are team leaders able to use the dashboards created? Once the reports are in use, the reader should be able to interpret them without help from the creator. You can track how often the reports are accessed, and test which ones are actually being used.
It’s critical also to track what resources and activities go into building those automated systems. From a return on investment perspective, this is a valuable metric.
Ultimately, the IT team is not there just to execute the directions of leaders. You could proactively use your valuable experience and knowledge of technology in a consultative way. It’s about finding the opportunities to add more value and surface more revealing insights that the entire business can benefit from. Again, a good place to start is with some questions:
What aspects of my knowledge can I apply to these dashboards to elevate them above the standard reports?
How can my work with other teams be applied here?
Are there any existing resources I can leverage to streamline this process?
A dashboard that’s making a difference
Clean Your Room is a powerful example of a dashboard that the LIKE.TG Sales Operations team developed to help our sales leaders. This dashboard helps sales to see opportunities they might otherwise miss.
There are often important customers or opportunities that may not have received the same focus as others. Perhaps they haven’t been captured in a standard forecast, as they fall just outside the parameters of what would normally get a salesperson’s attention.
Clean Your Room reveals customers that the organisation hasn’t engaged with via a call or email in a chosen period of time. It also highlights opportunities that haven’t been thoroughly explored due to a lack of some critical information. By spending a little time evaluating this report, potential leads could be uncovered.
This is an example of how an IT team works proactively to bring fresh insights and opportunities to business leaders, rather than just acting on requests.
Start creating CRM automated reports and dashboards
Trailhead is the first step in learning how to start working with automated reports and dashboards. There are plenty of modules and Trail Mixes to get you started on your journey.
LIKE.TG also has blogs and resources pages like LIKE.TG Help to assist with questions about creating and using reports and dashboards.
You can also make use of the Trailblazer community. This is an extremely useful resource, with passionate users ready to share real-life examples of what has and hasn’t worked for other teams.
It’s also important to learn from other parts of your organisation about how they’ve made use of your CRM. Learn from their solutions to challenges, and consider using their existing reports as templates.
Insights lead to innovation
As a team, IT is ideally placed to uncover insights and drive innovation. By understanding how the business sells, markets, and engages with customers, you can best advise on the technology to fit your needs. If your organisation sells software, you also understand intimately how your own products work.
A LIKE.TG CRM can be configured to suit your needs. As soon as there is an understanding of your organisation’s requirements, you can start to create dashboards and reports to generate the insights that drive innovation.
Find out more about LIKE.TG for IT.
How the Public Sector Can Lead Through Uncertainty
From natural disasters to a global pandemic, we are living and working in an era of uncertainty. It’s difficult to know what’s coming next, and how to manage it.
The public sector operates on the frontlines of uncertainty. Public servants must find ways to lead through change, and drive prosperity during difficult times.
In a new LIKE.TG webinar, international keynote speaker, storyteller and best-selling author, Chris Helder, discusses how to accept uncertainty and affect positive change in a challenging reality.
He sets out the seven stages of uncertainty acceptance:
1. Take an adventure mindset
Opportunity exists in the absence of certainty, but we must adopt an adventure mindset to see it.
The public sector operates in an environment of almost constant uncertainty. From natural disasters and global pandemics, to frequent elections and relentless media oversight, public servants face political uncertainty on multiple fronts.
However, it is within this uncertainty that we can affect meaningful change — if we embrace the adventure.
2. Focus on what you can control
In these unprecedented times, there are many things we can’t control. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that there is no perfect silver-bullet approach that will restore certainty.
However, we can control how we respond to uncertainty. We can control how we lead change. We can control the actions we take to make a difference.
LIKE.TG supports our customers to manage change through uncertainty. Our tools unlock the data, processes, and insights our customers need to build resilience and enable measured and effective change management in the public sector.
3. Adopt useful beliefs
This is a challenging time in the public sector, but we have a choice. We can freeze in the shadow of negativity and hopelessness. Alternatively, we can adopt useful beliefs that drive positive actions.
Yes, the pandemic is awful. However, the technologies we have make this the best time in history to cope with it. We have come together as societies, and taken action to minimise risks. We have the technology to work from home. We have the tools to make amazing things happen.
These are the useful beliefs that will drive us forward. Like a Swiss Army knife of capabilities, LIKE.TG can support public sector departments to turn useful beliefs into positive actions.
4. Adjust your values
Whether we like it or not, the pandemic has changed our reality. As individuals and employees, we must all adjust our values accordingly.
In the public sector, serving people and the community is an important value. The pandemic has affected many people, and wide-spread uncertainty is making many of us feel vulnerable.
In this climate, time is the greatest gift we can give to our customers and stakeholders. We must invest our time to make their day better. When our stakeholders give us their time, it’s our job to give them everything we’ve got.
5. Keep it simple
As uncertainty grows, high performers and effective organisations keep it simple. The past 12 to 18 months has highlighted the importance of focusing our energies on important, high-value activities versus unimportant, low-value work.
To succeed in the face of uncertainty, we must ask ourselves what is useful and what is not? Which activities produce results, and which do not?
LIKE.TG helps organisations simplify work processes. We smash data silos, integrate platforms, and remove the complexity of managing multiple technology stacks.
6. Choose your narrative
Where do we go from here? The public sector must continue to lead through ongoing uncertainty. But there are opportunities everywhere.
We can take ownership of the narrative, and tell stories that celebrate what we can control. We can simplify the messages we share, help define what’s important, and focus on how we can grow from tragedy.
7. Take action
Today is the day to take action. It’s okay to start small, and acknowledge when things can be done better. That’s how we ignite conversations and share ideas.
When you learn what works — replicate it. Code the success into your DNA, and design a life of excellence.
LIKE.TG helps organisations do this at scale. It is a fast, flexible, and agile platform that can stand up solutions in days and weeks, not months. With LIKE.TG, you can take action today.
Watch the full webinar with Chris Helder.
How To Use Marketing Metrics To Measure The Success Of Your Outreach
While creative copy and an attractive design can draw attention, and perhaps appreciation, it is data that helps you turn this attention into measurable value, say a purchase or signup.With businesses and customers going digital, there’s an abundance of data available to marketers from various sources. Defining and measuring the right marketing metrics make it possible to drill down to what data says about your marketing efforts effectiveness. The marketing team plays a crucial role in selecting, monitoring, and analysing these metrics to ensure they align with campaign goals and formats.What are marketing metrics?Marketing metrics are values marketers can monitor to measure the performance of their campaigns. These values can tell how effectively your marketing efforts are leading audiences to take actions that generate value. But blindly measuring any metric can present a partial or skewed picture of how things really are. A key area of focus in the evolution of marketing metrics measurement is assessing digital marketing performance, which involves tracking progress towards marketing goals and making data-informed decisions to optimise marketing strategies over time.Marketing metrics tell marketers what data to collect and analyse. The marketing metrics you measure should differ based on the channels, goals, and formats of your campaigns. This will reveal finer nuances of the engagement and revenues generated from each campaign over time.How measuring marketing metrics has changed in the last few years.Marketers are trying innovative ways to engage rapidly evolving digital-first audiences. This also drives them to adopt a wider range of metrics to measure their marketing efforts’ success. LIKE.TG’s 8th State of Marketing report says 78% of marketing organisations have reprioritised or changed their marketing metrics in the last year or so. But the marketing function’s underlying goals will always be the same –spread awareness, gain new customers, and continue to engage the existing ones.Metrics like revenue, funnel performance, and customer satisfaction are still the most popular. But KPI-conscious metrics like customer referrals, acquisition costs, engagement with content, etc., are increasingly tracked as well. Utilising tools like Google Analytics allows marketers to gain insights into website performance, track digital marketing performance metrics, and adjust their strategies for better results based on data-driven insights.Since marketing is more strategic now, its metrics must be in line with overall company goals. 70% of CMOs today align their KPIs and metrics with their CEO’s. There are various intelligent marketing tools today that are helping marketers become more efficient and targeted in their approach.Why is it important to measure marketing metrics?As more consumers go online and follow intricate journeys, it becomes harder for marketers to know how they can positively impact their experiences at every touchpoint.Measuring the right marketing metrics helps marketers know how consumers react to their campaigns and communications. Among these metrics, the ratio of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) stands out as a critical indicator. MQLs refer to leads who have shown interest in a product or service and are deemed likely to become customers by the marketing team. SQLs, on the other hand, define prospects that sales teams have determined are ready for a direct follow-up and have a high probability of becoming a customer. Tracking the MQL to SQL ratio is essential for assessing the effectiveness of lead generation efforts and the alignment between marketing and sales teams. Based on these insights, marketers can amplify the efforts that reap the most benefits, and adjust the ones that are not producing the desired results.Metrics also help marketers prove the value their efforts add to the organisation. This helps them get bigger budgets and better resources to create a greater impact.Examples of common marketing metricsThe significance of specific metrics and their benchmarks differ from industry to industry. But there are a few marketing metrics that marketers across industries keep a close eye on at different stages of their customers’ journeys.Some marketing metrics you can measure at different stages of the marketing funnel and on different channels include:Here are some common marketing metrics you need to know about:1. Impression share: Marketers can use this metric to determine how much visibility their brand is getting on a particular channel compared to the larger potential audience it can engage. An increase in impressions can lead to higher sales.2. Click-through rate (CTR): CTR is the number of times an ad or link is clicked on as a percentage of the impressions. Since ads are “push” campaigns, their CTR is generally low. About 4% or higher CTRs generally indicate that your messaging is relevant and compelling. But to ensure audiences’ journeys progress from here on, it is important to provide experiences that align with the expectations you set. There are many marketing tools that can help you monitor CTRs, some even in real-time so you can optimise campaigns on the go.3. Lead generation metrics: AI-powered solutions like Marketing Cloud can help marketers track leads generated from multiple marketing channels in a single, unified dashboard. These leads get prioritised automatically based on the likelihood of their conversion. Popular lead generation metrics include Visitor-to-Lead and Lead-to-Opportunity that measure the conversion of page visitors into ‘warm leads’ and ‘warm leads’ into ‘hot leads’ respectively.4. Marketing qualified lead (MQL) to sales qualified lead (SQL) ratio: MQLs are those that have shown the intent to buy, and SQLs are prospects that sales teams consider ready for direct contact. Your assets and ads may get several signups or clicks but not all these leads would have a purchase intent.Before you send your leads to the sales team, follow these steps to ensure they are ready to buy:Check the information they have sharedDiscard dummy email addressesVerify their LinkedIn profilesMake business email addresses mandatory (for B2B)Request additional information.A good MQL to SQL ratio shows that your sales and marketing teams are well-aligned. It reflects a healthy pipeline and how effectively your marketing teams can qualify leads.5. Cost per lead (CPL): CPL is the amount you spend on gaining a new lead from a campaign or channel. This metric can help you measure the ROI of your campaigns and allocate budgets where you see better results. Ensure that the amount you spend on measures like paid ads and monitoring social media is as low as possible while maintaining high acquisition rates.6. Lead-to-customer conversion rate: While gathering leads is important for your marketing and sales teams, measuring the number of leads that actually convert into paying customers is also important. This can help you determine whether your sales team needs a greater number of leads, leads of higher quality, or the right content to help them close deals faster.7. Cost per acquisition (CPA): CPA is the amount you spend to get a new customer. If the CPA is less than the revenue the customer brings in over a period, then your marketing efforts are on the right track. You can calculate the overall CPA of all your marketing efforts or for individual channels to inform budget allocations.8. Customer lifetime value (CLV): CLV is the amount a customer is expected to spend on your company during the time they are with you. It can include licence renewals, product plan upgrades (upsell), and buying your other products (cross-sell) depending on your offerings and pricing model. You can predict CLVs based on similar customer profiles and journeys seen in the past.CLV is important for proving how often quality is better than quantity in marketing. To maximise revenue, some of your campaigns should always be aimed at better engaging existing customers.9. Return on investment (ROI): Marketing ROI can be calculated by dividing CLV by CPA. If your CPA is high but CLV is low, you need to tweak your campaign strategy to increase the revenue generated from it.10. Action completion: Check if your audiences are taking the actions you are leading them towards. It could be actions like entering contact details, subscribing to newsletters, or clicking on a CTA. Action completion for different channels will be measured on the basis of different actions. So, if the action is subscribing to a newsletter, you would measure how many people are subscribing.11. Multiple touchpoint attribution: Not many people complete a purchase the first time they browse online. Usually, buyers prefer checking their options and coming back to make the final purchase.To better understand the impact of your marketing efforts at different touchpoints in your customer journey, you can use tools like the W-shaped attribution model. This model attributes 30% credit to first clicks, 30% to clicks that convert leads, 30% to clicks that create opportunities, and 10% to other interactions.W-shaped Attribution Model12. Company-focused metrics: Lastly and importantly, knowing how marketers contribute to the company’s business growth and profits is crucial. Company-focused marketing metrics help measure and assess how much of the company’s new or repeat customers, business opportunities, revenue, and profits – can be attributed to the marketing initiatives. Examples of such company metrics include Marketing Originated Customer Percentage, Customer Acquisition Cost recovery time, Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI), etc.There are also metrics specific to measuring the performance of campaigns on different channels or platforms:Website metricsWhen a person wants to know about your company, the first thing they do is check out your website – read blogs, watch videos, listen to podcasts, and so on. Measuring website traffic metrics is essential to determine how visitors interact with your website and if the website is engaging enough to move them to the next steps. You can track website metrics such as:Pageviews: The total number of views that your website pages get over a period. This number includes multiple views from the same visitor. Ideally, pageviews should go up with time.Unique pageviews: The number of views your website pages get from individual visitors over a period. The higher the number, the better is the website experience for visitors.Retention rates: Returning visitors indicate interest in content or buying.Average time on page: The time a visitor spends on a page on average. While a short duration of 30 seconds or so is not a good sign, a long duration is just as bad, as it means your visitors either find the page too complex or are idle on your page. A duration of 2-3 minutes indicates good engagement.Engaged time: Measuring engaged time is a step further from time spent on your web pages. This helps you determine if audiences are actively exploring your content or if your webpage is simply open on a browser.Some marketing tools also use heat maps to determine how much time audiences spend on different parts of your web pages. With insights like this, you can continuously improve the content and structure of your web pages to increase engagement.Pages/session: The number of pages a visitor views in a session. A session is an interval between the visitor’s arrival on the website and when they leave it. The more pages they visit during their session, the more attractive they find your content and the more likely they are to progress to the next stage.Bounce rate: A “bounce” happens when a new visitor visits a single page on your website and exits immediately without taking any other action. Bounce rates are an indicator of how interesting, relevant, or pleasing the content on your site is to your audiences. Besides this, other factors that can impact bounce rates are content placements, hyperlinks, CTAs, aesthetics, load times, etc. Ideally, your website bounce rates should be below 40%.Ask yourself if external sites are:Relevant to your siteConsidered credibleAttracting humans or meant for web crawlers (search engine bots that index web pages on the internet)Linking to spam sites or selling linksWebsite conversion rate: It is not enough to only measure the number of people who visit your website. To make the most of your marketing efforts, measure where these visitors are coming from and how many complete intended actions – like making purchases, subscribing to a service, requesting a meeting, etc.Once you have identified the actions you want to measure, set up custom landing pages that only converted audiences will be taken to. Ensure there is no other way to arrive at these pages, so your calculations stay accurate.To truly understand the impact of your website on your overall marketing success, it’s crucial to measure website metrics across different marketing channels, including digital and traditional channels, to monitor and analyse a variety of marketing metrics for internet marketing, email marketing, and social media metrics.Email marketing metricsEmails continue to be one of the best ways to reach and engage your audiences. Measure the performance of your email marketing campaigns with metrics like:Email open rates: Open rate is the ratio of the number of recipients who open your email to the total number of recipients. A high open rate is desirable, and a compelling subject line usually does the trick.Email bounce rate: It is the number of email addresses to which your emails do not get delivered. Hard bounces (typical to fake or non-operational addresses) and soft bounces (caused by temporary issues) should be measured to refine subscriber lists.Email click-through rate: Higher click-through rates indicate the effectiveness of your email copy, design, CTAs, etc.Unsubscribe rate: Watching subscribers leave can be alarming but approach this positively. When uninterested audiences leave, you are left with subscribers who genuinely want to engage with your brand. This can also reveal important traits of ideal audience segments.New subscribers: Understanding subscription patterns can help marketers identify the triggers behind the increased interest in your brand. This is also a content marketing metric that can guide your content marketing and promotion strategies through emails.Unengaged subscribers: Just like having inactive followers on social media, unengaged subscribers to your email lists don’t help you in any way. In fact, such subscribers can often give you a false sense of successful brand engagement. To maintain a healthy subscribers list, marketers need to periodically identify inactive audiences and cleanse the list. You can set up automatic unsubscribing to remove unengaged individuals from your list after a decided duration of inactivity and notify them.Social media metricsSocial media is a great platform for building customer engagement and deeper relationships with your target audience. But having thousands of followers is no use if they don’t engage with your brand’s content. Indicators like shares/re-shares, likes, comments, pins, etc. are a great way to determine audience engagement rates and sentiment. Social media engagement is one of the most accurate indicators of brand awareness, the other two being brand mentions and branded search.Let’s look at these metrics in a bit of detail.Engagement metrics: Likes, comments, new follows, shares/reshares, tags, etc. indicate active engagement.Reach: The number of times your content is displayed, leading to more people seeing them.Impressions: The number of people and times your content is shown to your audiences.New followers and follower growth rate: You can measure growth by calculating the rate at which your followers increase during a set period.Traffic: The amount of traffic your draw to your website through social media platforms.Brand mentions: Identifying where your brand gets mentioned can indicate the exposure it is receiving on different platforms. Add to this mention of competitor brands and you’ll find more places your brand can appear.Then, there are metrics that are used to measure success post-sales.Retention metricsTo raise your CLV, it is important to dedicate some marketing campaigns towards engaging existing customers. Here are three marketing metrics you can measure to ensure your customers stay connected, loyal, and happy:Customer churn: This is the rate at which customers stop buying from you or subscribing to your services. This is particularly critical for businesses that follow a subscription-based sales model.Revenue growth rate of existing customers: A rise in this metric shows that your marketing and sales teams are convincing customers to spend frequently or increasingly on your offerings. A fall, on the other hand, should be investigated immediately and addressed,Net promoter score: Rated on a scale from 1-10 (scores ranging from -100 to +100), this metric tells you how likely a customer is to recommend your offerings to others.Once you are familiar with common marketing metrics, it is time to determine which ones your marketers can start measuring.How your marketing department can set their key marketing metricsThe marketing metrics you choose to measure should be relevant to your business, industry, preferred channels, and campaign types. To determine the right marketing metrics to measure your campaign success, follow these two simple steps:1. Identify your goals: Know what you want to achieve through marketing – whether it is finding more leads, raising CLV, or anything else. Marketing metrics should be directly related to the results you seek.2. Stay focused: It is natural to want to know all the ways your marketing efforts affect your business. But when you want to see specific outcomes, stick to the metrics that help you measure marketing performance on those lines.Remember, a lot of your marketer’s time and effort can go into measuring and monitoring marketing metrics. It is best to focus on the essentials, instead of spending time on activities that may not be useful for you at a given point.Metrics make marketing successfulMarketing metrics act as guardrails for your marketing strategies and activities. They ensure that you’re on the right track with your strategies and budgets and that no effort or marketing investment goes to waste. If you never measure the results at every stage, you’ll never know what you’re doing wrong (or right).LIKE.TG Marketing Cloud is a complete solution that can get you started and set you up for success, as all your digital marketing needs can be met in one place. It is driven by an in-built AI engine that helps marketers make data-driven decisions with speed and accuracy.Click here to learn more about Marketing Cloud’s features.
How PLDT Global Personalises Customer Care Using Heroku
According to the LIKE.TG State of Service report, 79% of service professionals believe it’s impossible to provide great service without a complete view of customer interactions.
It’s easy to understand why. For today’s customers, great service typically means service that’s personalised and efficient. However, that’s difficult to deliver when customer data is siloed across different systems.
PLDT Global is one of many businesses that have experienced this challenge. PLDT Global offers telecommunications infrastructure and solutions to a global network of carriers, enterprise customers, and distributors.
The business also provides connectivity and content services to Filipinos living abroad. One of these services, Free Bee, is an award winning app that enables users to make free international calls back to the Philippines and stay connected with their friends and family.
Here, we share how PLDT Global has overcome the challenge of siloed data to provide all its customers with best in class service.
Digital drives need to level up service
Like many other organisations, PLDT Global was driven to transform service in response to customers’ digital expectations.
“Customer service is very challenging these days because almost everything now is digital and there’s a higher expectation for businesses to be digitally available and extra efficient. We identified the need to level up our service capabilities, including the tools and knowledge bases used by our customer service teams and the cadences for cross-functional collaboration,” said Lea T. Garcia, VP and Head of CX and Process Quality at PLDT Global Corporation.
As a starting point, PLDT Global needed to gain real-time access to, and analysis of, its customer data. This information was distributed across six major systems. These were systems that contained loyalty data, subscription data, transaction data, digital distribution and a Voice of the Customer system.
PLDT Global wanted to connect these systems for a complete view of the customer, enabling personalised service and supporting customer analytics.
Lea shared that PLDT Global is data-driven and wanted to better understand its customers to deliver more meaningful products and services.
“We make an extra effort to collaborate and engage with customers so we can craft solutions that fit in with their lives and businesses. What carries through in everything we do is our core value of malasakit, which translates to a unique Filipino care and sense of ownership in service,” said Lea.
Unlocking customer data
Heroku Connect has helped PLDT Global deliver on its customer experience goals. Heroku Connect is a data integration service that is typically used to synchronise data between LIKE.TG and custom apps.
In this case, Heroku Connect was used to link multiple systems and establish a consolidated view of each customer.
Appistoki Consulting, a LIKE.TG Gold Consulting Partner, worked with PLDT Global to implement Heroku Connect and to optimise the business’s analytics capabilities using Tableau CRM.
Remarkably, the project was delivered in just 14 weeks. That’s something that Abhijeet Kulkarni, Founder CEO of Appistoki Consulting partly attributed to the versatile nature of Heroku Connect.
“We believe in leveraging the power of the platform and always adopt a configuration-first approach,” said Abhijeet. “Heroku Connect is also a very versatile platform. We used it both as middleware to link multiple systems and as a database to normalise data before leveraging it to enrich the business’ customer profiles.”
“We now have a 360-degree view of our customers, which helps us manage service and provides a strong foundation for analytics to support all of our customer experience efforts,” said Lea. “Tableau CRM also gives us the tools we need to slice and dice our data and make it more actionable. For example, we can carry out customer modelling, customer segmentation, and churn analysis.
“These analytics provide us with a greater understanding of our customers and also offer us insights into the future, thereby helping us formulate plans to grow the business further.”
PLDT Global has already experienced more immediate wins, including:
Eight percent increase in first contact resolution rate
Reduction in first response speed from an average of 33 minutes to under five minutes
Five percent increase in CSAT, lifting average to 85%
Seven point increase in NPS for an average score of 35
“Overall, our implementation of Heroku Connect was a strategic move and something that will benefit our customers and business for the long term,” said Lea.
Watch the webinar with PLDT Global to learn more about how the business is using Heroku Connect to drive better customer service.
Why Slack Is a Sales Team’s Secret Weapon To Growing Revenue
Sales Cloud 360 and Slack open up new ways to sell, helping your sales team to sell faster: driving growth now, and in the future.
Ah, that classic knock-brush sound.
For many members of the 21st-century workforce, the familiar Slack notification sound has become shorthand for many things. A team member celebrating a major deal closing. A supervisor giving some last-minute encouragement before a make-or-break meeting. Sometimes, just the social committee figuring out where everyone is going for lunch. These days, it represents the future of how we work and how we grow.
Many people see Slack as a tool to communicate, and it still is. Now, it’s also a tool to close deals faster. Here are three ways Slack can help you rewrite the rules of sales:
1. Cut out conversation-killing email and talk with customers in a real-time #buyer channel instead
What: Slack Connect allows salespeople to move conversations with customers, partners, and vendors out of email and into Slack. You can create a dedicated Slack channel for each buyer, choose the option to share that channel externally, and send the buyer an invite link to join. All of the magic happens in one place instead of in unending email threads.
Why: Email is the new snail mail. The immediacy of Slack communication mimics the natural flow of in-person conversation. Similar to texting and instant messaging, it creates more genuine connections according to industry research. There’s also the added benefit of being able to easily share white papers, demo recordings, and other insights right in a chat. With a simple “@” mention, you can address concerns right away and lessen overall response time. This shortens the sales cycle.
An IDC study revealed businesses that implemented Slack as a sales tool were able to respond to a sales lead 21% faster. That ease of communication can make the difference between struggling to book a meeting and finally closing that deal.
How: Let’s say a buyer has a question about implementation time. Instead of playing a game of email tennis with a bunch of different stakeholders — an asynchronous way of communicating that eats up time — you can loop in the right technical expert in Slack within minutes. Need someone who can provide more detailed answers on use cases? Tag a product expert. Just needing to strengthen rapport? Tag an executive sponsor. No “just circling back on my previous email” required.
Slack Connect brings customers and partners into the sales cycle so you can easily check on progress, catch potential blockers, and stay ahead of upcoming renewals. Slack bots can even scale your customer outreach, allowing you to do them en masse for smaller accounts.
In a work-from-anywhere world, tools like Slack become indispensable. Forty-six percent of salespeople in a recent LIKE.TG survey stated they’ll be working virtually from now forward. To maintain a quality customer experience, sellers need collaborative software.
Influx is the world’s largest on-demand support provider, and relies on being able to quickly react to clients’ seasonal needs. “Within 30 seconds of a lead arriving on our website, our app sends a notification to a dedicated Slack channel,” says Alex Holmes, Chief Growth Officer. “Those leads get actioned by the inbound sales team to let everyone know when they followed up – with a timestamp – and whether it was successful or if there was an issue. Every lead turns into a learning event.”
2. Make onboarding new team members a breeze with #new-hire tools
What: Before a rep’s first day, invite them to join a #new-hire Slack channel where they can use the chat for all onboarding questions instead of email. If your company is large, you can even create different Slack channels for cohorts onboarding on different dates (e.g. #new-hire-November2021). Ask them to write a brief introduction and get acquainted with other newbies. Most importantly, provide all onboarding info in this channel. Need day one materials? Want an onboarding buddy? Don’t know how to enroll in benefits? Another benefit is new reps can see the entire history of an account in one place. All conversations, decisions and documents are available, not locked away in their predecessor’s inbox. Everything can be found in Slack.
Why: Imagine you’re a sales development representative (SDR). It’s your first day on the job and you’re just getting started. The onboarding process is spread across documents on different platforms, resources in different inboxes, and known only to specific people. In short, it’s siloed and utterly overwhelming. With a single workspace for all onboarding materials, you can ramp up people faster. Not to mention that creating a channel for new hires gives everyone the benefit of seeing other people’s questions and saves HR teams the extra workload of answering repeat queries.
Once new salespeople are up to speed and ready to venture out onto the virtual sales floor, they’ll find everything they need to do their jobs within Slack. They’ll also have visibility into historical account activity, so they’ll know what they’re walking into when they inherit accounts. You can even use a customer relationship management (CRM) integration to sync sales data. That way, salespeople no longer have to switch back and forth between systems.
This makes early training a cinch. The threat of the productivity-killing “frankenstack,” where various project systems are haphazardly sewn together, is eliminated. Slack alerts can help you prioritise the right deals as you prep for meetings by providing insights from Sales Cloud. The less time you spend digging for information, the quicker you can land your very first sale. Companies with a Slack integration had a 15% faster sales cycle on average and 13% more deals closed.
How: Slack can optimise and, frankly, humanise the employee experience, leading to less turnover and more well-prepared sellers. New team members can learn how to be successful based on others’ wins, benefitting from peer-to-peer learning. They’ll also build rapport with their teammates, establishing a company culture even virtually. “What’s great about Slack channels is, you have context for every message, and messages don’t get lost. That allows us to come up with solutions to problems faster and train people and figure out what’s really going on,” says Holmes.
Slack with Sales Cloud can even boost effectiveness in small ways that aren’t always obvious. “Often it’s as simple as an emoji system, where I can really quickly see which leads may be worth following up on or not,” says Holmes. “If they’re unqualified leads, why are they not qualified? If there are leads where we don’t have enough information, I can see whether someone is actively following that up. Similarly, if any leads are a repeat lead, that information is clear to us as well.”
3. Create specific #opportunity Slack spaces so you can close deals as a team
What: Selling is a team sport, so use Slack channels to collaborate with cross-functional team members on important opportunities. These digital “deal rooms” allow team members to swarm around customer needs in order to drive more deals forward, faster. Now, it’s easy for everyone to stay up to date on a deal’s stage and activity, and to work together on next steps to keep things on track. Winning deals is now a team orchestration instead of a solo effort. Plus, you can create a #winning channel where employees gather to pop (emoji) bottles and congratulate each other after a major close.
Slack recently launched a new Huddles feature that allows group audio within a channel. People can quickly hop in and out of an audio conversation without having to schedule a formal video chat while still sharing files and screens. This aligns with research from Yale that shows phone calls create an even stronger empathetic response than video calling. The screen-sharing capabilities also allow everyone to feel like they’re in the office standing over a monitor, hashing out last-minute decisions.
Why: Selling is a team sport –no rep closes a deal on their own. If a seller is facing a hurdle and they’re not able to pull in the right person quickly, it negatively impacts credibility, delays decision-making, and ultimately slows down the sales cycle. When teams are able to move as a unit, revenue grows.
Slack enables sellers to not just talk to each other better but to talk to other departments better. Slack tears down the walls that exist between sales and marketing, engineering, finance, legal, product, or customer success — all the key players needed to get the deal done! This empowers sales organisations to act on customer feedback faster, passing along valuable input to the product teams. One hundred percent of sales leaders surveyed in an IDC study agreed that Slack helped them better understand and work with non-sales teams.
How: Slack allows immediate collaboration between teams, even if the salesperson is on a call with a potential customer at that moment. If a prospect raises an objection, the speed of Slack allows the salesperson to contact the right person within their organisation, get an answer, and go right back to the client without leaving the call.
Slack is there to help share the joy of winning a new contract, too.
“When we acquire a new client, that information automatically goes into the general channel that the entire company sees,” says Holmes. “It’s a nice way for the people working on that deal: from the salesperson to the person onboarding the deal, and the team leader, to get credit for their contribution.”
So, are you ready for #next-steps?
Slack is a bridge builder. It closes the gaps between sellers and buyers, sellers and marketers, and sellers and other sellers. Slack helps to transform a CRM system from just the place where you keep information to the place where you engage, learn, and ultimately win. On virtual sales floors where salespeople are moving with ever-increasing agility, Slack positions teams to drive growth from anywhere.
Try Slack for free.
This post originally appeared in the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
Case Swarming With Slack: How LIKE.TG Support Delivers Better, Faster Case Resolution
The pressure on customer service teams continues to increase. Customers expect instant help — either from self-service digital resources or, with a complex problem, bytalking to a person. They’re looking for support that’s both easy and expert.
However, the traditional support model of escalating difficult cases to managers or other teams doesn’t cut it anymore. In fact, 82% of customers expect to be able to solve complex problems by talking to just one person, according to LIKE.TG’sState of the Connected Customerreport.
The old way of providing support often results in long resolution times and multiple handoffs for complex cases. That’s frustrating for the customer. It’s also inherently inefficient for the organisation.
The solution iscase swarming, a collaborative service model that shares the load of solving customers’ complex problems across the organisation. At LIKE.TG, we’ve transformed how we provide support to our customers by adopting case swarming. We are doing this using the newest addition to LIKE.TG Customer 360:Slack.
Connect with the right experts, every time
Under a traditional model, customer service teams are typically grouped into tiers, based on their level of experience or expertise in a particular product. A customer with a complex problem is often passed from a Tier-1 service agent to a Tier-2 team member, then to a Tier-3 agent.
There are clear downsides to the customer experience: time to resolution is longer, and customers often have to repeat information about their issue to multiple case owners. Even with a successful resolution, this drawn-out experience reduces customer satisfaction.
A traditional, tiered model requires an overly complex structure, with multiple customer handoffs. Service agents may spend time on cases they are ill-equipped to resolve, reducing their productivity. When an agent escalates a case to the next tier, it can result in a lack of accountability and ownership. Unless they receive formal training, they’re not learning new skills or progressing their careers.
In a tiered support model, customers interact with multiple agents to resolve their issue.
Recognising these issues at LIKE.TG, we set about solving them by adopting a new model of intelligent case swarming. We redefined our strategy by creating swarm pods, giving customers access to more expertise from a pool of support engineers. We useService Cloudto route the case to a swarm pod lead who brings in the necessary experts from across LIKE.TG.
Case swarming puts the customer at the centre of the support experience. This type of support model is designed to ensure customers only deal with one owner for each case, someone who has quick access to the expertise they need to resolve each issue quickly.
Collaboration by default, not escalation
Each of our swarm pods supports a different LIKE.TG product, although some pods offer a specific skill set or specialty. Support engineers collaborate within their pods, and can also jump into other pods to help. There’s no need to escalate a complex issue — everyone is collaborating by default, so a case owner can quickly connect with the right person or people to resolve the issue.
We useSlack as our collaboration toolbecause of its flexible, feature-rich environment. It allows cross-functional teams to communicate and make decisions in real time, no matter where they are located. Because it will integrate with Service Cloud, the full case histories will be easily accessible from within those conversations, creating a simpler agent experience in a single, collaborative place.
Case swarming helps bring the right experts together to quickly resolve cases.
Slack gives our support pods the flexibility they need to work together to resolve even major issues quickly. Here’s how it works: If an engineer needs help on a case, the pod’s lead pushes a swarm request into the appropriate Slack channels, asking other pods, cross-functional subject matter experts, and managers to swarm the case.
Workflowsbuilt into Slack automate the processes service agents use to bring the right experts to the swarm pod and work through the case together. Slack bots help monitor and process channel activity, post messages in channels, react to members’ activity, and make channel messages interactive with buttons.
This approach allows our engineers to resolve customers’ problems faster, while also shielding customers from the complexity and multiple hand-offs of a traditional support model.
As a result, LIKE.TG has seen a 26% reduction in case resolution time since introducing a tierless support model with case swarming with Slack, despite an increase in customers and case volume over the same period.
Learn, coach, and mentor in real time
With the swarming process, our engineers are regularly collaborating with engineers in other pods, while working closely with highly-skilled experts in their domains. They’re constantly learning from each other, accelerating their skills in their areas of expertise, and broadening their knowledge across domains.
Meanwhile, pod leads can coach and mentor their teams in a real-time, collaborative way, instead of the traditional, review-style management approach.
As a result, the company gets a more highly-skilled support team, while engineers gain more skills and more responsibility, progressing their careers.
Scale case swarming to new teams
Ultimately, case swarming has improved the dynamic between our support teams, managers, and customers. Looking ahead, we plan to standardise and scale case swarming across LIKE.TG.
Having seen its success in customer support, it’s not hard to see how swarming could benefit other teams. Already, for example, Slack channels provide readily available feedback loops for product teams. They can see issues as they unfold, identify trends, and come up with new ways to improve products for our customers.
We have amazing people working in security, operations, finance, sales, product development, support, and other departments. We’re already a highly-collaborative organisation, but swarming could take that to a new level, enabling our people to readily share their knowledge, experiences, and resources in real time.
Learn more about Slack here.
This post orginally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.