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How 3 Retailers in Asia Boost Customer Engagement with Marketing Tech
According to more than 8,000 marketers around the world, the single greatest challenge for the profession this year has been real-time customer engagement.
It’s no surprise, then, that the main priorities for marketers looking into the future all revolve around improving customer engagement and creating seamless experiences. The 2021 State of Marketing report, released this past month, reveals what has been top of mind for marketers as they adapt to new customer behaviours and expectations. At the top of the list of priorities are:
Innovating
Engaging with customers in real time
Creating a cohesive customer journey across channels and devices
Improving marketing ROI and attribution
Improving collaboration
There are already great examples of businesses that are nailing customer experience and engagement. They are doing it through the innovative use of technology and collaboration between marketing, sales, and service.
Here are three great examples:
1. Tokopedia
When growing, almost every business reaches a stage where increasing headcount is no longer enough to keep up with service demands.
With more than 100 million active users per month, Indonesia’s largest marketplace platform Tokopedia had to create new ways to deliver trust at scale. The solution came with the optimisation of channels such as email, live chat, and self-service.
Tokopedia was able to implement its LIKE.TG solutions in four months and with zero downtime. Using LIKE.TG gave Tokopedia a 360-degree view of customers. The business achieved some great customer engagement outcomes as a result, including:
Seventy percent drop in repeated contacts
Ninety percent drop in the complaint-to-transaction ratio
Forty percent improvement in response times for customer care
Read more about Tokopedia’s success here.
2. Sendo
Sendo, one of Vietnam’s largest ecommerce businesses, connects more than 300,000 sellers to millions of buyers. Three years ago, their customer service team of just 20 agents had to scale quickly in a heavily siloed technological environment.
The solution involved integrating all data into a single system. This provided a single customer view as well as customer access across multiple channels. Service Cloud and Social Studio enabled this and more at Sendo, including real-time reporting to measure and improve KPIs such as call handling time.
Having all customer information in one place resulted in an increase in productivity by more than 30%. Customer satisfaction has increased 20%, and survey response rate has grown by a massive 150%.
Read more of Sendo’s story here.
3. Fisher Paykel
Premium appliance brand Fisher Paykel is on a mission to be the most human-centred appliance brand in the world. Accomplishing this requires a deep understanding of what people want and need from their products.
As the company sells directly to consumers as well as through a network of retailers, it’s critical that all tools and data are centralised for easy access by other areas of the business.
LIKE.TG solutions have helped Fisher Paykel break down silos and improve efficiencies. Marketing Cloud helps the company tailor communications to individual customer preferences based on previous behaviours. Builders, designers and retailers can make use of a dealer portal built on Experience Cloud that simplifies collaboration and order tracking. And integrating Service Cloud into Fisher Paykel’s call centre is helping service teams get instant insight into the customer at the other end of the phone.
Together, these measures have reduced transactional calls by 60%, and the time it takes to train new operators has shrunk from nine months to three weeks.
Get more insights into Fisher Paykel’s success here.
In 2021, business success involves a deep knowledge of customers as well as one-on-one communications. When all teams have a single and shared view of the customer, customer experience moves to an entirely new level.
Customers Want Connected Experiences. Data Integration Does Just That
It can take up to 35 pieces of data to create one personalised customer experience, according to MuleSoft. Yet, customers crave connected experiences. Customers volunteer information such as what they buy, where they buy it (online or at a store), if they contacted customer service, if they use a coupon, if they read your marketing emails, and on and on. Your customers never stop giving you valuable information about their preferences.
Now, customers want you to remember these interactions. For your brand to connect with them, now and in the future, with these preferences in mind. They want you to see them as individuals. They want you to provide them with the personalised experiences they prefer. According to the 4th Edition of the State of the Connected Customer report, 80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Customers feel so strongly about this, one in three would abandon a brand after only one negative experience.
Customer data increases exponentially
The amount of data organisations must connect, analyse, and act on continues to explode. Yet, only one-third of the average 900 applications enterprise organisations have is connected. It is no wonder nine in 10 IT leaders believe these data silos create unaddressed business challenges.
So, it’s time to ask: What if you could connect all those data points to power all aspects of your business?
This question is creating massive hurdles for many companies across every industry. But this isn’t something IT leaders can ignore if they want to stay competitive and meet evolving customer needs. Instead, a data-driven business should be a priority now — if it wasn’t before 2020. Seventy-two percent of those surveyed in a recent report say experimentation with and investment in digital technologies have played a key role in helping them navigate the crisis. Sixty-seven percent of those same respondents invested more than industry peers in digital-related capital expenditures.
You know there is a better way. Whether it is for your salespeople that spend two-thirds of their time not selling, or for your IT team who spends time on projects that aren’t business-critical. Maybe it is for the customer service people who spend time answering the same questions over and over again. Whomever it is for in your organisation, you know productivity and morale improvements are necessary. That data is the key.
Employee experience supports customer success
Not only should your technology bring you and your customers closer, but it should also support your employees in their work so they can be the glue to keep your customers close. You can useLIKE.TG Customer 360, the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, and Slack to ensure a superior employee experience. It’s time you discover what other innovative companies have: Better employee experiences lead to better customer service experiences. That all leads to business growth.
As businesses work to obtain their footing in a changing world, most (87%) IT and business leaders feel their alignment has improved over the past year. For example, INSEAD CIO Mr. Choo Tatt Saw knows increasing employee productivity means better customer service. “MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform’s API capabilities enabled us to implement automated scheduling and course bookings — improving the efficiency and productivity of our staff. Now, they can focus on higher value tasks instead of manual work.” Additionally, connecting systems through one integrated platform enabled INSEAD to provide a 360-degree view of their data, which in turn powered innovation and cut down on development time from three months to two days.
This type of flexible and secure technology should be at the heart of your digital transformation. As you evaluate solutions, it is crucial to get a trusted technology partner and platform capable of adjusting as your organisation and market needs it to.
Flexible technology is the answer
The MuleSoft Anypoint Platform provides this flexibility. It uses application programming interfaces (APIs) to connect the data from your LIKE.TG CRM to Tableau to visualise that data.It is possible to use Slack as a frontend interface that can enhance inter and intradepartmental communication.
The current business landscape is still evolving as the pandemic economy continues. Businesses that want to continue growing need a flexible platform that can respond quickly to the market. A recent study shows a correlation between those that have successfully navigated the ongoing pandemic and have invested, more than their peers, in experimentation in digital technologies. Whether that is the evolving market of today where coronavirus variants are now surging or the market on the horizon with the return to schools and hybrid work schedules.
What’s next?
The only way to prepare for the unimaginable is to do the best you can with the data you have now. Have reliable, secure, and flexible technology built for agility. Finally, prepare to look at novel business challenges with a “beginner’s mind” when the situation demands it.
Given everything that’s happened since March 2020, are you ready for the next step in your digital transformation? See how MuleSoft (with LIKE.TG, Slack, and Tableau) can provide your customers with the connected experiences they want — faster.
Go ahead, take the next step.
Meet Brandy the Fox, the Newest LIKE.TG Character
We are in a new digital-first world. Customer expectations are changing. We’re working from anywhere. With all of these complex challenges, what’s a marketer to do?
Call Brandy, the newest LIKE.TG character.
Wherever you are in your marketing, Brandy is here to help monitor pipeline, cultivate campaigns, tell stories with personalisation, adapt to trends, and more.
You’ll see her start to appear alongside our other characters — Astro, Codey, Appy, and all our favorite friends — in the coming weeks and months.
Here’s a little more about Brandy the marketer and some insights behind her creation.
The ideas behind our characters
Let’s back up. Why do we haveour LIKE.TG characters, anyway? In 1999, LIKE.TG changed the mindset of what enterprise software could be — easier to purchase, simpler to use, and more democratic without difficulties of installation, maintenance, and constant upgrades.
Left to right: Appy, Einstein, Brandy, Astro, and Cloudy
Our characters reflect this vision. While each of them has a specific job and purpose, every character shares our mission of making technology friendlier, more approachable, and accessible. They also embrace the fun side of our company and inspire our community to blaze new trails.
Fast forward to today and our introduction to Brandy the Marketer. We began by asking ourselves, “What inspires us about our Trailblazers?” To answer the question, we made a list of their best qualities. Then, we went looking for the perfect way to put that into a character’s personality, appearance, and places she’ll show up.
Marketers and foxes have more in common than you might think. Here are some details on Brandy, and why she’s a fox.
Adaptable:Foxes thrive in diverse habitats — from forests to grasslands, mountains, and deserts. They can scale hurdles and swim well. This makes Brandy a welcome companion to marketers navigating a unique landscape of their own — our all-digital, work-from-anywhere world.
Analytical:Foxes scan the field for data. Like marketers today, they have an analytical approach to everything they do. They have an “internal compass” to determine the distance to a goal, just like how marketers use their data to lead their strategy.
Adventurous:Foxes can cover a lot of ground. They’re excellent travelers, always headed toward the next horizon. That’s why Brandy loves planning journeys. She finds the magic in every stop — or customer interaction — along the way.
Approachable:Foxes are warm and friendly. Sometimes misunderstood or portrayed as mischievous, they’re actually quite lovable. Meet any of our Trailblazers, and you’ll walk away inspired and with a smile on your face.
Moment maker:With her camera and watch, Brandy helps marketers deliver amazing customer moments at the right place, at the right time. Moment by moment, she helps marketers build customer relationships that last.
A fox. A friend. A field guide.
With her brilliant mind only matched by her blazing fur coat — perfectly matching Marketing Cloud’s hallmark orange — Brandy truly is a natural fit to the LIKE.TG family.
Brandy is an on-the-go, work-from-anywhere marketer. She’s just like you.
But mainly, she’s just like you: a marketer who delivers unforgettable moments for their customers. See how those moments are being built over by marketers everywhere atMarketer Career Pathon Trailhead.
You’ll be able to:
Skill up in your marketing role.From email marketing to analytics, data science, and more, learn new in-demand marketing skills specific to your current role.
Network with fellow marketers.You don’t have to go it alone. Join a thriving community of marketers and get expert tips, talk strategy, learn about customer trends, and more.
Transform your career.Discover open positions, learn insights from industry leaders, and get inspired with stories of success from marketers just like you.
Grow your career, connect with fellow Trailblazers, and explore what’s possible with marketing. Join the #MomentMarketer community.
This post orginally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
Using Technology To Scale and Grow Small & Fast-Growing Businesses
Customer expectations have changed a lot since 2020. Finding the right technology to engage customers and grow relationships over the long term is now a top priority for small and fast-growing businesses.
According to our fourth Small Medium (SMB) Business Trends Report, more than three-quarters of SMB leaders said last year’s crises should be a catalyst for business improvement.
SMB leaders cite these three factors when it comes to the technology contributing to business success:
It drives my customer interactions (51%)
It influences my organisation’s ability to stay in business (46%)
It drives the growth of my customer base (42%)
SMB leaders are learning that technology can make a critical difference in the success and growth of their business.
To learn more about this critical connection, we spoke to a few fast-growing SMBs at LIKE.TG Live: Asia. Read the infographic below to learn what they said worked for them.
For details on this infographic, please click here.
How Government Generates Trust Through Digital Services in Singapore
A major global study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and LIKE.TG reveals the links between a government’s digital services and levels of trust for government.
It’s not news to anybody that the pandemic has driven people online in record numbers. More people than ever now live more of their lives within a digital realm.
What is fascinating is the effect this is having on customer expectations, and on trust in government.
Whether it’s shopping, working, learning, healthcare or government services, people are looking to the digital realm, first. As they do, they are having varying levels of experience.
Every time they have a wow moment, every time they’re delighted by a remarkable, personalised online interaction, their expectations are being shaped.
The trailblazing report The Global Trust Imperative from BCG and LIKE.TG offers a sharp focus on what those changing expectations mean for governments and their agencies. In particular, this report – developed from surveys with 24,500 people across 36 countries – reveals that 87 per cent of respondents globally believe that a great digital government customer experience would increase their degree of trust. This alone highlights the fact that there is a deep and powerful connection between digital government services and trust in that government.
In Singapore the report found 77 per cent of respondents say great digital experiences would have the highest positive impact on trust for the government. Importantly, almost as many say bad experiences decrease trust. There’s great risk involved in getting digital experience wrong, or not providing it at all.
Some of the findings are encouraging in terms of the positive impact digital upgrades have already had. For example, in Singapore, 54 per cent say their needs are being met by their government’s digital services.
There were several findings of interest to public sector leaders. For example, globally, 94 per cent of customers say they’re not happy with just any digital offering. Customers worldwide expect government digital services to be as good as or better than banks, telcos, leading tech firms or other leading governments. That’s high expectations, indeed.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
What customers want
To know how to best serve customers, first we need to understand what they don’t want. Globally, 70 per cent of customers say the last interaction they had with digital government services had at least one pain point. Although this number varied from country to country, even a leading country like Singapore found that 64 per cent of users faced some type of problem when accessing their digital service.
So what is it that they want? Where are governments falling short in the digital realm?
The most common problems were:
the length or difficulty of the process – 21 per cent
technical difficulties or issues completing their request – 20 per cent
no help available – 16 per cent
not having all the paperwork or information they needed – 16 per cent
Why is all of this important? Because customers are hesitant to share personal data with the government. The report tells us 41 per cent of customers feel they have little control over their data and 37 per cent don’t trust that their data won’t be used for additional purposes without their consent.
But here’s where it gets really interesting. More than half (52 per cent) of customers globally said if they could see how it would benefit themselves, they would be willing to provide personal data to the government.
In other words, the government can build enormous trust by communicating benefits more effectively.
How is this achieved?
In the public sector, spending is at an all-time high. However, budgets are still limited.
Transparency is an important goal – trust will convince customers to share more data. To effectively utilize that data, governments require a modern, agile and resilient technology engine that is fuelled by data.
Government also needs to be where the people are, digitally speaking. That’s not on desktop screens but instead on fully modular devices, the same ones being used by digital natives. If it wants to deliver the right messages and services to the right audiences/users at the right time, the government needs to be on smartphones and tablets.
And speaking of “the right messages” and “the right customers”, data must be utilised to personalise messaging and service. Personalisation further builds trust. It demonstrates interest and thoughtfulness. It streamlines processes. It removes many of the blocks, mentioned above, that make customers feel that the government is falling short in digital delivery.
Finally, the government must seek constant, real-time improvement to its services. For example, great government apps offer a simple choice of thumbs-up or thumbs-down after almost any online interaction. It’s immediate, real-time data that should lead to constant improvement of service.
Breed success by addressing data-sharing fears
The reality is that governments that experience greater trust from their online users deliver better online service. Better service delivery that meets or exceeds user expectations encourages more data to be shared. This drives even better service delivery. It’s a virtuous cycle.
In fact, The Global Trust Imperative tells us that roughly half of all respondents would share their personal information if it would benefit themselves (52 per cent) or the community (47 per cent). To encourage sharing information, governments will first need to address some universal fears. Globally, 1 in 3 users were afraid their personal information would be made public (36 per cent), not stored securely (36 per cent), or could be stolen by hackers (35 per cent).
Therefore, it’s worth putting some effort into the establishment of a data-sharing compact with users. The quality/trust benefits to users and to government agencies should be made clear and tangible.
What are the other high-value focus points to come out of the research?
The first is a recognition of the good work done so far, and the resulting gains in trust over the last few years. During the pandemic, digital projects were delivered at pace and under unprecedented conditions. They were often cross-agency and multi-disciplinary, representing best-practice digital delivery. There’s now a great opportunity to take this experience and trust forward to create ever greater gains.
What does the report make clear? First, digital services that deliver on users’ increasing expectations are critical to a functioning government.
Next, there is a clear connection between a government’s quality of digital services and the overall levels of trust people have in that government.
We know most users are still experiencing problems and challenges with online government services, and are hesitant to share data. We also know that if the personal benefits are clear and tangible, people will be more willing to share their personal data.
Finally, governments able to deliver a high quality of service delivery will achieve enhanced policy outcomes as trust will increase.
Never have technology and human sentiment been so aligned, meaning right now there is great opportunity for governments to innovate in an environment of increasing trust.
Download The Global Trust Imperative report here.
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.
