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How To Build a Digital Transformation Strategy
When you are at the beginning of your digital transformation journey, it can feel like standing at the foot of a giant mountain.
When faced with a daunting climb, ascending is almost impossible without a carefully considered plan. Similarly, reaching the top is far more likely with the help of an experienced partner. What is true for mountaineering is also true for digital transformation. Not only do you need a strategy, but you’re far better off by taking the journey with someone who’s been there and done that.
Before you start — do you really need to climb this mountain?
Before setting out on your journey, you might wonder if digital transformation is the right way to go. Usually, clear signs point to the need to transform, most of which have grown far bigger and brighter since the onset of the pandemic.
The most glaring is that ‘business as usual’ is no longer cutting it. Perhaps business isn’t repeating at the same rate, or you’re no longer getting as many referrals, or previously successful promotions are failing to generate leads. If these sound familiar, chances are you need to consider a digital transformation strategy.
You may also be getting internal signals from employees. Individuals and teams could be complaining that they can no longer collaborate successfully, especially with the move to the hybrid workplace. They may be asking for features you’re unable to provide, but that have become commonplace in consumer apps.
These are just some of the many issues that are best tackled by heading towards that mountain.
Make sure you have a vision
Any successful endeavour in business, whether short-, medium-, or long-term, begins with the formulation of a vision.
To create your own vision, imagine a hypothetical point in the future where you’ve achieved what you set out to do. For the mountaineer, this could be anything from achieving a personal best climb, to reaching the summit of Everest. For a business undertaking digital transformation, it could mean integrating outdated systems so that your entire organisation is working together.
You don’t have to scale an entire mountain or update all your systems all at once. However, you can’t take the first step towards either without having at least a general sense of where you’re heading.
Prioritise your objectives
Once you’ve formulated your vision, it’s time to break the overall goal down into smaller objectives. When it comes to digital transformation, especially on an organisation-wide scale, it’s important to identify the objectives that will drive the most success, and start there.
This could mean taking a forensic look at all your departments and verticals and identifying which would benefit most from transformation. You should also consider which departments will deliver the greatest returns the quickest. By starting with the teams that provide the fastest returns, you can prove quicker return on investment.
You should also plan how other teams will be a part of that same transformation down the line. If transforming your sales processes is a priority, then it’s important to understand how marketing will become a part of that same digital world, even if that won’t happen for a while.
Involve the right people at the right time
Digital transformation is a complete change to the way you do business. Even if you’re prioritising certain objectives over others, your entire workforce is going to be affected. Implementing systems incrementally or all-at-once is only part of the process. You also need to make sure that the digital transformation sticks on a human level. In order for that to happen, you need to bring everyone along with you.
This doesn’t mean that all employees in all departments have to be involved from day one. But it is a good idea to make everyone aware of the changes—they’ll be involved eventually.
It’s important to choose the right people for the team that leads the transformation. Every organisation has employees who embrace change, but there may be those who are hesitant. Make sure that you include both kinds of people in your transformation team. The people excited by change will bring others along with them on the journey. Those who are more reluctant will give you much-needed perspective.
Communication is vital. The more transparency, the more likely you are to get a buy-in from the right people at the right time.
Consider a partner
Climbing a mountain is always going to be more manageable with the help of someone who has been there before. This is particularly relevant for small and medium-sized businesses who may be even further away from the digital world than larger organisations.
Digital transformation isn’t always a quick or easy process. Enlisting the help of an expert can simplify and speed up the digital transformation process. This could save you time, money, and energy in the long run.
Make sure that you select the right partner, though! Just like with mountaineering, you should make sure that the partner you choose has experience in the landscape you work in. Many providers will claim that they can help you, so take the time to ensure that they understand your industry, and have experience with businesses of your size.
Don’t be afraid to fail
You will formulate a vision, prioritise your objectives, and take a carefully planned journey towards your ultimate goal. You may enlist the expertise of a partner, and get a buy-in from the right people at the right time. But not everything is always going to go according to plan. Don’t be scared to take calculated risks.
As with mountaineering, you may occasionally fail to travel as far as you thought by the end of the day. You may find one route harder than expected, and you may have to pause and find a better way up.
Understand that not every move will end in a win. As long as you remember your vision and your strategy, you’ll be prepared to face each new step in the journey.
Download our e-book and read about the five steps top organisations take to reimagine their businesses and improve customer experiences. Blaze your trail to digital transformation today!
3 Revealing Stats From Our Digital Trends Report
The way we conduct business around the world is fundamentally changing.Leading brands are embracing digital-first encounterswith their customers, engaging with users across an increasing number of channels, andharnessing the power of datato create highly-tailored experiences. They’re also innovating on ways tomeet their customers with empathy and flexibility, no matter the circumstance.
To learn more about how businesses are optimising their digital-first experiences, LIKE.TG Research analysed data from four different research studies.
Here are the three most revealing takeaways for marketing, commerce, and service professionals.
56% of companies expect the majority of their revenue to come from digital channels within the next three years
Digital-first customer engagement is here to stay. Many customers had to adopt online experiences in 2020 out of necessity. Now, many prefer to interact digitally, even as in-person experiences resume. With68% of customerssaying they’ll continue to buy essential goods online after the pandemic, we can anticipate a future that prioritises digital engagement over brick-and-mortar encounters.
Increased online activity has allowed marketers and customer-service agents to learn more about their audiences, leading tomore personalised interactions. This also means that customers have elevated expectations for how brands engage with them, including brands’ ability to innovate and connect in new ways. For instance,78% of customerssay that companies should offer new ways to get existing products or services, such as digital versions of traditionally in-person experiences, while83% of customersexpect flexible shipping and fulfillment options, such as buy-online-pickup-in-store.
To better meet customer expectations, digital leaders are adopting new channels of engagement, like chatbots and self-service tools, which have been classified as “emerging” in recent years. Social media, video, and digital ads have become the three most common means of reaching customers, underlining the value in implementing digital-first marketing toolkits.
86% of customers want more transparency over how personal information is used
Eighty percent of customers say the experience a brand provides is just as important as its products or services. As the world becomes increasingly digital, businesses are seizing new opportunities for capturing insights on customer behavior and preferences.The most innovative digital leaders are harnessing this customer datato provide a consistent, convenient, and empathetic brand experience. But this dependency on data isn’t without its challenges.
As Google, Apple, and others restrict the use of third-party cookies,leaders have to rely more on known digital identities, such as email addresses, social IDs, and transactional data to personalise customer experiences. Marketers are also faced with customer data-privacy concerns.Customers are increasingly demanding more transparency with data use, and only 27% completely understand the way that brands collect, store, and use their data. As a result, over 60% of marketers say they are going above and beyond regulations and standards to protect their customers’ privacy.
83% of marketers say their work will be more technology-driven after the pandemic than before
The pandemic brought onsubstantial changes in customer engagement, but it also changedhow teams and organisations operate. Work-from-home, restricted travel, and insufficient collaboration tools shed light on inefficiencies within organisational structures and processes. More than50% of service professionalssay the pandemic has exposed moderate or greater shortcomings in capabilities including technology, policies and protocol, and staff skill sets.
Digital leaders are rethinking how their organisations utilise technology to operate more efficiently and better meet customer needs. As companiesembrace digital-first strategies, this means that marketers are reevaluating the technical skill sets needed to do their jobs, and businesses are rethinking organisational structure to optimise operations.
Dive deeper intro insights and trends from the report bydownloading the Digital Trends report.
This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
5 Ways Sansiri Creates a Cohesive Customer Journey
Marketers must create a cohesive customer journey across channels and devices. This is the top priority for Thai marketers, as revealed in the 7th edition State of Marketing report.
Kavin Manomaiudom is VP and Group Head of Tech BI at Thailand property developer, Sansiri. He believes creating a cohesive customer journey begins with digital transformation.
“It’s about cultural, organisational, and operational change,” he shared at a LIKE.TG webinar. “We must combine an agile mindset with processes and tools to deliver value to customers.”
Mr Manomaiudom outlines five ways Sansiri is creating a more cohesive customer journey.
1. Respond to changing customer behaviours
Sansiri turned to LIKE.TG three years ago to begin its digital transformation. Mr Manomaiudom says LIKE.TG technology helps the company identify changing customer behaviours. This has been vital to staying agile during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Before COVID-19 hit Thailand, our customers were visiting showrooms in person,” he says. “Now, we have a significant number of customers viewing our properties virtually. We needed to react fast by adjusting our marketing priorities.”
Mr Manomaiudom says that means using customer data “to know more, see more, and do more. Marketers must leverage customer data to analyse and understand changes in customer behaviour.”
2. Map customer journeys
New customer journeys must align with changing customer behaviours. Sansiri used Marketing Cloud and Journey Builder to map a range of new customer journeys.
Mr Manomaiudom explains that it’s helpful to begin with the customer’s end destination. Then reverse engineer the customer journey.
“We always begin with the end in mind,” he says. “Our customer journeys at Sansiri have evolved with COVID-19. To date, we have built a total of 25 journeys. This has decreased customer attrition. These journeys have also increased sales conversion across all customer touch points.”
3. Personalise customer communications
Link customer communications to specific points on each customer journey. Doing so helps to personalise customer communications. Sansiri uses marketing automation to achieve this.
“We send an automated email to remind customers about their viewing appointments,” Mr Manomaiudom says. “We also send relevant messages to convert our customers when they register online.”
This, says Mr Manomaiudom, has doubled conversions. “It helps us make sure we are achieving good return on investment (ROI) against our marketing spend.”
4. Innovate digital payments
Payment is a critical point on every customer journey. Sansiri launched an online payment gateway during the pandemic. The company also now accepts cryptocurrency.
Mr Manomaiudom says that digital payment innovations help to engage the younger generation. This stimulates revenue growth.
“One of our big steps is to make cryptocurrency purchases in the real estate sector a reality,” he explains. “Especially amongst the young generations who are keen on using this technology.”
5. Stay agile and use data as your guide
Customer behaviour may continue to change over next 12 months. Mr Manomaiudom says marketers need to stay agile. They also need to track campaign ROI, and shift priorities when needed.
“We started to shift our advertising budget to online, but surprisingly did not see as strong returns for some product segments and some zoning,” he explains. “As a result, we reallocated the budget back to offline marketing.
“Marketers must be agile to run successful campaigns, stay on budget, and hit KPIs. You must be adaptive at all times and do not stick with what might work.”
Rather, use customer data to identify what will work. This is how marketers adapt to change and keep delivering cohesive customer journey.
Download LIKE.TG’s 7th edition State of Marketing report in English or Thai for more marketing trends and insights.
Cybersecurity Insights: Secure Your Business Data at Every Touch Point
Virtual spaces are new territory for cyber attacks, data leaks and company breaches. In fact, according to the IBM Cost of Data Breach Report 2021, phishing attempts have risen 600% and cloud-based attacks rose 630%.
What would you do if your business data fell into the wrong hands?
To stay secure, there are a number of layers of data security you need to consider. From physical hardware, to digital networks, and every manner of encryption in the cloud.
Explore our cybersecurity infographic below to see how to secure your data, and get more tips on data security and compliance for every IT Leader in this e-book.
Can you afford not to protect your most important business asset?
For details on this infographic, please click here.
How To Build Thriving Slack Communities for Marketers
It’s no secret that marketers love to connect with each other to learn, trade stories, or simply make new friends. But with so many channels to choose from, it’s hard to find a comfortable, virtual place to meet regularly. That’s why I’m passionate about building Slack communities for marketers.
I’ve been using Slack within the digital marketing community long before I started working at LIKE.TG. It’s helped me get to where I am today. My role at LIKE.TG focuses on collaborating with our amazing Trailblazer community. I use Slack channels to connect with people on everything fromMarketing Cloud certificationsto best email marketing practices.
Building Slack communities for marketers has helped me build relationships that last — as a mentor, a marketer, and a collaborator. Slack has many tools for knowledge sharing and relationship building, so it’s important to use it wisely. Here are a few of my best practices for making Slack a tool for building strong communities in your marketing space.
Be strategic with Slack communities for marketers
I won’t lie: Slack can be tricky to navigate. There are public and private channels, direct messaging,Huddles, video calls, and more. I’m a part of 22 external Slack channels and twice that many for my LIKE.TG job. These channels cover a lot of ground and can take up a good chunk of my time, so I have to be very strategic with how I incorporate channel engagement into my day-to-day work life – especially since Slack is always “on” as a global platform.
I’m also intentional about creating new Slack channels, knowing that other marketers are in the same situation. Before starting a new channel, I look at what’s already out there on the platform. I consider the community’s needs and how my channel can meet those needs. I also identify the rules for a new private channel, including approval processes, conversation topic guidelines, and other channel guardrails.
You may be wondering: what’s a channel? Think about channels like you think about a Facebook group, or even an email chain with multiple parties (but way better organised). It’s a common space for people to discuss a topic, like new marketing strategies, or a place to collaborate on an upcoming campaign launch.
Some of the most powerful Slack channels emerged out of a desire to help others attain something, whether it was knowledge, career development, or community. Slack channelsmustserve the good of the community. When you bring this spirit of service to your channels, you’re more likely to engage with others in impactful ways.
Lean in to organic, authentic conversation
My introduction to Slack was throughEmail Geeks, a community of developers, architects, and email marketers. I wanted to write some LinkedIn thought leadership pieces to help customers understand Marketing Cloud, so I reached out to Email Geeks members on their Slack channel for feedback on article ideas. Since then, Slack has been a collaborative space for authentic knowledge sharing in my work as a marketer.
Today, I keep the same principle in mind when using the platform. I use Slack to engage with the entire Trailblazer ecosystem in very different ways, from updating people on upcoming events or program opportunities to answering community questions and offering helpful resources. I’m able to connect with other marketers and Trailblazers in these relevant ways because the conversations and interactions come from a place of authenticity – honestly interacting with others in a way that benefits everyone involved.
Take one of my favorite public Slack workspaces, for example:Marketers Chat, a place where thought leaders from various companies gather to discuss marketing topics, events, services, suggestions, and tools. I heard of Marketers Chat through word of mouth, as did many of its 7,000 members. Its value as a collaborative, engaging space for knowledge sharing has proved itself naturally. This is the magic of a well-created Slack workspace. It makes space for meaningful dialogue within appropriate guidelines, which makes it a place where relationships can thrive.
Know the rules and stick to them
Some Slack channels have specific rules around channel use, self-promotion, and selling products to keep the space relevant and distraction-free. When stepping into Slack conversations, it’s crucial to know and adhere to these rules. Remember that Slack is considered a private space for our marketing community to be open, honest, and vulnerable.Many channel admins automatically share channel guidelines to new members upon joining.
It’s also helpful to understand what Slack means to other members in these channels – not necessarily what Slack means to you or your organisation. Everybody uses Slack for different reasons. They may use it as a hub for answers to pressing questions. Or it may be a place for venting about a product, service, or certification exam. Regardless, always ask yourself how you can achieve a goal or help a fellow team member in the most respectful way possible.
For example, at LIKE.TG we have ‘broadcast only’ channels, where team leads publish critical updates, and designated QA channels for company-wide meetings in which employees can ask questions in real time and search for answers afterward. Having a specific purpose for each channel helps everyone get the most out of Slack.
When in doubt, check in with channel owners and admins. Back when I was sharing thought leadership on Twitter, for example, I regularly consulted the owner of Email Geeks before posting anything in that Slack channel about Twitter events I was leading. I did this out of respect for the community and also for the sake of transparency, a key piece in building trust with peers and customers.
If used mindfully, Slack can be a powerful tool for creating meaningful conversations on the topics we marketers care most about: relationships with our customers, brand strategy, certifications, and so much more. Given that the platform continues to add new features and integrations every year, I’m keeping my eyes on the Slack horizon for even more ways to connect with my digital marketing community.
Ready to deepen your own engagement with colleagues and brand fans? Check out my favorite public Slack communities for marketers:EmailGeeks,Marketing Cloud Learning Camp,Ohana Slack, andPardashians.
This post was originally published on the U.S.-version ofthe LIKE.TG blog.
How To Attract and Grow a Talented Field Service Team
Field service teams have helped customers navigate changing circumstances throughout the pandemic. They provided vital support and stability when customers needed it the most, and became the trusted face of brands.
A motivated and skilled field service team helps your business drive revenue and improve customer retention. However, talent attraction can be a challenge. That’s because the older generation of workers are retiring, so field service leaders have to think about how to attract younger workers.
Here’s what organisations can do to attract and grow field service talent:
1. Reposition the field service team as a strategic asset
Service teams are no longer regarded as cost centres. According to 80% of decision makers, field service is key to their overall strategy. Seventy-five percent of decision makers say field service is driving significant revenue.
How so?
Service teams interact with customers and keep them happy. By providing excellent service, they can reduce churn. They can also help to upsell equipment. LIKE.TG research finds that 91% percent of customers are more likely to make another purchase after a great service experience.
Think of upselling as an extension of an outstanding customer experience — not just pushing more products in order to meet sales targets. Upselling develops from the trust your customers have in the organisation. Service agents have an important role in nurturing that trust. They can create starting points for sales and marketing to introduce new campaigns to receptive customers.
2. Empower your team with field service management technology
Field service workers expect to have the technology needed to get their jobs done well. Your best talent would be unlikely to stay if they have to make do with inferior or outdated tools.
One type of technology that would help field service workers immensely is a connected field service management solution. It gives agents, dispatchers, and mobile workers updated information. This includes customer data, job details, asset history, and warranties. Having full customer context is crucial. Without it, 79% of field service professionals say they can’t provide a great customer experience.
With full customer context, field service teams can achieve a high First Time Fix Rate with:
Automated dispatch based on mobile worker availability, skill set, and location (if an in-person visit is needed). This eliminates manual effort, scheduling errors, and any unintentional bias.
Route management reduces time-to-site. It also automatically responds to schedule changes, whether it’s a late arrival or a new job request.
Appointment Assistant automatically updates customers with an estimated time of arrival, pre-arrival checklist, and the mobile worker’s details.
Digital work order management instantly tracks updates about an assigned job, assesses current inventory volumes, and reviews warranties.
Visual Remote Assistant connects mobile workers at a job site with an experienced team member by video to collaborate on a resolution.
3. Look after your field service workers’ safety and wellness
Many organisations implemented new safety policies in 2020. Moving forward, here are more ways you can enhance the safety and wellbeing of customers and workers:
Not every issue requires a worker to go onsite to resolve it. Consider using alternative field service options such as Visual Remote Assistant. With Visual Remote Assistant, your workers can invite customers to an interactive video session and walk them remotely through the troubleshooting process. If the issue is more complex, customers can schedule an onsite visit for further support.
When customers make in-person appointments, let them know how to best prepare for a site visit. For example, you can request that they complete a short safety checklist beforehand.
Finally, don’t forget to do regular checks on employee wellbeing. You can do monthly employee wellness surveys to understand the team’s health and wellbeing challenges. Use the data to address areas where employees are struggling. For example, if teams are struggling to get their work done because they don’t have the right tools, make arrangements to get them the equipment they need.
4. Show mobile workers their career potential
Eighty-five percent of mobile workers in high-performing teams say that they have a clear path for career growth, compared to just 39% of underperformers.
Work with your field service team early in their careers to set short and long term career goals. Learning new skills is a crucial part of career development. Use digital learning platforms like Trailhead to upskill and reskill your team. In addition to technical skills, encourage them to learn relationship management, customer service basics, and even sales skills.
Another way to show your field service team that they are valued is to include them in decision-making. Field service workers might have valuable insights into how the business works or what customers want, which their colleagues at the office might not have. Don’t forget to reward your field service team when they do a great job. Rewards can be custom tools to use on the job, or opportunities to represent the company at high-end conferences.
You’ll want your field service workers to feel included and appreciated. Give them opportunities to level up and take on decision-making roles. Then your workers will be more likely to stay and grow with your organisation.
Read more about how to strengthen your field service management strategy.
What Is Business to Business Sales, and How Can You Improve It?
Isn’t business to business (B2B) sales just like any other type of sales? In the simplest sense, maybe this statement is true. But in the real world, B2B sales is very different from business to consumer (B2C) sales. In the battleground of B2B sales, salespeople face multiple decision-makers, lengthy closing times, and complex sales cycles.Helping other businesses realise what they need to be successful, and fulfilling these needs with your offerings and solutions is B2B sales.With the digital age, the traditional model of B2B sales has been disrupted by changes in the way people purchase goods and services. Internet penetration and the consequent explosion in easily accessible knowledge and networking have affected B2B sales as much as anything else. But in every change, there is opportunity.What is B2B sales?B2B sales involve one business selling goods and/or services to another business, as opposed to selling them directly to end consumers. B2B salespeople need to be more convincing and good at negotiating, as business buyers are highly evolved and deal sizes can be huge. They must thoroughly understand their prospect’s organisation, needs, challenges, and industry. The role of B2B salespeople has evolved from simple selling to something more consultative, making them advisors to their customers.What does a B2B sales process look like, and how does it work?The B2B sales process is a series of steps that is meant to take a business buyer from the initial stage of discovery to a closed sale. It requires a well-thought-out strategy and the use of sales techniques suitable for each target persona.Every organisation will need a slightly different B2B sales process involving anywhere from five to eight steps. A typical eight-step sales process consists of:Developing in-depth understanding of offerings: The best sales reps have great command over their offerings and where these fit into specific markets. They can easily justify their value proposition to the right customers. This requires them to do the background work and continuously hone their mastery of the products and services they sell.Prospecting: Prospecting involves finding new prospects that have a need or use for your offerings. Salespeople can use both online (LinkedIn, Quora, digital marketing campaigns, etc.) and offline (conferences, expos, referrals, cold calls, etc.) channels to find new prospects.Qualifying: Once new quality leads are identified, salespeople connect with them to know if they are potential buyers. Taking prospects through the sales process, especially for B2B sales, can be expensive and time-consuming, which is why it is important to qualify leads early in the process.Research: A salesperson should know about the prospect’s organisation, their needs, challenges, and industry trends. Research is vital in B2B sales due to its complex nature and the professional expertise buyers are likely to have. Also, with a single view of past interactions, sales reps can access all the relevant information about each prospect in one place for more contextualised conversations. Good research enables salespeople to tailor their pitch to each stakeholder’s needs.Pitching: Pitching can be in the form of a presentation, product demonstration, or a combination of multiple methods. Pitching is one of the most crucial steps in converting a B2B prospect into a customer.Handling objections: Savvy business buyers make decisions based on the value your company can add to theirs. Salespeople should use the qualification and research stages to anticipate questions prospects might ask. The better a salesperson can respond to questions and objections, the more confidence they can inspire in prospects.Closing: Depending on the situation, closing a deal can take the form of a quotation, price negotiation, or contract signing.Nurturing: B2B sales are rarely one-off transactions. Most B2B sales are focused on getting repeat business. B2B salespeople need to maintain and nurture relationships with their clients even after deals are closed. This could involve following up with them on delivery of their purchased products and services, providing after-sales support, or simply checking in periodically for cross- and upsell opportunities.The B2B sales process serves as a roadmap for B2B salespeople to maximise their efficiency by stringently following the steps crucial for closing deals and ensuring repeat business.What is a B2B sales funnel?A B2Bsales funnel is the sales process from the customer’s perspective. Like the sales process, the sales funnel too can have multiple stages. But today, this customer journey is not linear. Customers spend a significant amount of time researching and discussing their options with friends and colleagues. By the time a salesperson is involved in this journey, customers may even be close to a decision.A typical B2B sales funnel involves these stages:Awareness: The buyer finds out about your offerings either by themselves, a targeted ad, or from a cold-calling salesperson.Interest: A conversation with a salesperson piques the buyer’s interest in the product; they get an early idea of whether the product or service will serve their needs or not.Objection: After receiving a pitch from the salesperson, the buyer considers it and raises objections, if any. Objections allow the buyer to get more information about the product or service.Decision: After responding to their objections, the buyer decides if they want to buy the product or service being offered.Purchase: This is when the deal is closed after the prospective buyer’s organisation arrives at a decision.Evaluation: After purchasing the product or service, the buyer uses it and evaluates whether it fulfils their needs and solves their problems.Repurchase decision: After evaluating it, the buyer may or may not decide to repurchase the product or service. If the evaluation is positive, the buyer might consider repurchasing. If it’s negative, they might look for other suppliers. Outreach from salespeople can often greatly help swing the repurchase decision in favour of the seller.The B2B sales funnel helps a B2B salesperson better understand the buyer’s journey and align the sales process accordingly, thereby increasing the chances of closing the sale.B2B versus B2C sales: What’s the difference?The most obvious difference between B2B and B2C sales is the nature of the customers. Selling clothes to a customer is a completely different process from selling industrial textile looms to a manufacturer.For B2B sales, professional buyers or executives from various industries are customers. Anyone can be a customer for business to consumer sales.The differences in the customers’ nature also create differences in their decision-making and purchasing processes. Business buyers make purchases based on rational, strategic bases to generate further value. In contrast, consumer buyers can make decisions based on reasoning, emotions, desires, or personal values.The difference in purchase decisions calls for B2B and B2C salespeople to adopt very different sales tactics and marketing strategies.Here are some key characteristics of B2B sales:Larger average transaction values: B2B sales typically involve larger order quantities and pricier products, both of which contribute to higher average transaction values. Businesses are usually willing to pay a good price for the goods or services they need, if they perceive value in them.Multiple stakeholders: B2B sales often involve several stakeholders on the buyer side and are rarely dependent on one person’s approval. Some stakeholders might merely influence the sale, while others will have the authority to sign off on the final contract. More people involved means more of the salesperson’s time and effort needed to convince each stakeholder.Professional buyers: Businesses buy products and services that are likely to have a marked impact on their operations, justifying the due diligence needed to arrive at any decision. Some businesses even hire professionals to guide their purchasing decisions. B2B salespeople also need discipline and a high level of expertise to address purchasers’ objections and arguments satisfactorily.Fewer customers: Due to the specificity of most B2B products and services, the addressable market for a B2B salesperson is often quite narrow, especially when compared to B2C products and services. B2B customers return a higher lifetime value, compensating for their fewer numbers and high acquisition costs.Long sales cycles: The B2B sales cycle is usually lengthy owing to the involvement of multiple stakeholders and decision-makers, higher average transaction values, complex purchasing processes, and the material impact of the purchase and offerings on the buyer’s business. A typical B2B sales cycle can last several months, involving multiple meetings, emails, and phone calls.In B2B sales, relationship building through constant nurturing is needed to ensure repeat business. Getting new customers costs 5-10 times more than keeping existing ones. Since B2B sales typically involve bigger deal sizes and complex processes, repeat business becomes crucial for your business’s predictable growth.Not that repeat sales don’t matter in B2C sales. However, relationship building in B2C sales is done at a personal, emotional level, and involves smaller purchase values than B2B sales.How do you make B2B sales?Making B2B sales requires you to follow the same loose framework for making any sale. Build a sales strategy that is well-suited to target your ideal customer, break it down into repeatable steps that your sales team can follow, measure performance, and make improvements as and when needed.The difference is in the way you approach your prospects and customers and how you align your selling model with their purchasing process.Try to make your sales process as convenient, fast, and transparent as possible. Salespeople also need to have a good understanding of what they sell. B2B customers do not appreciate their time wasted, and showing a lack of knowledge and experience will not inspire confidence.Research well and get to know what they sell, to whom, which markets, etc. Understand the role of each stakeholder and their individual challenges and needs. This can help you hyperpersonalise your pitch to show how your offerings can address multiple pain points and goals. In addition, automating parts of your sales cycle is an effective way of making it faster.What are some B2B sales techniques?Within a basic sales process, sales teams can employ one or more of the following sales techniques to increase their chances of succeeding:Solution selling: This involves gaining a deep understanding of the buyer’s business, needs, and problems, and offering a tailored, holistic solution in response, rather than pushing one-size-fits-all products. Solution sellers almost never offer products off-the-shelf. Solution selling might incur higher sales costs, but the solution’s suitability usually results in a higher rate of closing.Account-based sales: This method focuses on premium customers, offering them end-to-end, highly tailored experiences. Each account, with all its shareholders, is treated as a complete market. A host of resources that would otherwise be put into full market segments is allocated to each account. This helps grow revenues from each key account through more targeted cross- and upselling.Challenger sale: In this method, salespeople educate and inform the customer about their needs in response to market trends, risks, and opportunities. The salesperson takes on a more active role here, helping customers realise a need in the first place.Sandler selling system: The system places greater emphasis on the buyer-seller relationship. Salespeople need to establish themselves as trusted advisors to clients, inspiring mutual confidence to work towards shared success. This system leverages human psychology and the buyer-seller dynamic to accelerate the sales cycle.Value selling: Value selling instructs salespeople to emphasise and establish the value addition their products or services can make to the buyer’s business. The value additions presented need to be concrete and measurable, such as cost savings, revenue increments, or productivity improvements.What are some key B2B sales tips?No matter the sales techniques used, all B2B salespeople can benefit from the following tips:Tailor customer communication on a case-to-case basis. This helps convey the value your offerings can add to the customer’s business faster.Continuously train your sales team. Professional B2B buyers appreciate salespeople who demonstrate expertise.Focus on solving problems rather than pushing your products, as B2B buyers are constantly looking for ways to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. Show active listening, empathy, and critical thinking by asking the right questions and providing relevant information.Adopt omnichannel outreach to stay in touch with B2B customers. With greater digitisation, B2B buyers too are warming up to newer channels to engage and buy on.Use social selling techniques to get B2B customers’ attention and approval. They care about their peers’ opinions, making referrals a great way to establish contact.Collect and display positive customer feedback, using these case studies for your sales playbook.Ensure all other customer-facing teams, such as marketing and customer service, are aligned to the sales goal.Beyond CRM solutions, employ sales engagement tools that use data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enable faster, smarter decision-making and action.Consider building a dedicated B2B sales team to increase revenue shares from your most valuable customers. This makes more sense if your organisation has different business units or departments that handle both B2B and B2C customers.Inside versus outside B2B salesInside B2B sales is made remotely by reps sitting in an office (or any location), whereas outside B2B sales is those made by reps in the field.Outside sales tend to be more successful because of the personal touch salespeople can add by interacting with customers directly. Outside salespeople might close more sales and drive order values up. However, outside sales is more expensive and time-consuming.With a wide variety of communication tools now available to salespeople, selling from anywhere is increasing in popularity, more so since the pandemic struck. Inside sales cost less and give managers more control and better oversight of the sales process.How is B2B sales changing?B2B sales has undergone a dramatic change in recent years. Business buyers now have access to a lot of information about products, services, and suppliers. They also have a wide range of options to choose from. This makes the B2B sales space more competitive and requires B2B salespeople to engage customers more meaningfully.Business buyers now expect a highly personalised purchase experience. To deliver this, salespeople must possess an intimate understanding of the needs and desires of buyers. Salespeople can also leverage technology to conduct better research about a prospect and their organisation or industry.Sellers also have access to a range of B2B sales tools that they can deploy, including data analysis tools, sales reporting and tracking, B2B marketing automation and targeting programs, and sales management and forecasting software. These tools improve the efficacy of sales teams, helping reps move clients along the sales funnel faster and more successfully.The way forward for B2B salesB2B sales has changed, but for the better. With more tools at the disposal of both buyers and sellers, salespeople can proactively reach out to prospective buyers at the right time. With business buyers expecting highly personalised purchase experiences, salespeople need to leverage data-driven tools and their social skills. Addressing the needs of business buyers and forging lasting relationships with them is the key to success in B2B sales.Now more than ever, it’s important to build deeper connections with customers, manage your business in real time, and adapt fast as the world continues to evolve.Learn how Sales Cloud can help you grow your business and bring out the best in every rep.This post was originally published on the LIKE.TG I.N. blog.
Achieve Digital Transformation Step by Step With Customer 360
You’ve decided that you’re ready for digital transformation, you’ve developed a strategy, and you might have even begun implementing it. Now, it’s time to configure the Customer 360 platform to serve the specific needs of your business.
Customer 360 consists of more than a dozen independent products, or ‘apps’, which can either be used on their own or linked together.
This modular approach means you only implement the components your business actually needs. You and your team can enjoy streamlined workflows, with the option to add or remove apps if and when you need to.
Further customisation is possible within each app, or you can use them straight out of the box — whichever suits you better.
How do you figure out which products are right for your digital transformation?
It’s simple: just complete the Create Your Own Customer 360 Package quiz for an accurate summary of which apps will benefit you the most.
Read on for a couple of examples of how LIKE.TG Customer 360 can be configured, plus some top-line questions to think about before you dive into the quiz.
Unique solutions for every sector
LIKE.TG’s core industry solutions are for Financial Services, Media, Communications, Energy, Utilities, and Manufacturing. That said, Customer 360 can be configured to provide solutions for any business.
For example, a growing retail business that has just started selling online might add the Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud apps to its Customer 360 platform.
The business can use the Commerce Cloud app to personalise each customer purchase and to sell through any channel. It can also use the Marketing Cloud app for curating hyper-personalised customer journeys, based on deep customer insights
Another example: a subscriber-based media business in the midst of a digital transformation might select the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud apps.
The Sales Cloud app helps maintain in-depth records for each subscriber, track sales opportunities, and review sales forecasts. Service Cloud provides advanced call-centre management and insights into every customer interaction.
Which Customer 360 apps should I choose?
Which apps could benefit your business the most? To prep for the LIKE.TG Customer 360 quiz, consider the following questions:
What is it you want to do?
Every business wants to prosper, but each has different ideas about how to achieve that prosperity. Is the goal of your digital transformation to achieve more leads? Shorten your sales funnel? Improve customer satisfaction? Or something else?
The answer (or answers) to this question will lead you to the Customer 360 apps that can make your digital transformation a success.
Who’s going to use the platform?
Knowing which of your departments will start using Customer 360 is another effective way to identify the specific apps you need. As time goes on and you roll out the platform to other departments, more apps can be considered.
Each app you choose can be tailored for use by certain people within a department. Therefore, it’s a good idea to know from the outset who those people will be. For example, Sales Cloud can be used differently by sales reps, sales leaders, and service agents.
Should you opt for a package designed for small or new businesses?
If your business is young, you may not yet know exactly how you will use the Customer 360 platform, and that’s OK.
LIKE.TG has off-the-shelf solutions for fledgling businesses, such as our LIKE.TG Essentials package. If you are new to using a CRM, this package contains everything you need to get up and running.
As your business grows, the Customer 360 Package quiz or a LIKE.TG rep can help you modify your platform.
Could you benefit from a business collaboration space?
Any business that’s planning digital transformation should consider how its team members will communicate while working. That’s especially important if employees are working remotely in various parts of the world.
Consider using Slack.
In July 2021, LIKE.TG acquired Slack. Slack is a channel-based messaging platform that brings people and tools together in one place. This helps teams to stay productive and aligned from anywhere.
Slack is used by millions of people around the world and enables entire organisations to work far more efficiently and effortlessly.
Adapting to every step of your digital transformation
As your organisation grows and you begin to reap the rewards of digital transformation, you can add functionality to your Customer 360 platform in order to amplify your gains.
In fact, using more apps within the Customer 360 platform directly correlates with positive business outcomes. Almost three quarters (72%) of businesses using more than one Customer 360 app report improved time to ROI, while 95% of those with two or more apps report improved efficiency and productivity.
Want to ensure your digital transformation succeeds but aren’t sure where to start? We can help you. Take the Customer 360 Package quiz to learn which LIKE.TG apps will benefit you the most. Soon, you’ll be on your way to realising your digital transformation vision.
AI Is Here and It’s Rewriting the Way Call Centres Work
These days, AI seems to be everywhere and in everything — from our cars and refrigerators, to our food delivery services, sleep measurement apps, even our toothbrushes. It’s been called the holy grail of computing. But what exactly is AI?
Put simply, it’s a piece of code which derives its intelligence from existing data to solve problems and make complex decisions easier and faster. That makes it extremely useful in automating repetitive business tasks, uncovering opportunities for growth, engaging with customers at scale, and saving costs.
These benefits are very evident in the call centre scenario.
Make every service experience memorable with AI
Gone are the days when customer support was perceived as a cost centre. Today, business leaders recognise good customer service as a way to differentiate their organisation, boost customer trust, and catalyse business growth. In fact, 78% of service agents say their company views them as brand ambassadors.
But to live up to these expectations, agents have to be empowered with the right tools. This is especially true in a COVID-19 world where the majority of service professionals (75%) say that managing case volume has become more challenging. Not only are they dealing with a rise in cases, but they’re also facing more complex cases with anxious customers who are harder to satisfy.
Here’s where AI-powered tools can help. They enable agents to be more productive, find answers quickly, deliver smarter recommendations, and make better-informed decisions. AI chatbots can also help customers self-resolve issues faster.
6 ways AI can add value to your service organisation
Here’s a look at how AI tools like Service Cloud Einstein can be used in call centres to optimise both employee efficiency and customer satisfaction:
Auto-triaging cases: As case volumes go up, AI can help your call centres do more with less by quickly triaging and routing cases. For instance, Einstein Case Classification automatically predicts and pre-fills case fields based on historical data. This saves agents valuable time and effort. Meanwhile, Einstein Case Routing uses machine learning to direct cases to the right queue in real time — so, customers don’t have to be kept waiting.
Recommending responses: Einstein Article Recommendations helps your agents find the right answers to customer cases quickly by surfacing the most relevant knowledge articles within the agent console itself. Einstein Reply Recommendations goes a step further by empowering agents with responses to common questions during chat and messaging conversations. This lowers case resolution time, while enhancing customer satisfaction.
Enabling customers to self-serve: Most customers (65%) prefer self-service for simple matters. So, it’s no surprise that AI-powered chatbots like Einstein Bots are becoming increasingly popular. They can immediately engage with customers to answer common FAQs, check the status of a claim, or provide personalised advice.
Using voice as digital medium: A solution like Service Cloud Voice can help transcribe the customer’s voice in real time, and route it to the AI engine in LIKE.TG to suggest the next best actions instantly. Let’s say a customer is on a live call with an agent, saying they’re unable to change the temperature on a recently purchased geyser. Based on their inputs, AI can automatically surface a trouble-shooting workflow. This makes it easy for the agent to choose the best course of action, and reduce the turnaround time.
Cross-selling and up-selling: Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to build trust and loyalty. The challenge for agents is to know what to offer customers at what time. AI-powered tools like Einstein Next Best Action can help by automatically recommending products, offers, discounts, or actions that are most likely to boost customer satisfaction. Say, the customer has purchased a travel package. The next best action might be to offer them a good travel insurance plan, or connect them to a local transport service partner. This way, you maximise the impact of your customer interaction.
Uncovering actionable insights: Not too long ago, businesses could only analyse a fraction of customer calls — that too, manually. But with AI tools like Service Analytics, you can analyse customer interactions at scale, and derive practical insights on customer churn, CSAT scores, and contact centre performance. These insights delivered in real time can help you proactively adjust and optimise service to deliver the best possible customer experiences.
4 things to think about before adopting AI
Everyone wants a piece of the AI pie. But first, identify what exactly you want AI to do in your call centre. Then, determine whether or not the solution you select actually has those capabilities. If you aren’t clear about your objectives, then your agents will only end up with one more tool that isn’t really useful.
Some things to consider before you embark on your AI journey:
Data quality:AI models are only as good as the quality of data on which they’re built. So, pay attention to the completeness, accuracy, bias, consistency, and labelling of your data.
Employee learning curve:Ensure that your AI-enabled tools are intuitive, easy to use, and seamlessly embedded in your CRM. If employees have to struggle to use AI, then it won’t matter how powerful the tool is — it won’t yield optimal returns.
Out-of-the-box technology:Look for AI tools that are already robust, comprehensive, and flexible enough that they don’t have to be customised heavily. Too many customisations could result in costly technical debt.
Effort investment:You want an AI solution that can be rolled out swiftly and with minimal effort. Complex and lengthy implementation cycles will simply bog down the business.
LIKE.TG’s AI offering, Service Cloud Einstein is specially designed to meet these criteria. It can be implemented quickly with minimum customisation and rapid employee adoption. The best part is that Einstein is built right into Service Cloud, your service channels, and your CRM data — which makes it super-easy to roll-out and use. Agents don’t have to toggle between multiple tools when talking to customers. With all AI capabilities they need on a single screen, agents can coordinate service requests much more smoothly, and deliver connected service experiences that your customers love.
We’ve only just scratched the surface of AI’s potential. As the technology grows more sophisticated, it will undoubtedly unlock new opportunities to improve both customer and agent experiences, as well as revenue growth.
Find out more about our AI offering, Service Cloud Einstein.
This post was originally published on the LIKE.TG IN blog.
Being Human in the Time of Automation
If you’re like most people, you probably think there’s a good chance that AI or robots will have a significant impact on the global job market. Yet surveys also show that most of us think that these disruptive technologies are primarily going to affect someone elseーsomeone with a skill set or an educational background that lends itself to repeatable work. This is a risky assumption on everyone’s part, including mine.
AI and robotics aren’t just for everyone else to think about. The robots are not only coming —they’re already here. But that doesn’t mean we’re all out of a job. It means that we need to explore opportunities for ourselves and our teams tohumanise the future of workto complement and even enhance AI, automation, and productivity.
At LIKE.TG, we recently invited award-winning New York Times technology columnistKevin Rooseto discuss the impact automation is likely to have on our lives and jobs. Roose shared that AI and automation are already changing the way we work — particularly for highly-educated, white-collar workers, whose everyday jobs are already evolving thanks to AI.
Predicting the impact of automation technology on the future of jobs
In the course of research for his book “Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation,” Roose found that for hundreds of years, we’ve been predicting what machines can and can’t do — and that usually, we’re wrong.
Here are a few examples to his point:
“I can state flatly that heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” —Lord Kelvin, 1895
“There is no prospect whatsoever that the employment of electronic digital computers in the field of translation will lead to any revolutionary changes.” —Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, 1962
“You won’t get the best seating or the best fares … what happens if you just press the wrong button?” —travel agency owner quoted in a 1984New York Timesarticle on the first automated ticket machines at airports
The disruptive technologies that would prove each of those predictions wrong went on to reshape economies and workforces forever. Yet at the time, each statement reflected widely-held beliefs. In the early 1980s, for instance, people were very skeptical that computers would ever meaningfully replace human travel agents. That changed quickly with the advent of travel-booking websites, which gave consumers direct access to making arrangements without a travel agency rep or the associated fees. Today, it’s a lot more likely that you use online sites to book everyday travel, except when using a travel agent is mandated as a workplace policy.
Where AI is changing the job landscape
Although many of us still think of robots on the assembly line as the typical agent of job displacement, AI has made advances in fields that many people never imagined were vulnerable to automation:
Healthcare: Machine-learning algorithms can diagnose some types of cancer or perform common X-rays with better accuracy than human radiologists. Other AI applications are in the works that can detect illnesses that range from cancers to Parkinson’s disease from smelling human breath.
Creative work: AI can compose music, write prose, build video-game levels, and write newspaper articles indistinguishable from human output.
Coding: Low-code or no-code development platforms take the complexity out of coding.
Analysis/pattern recognition: AI and machine learning are analysing data sets to identify patterns and trends. They are reporting real-time insights and can even predict, in some cases, what’s likely to happen next.
Influencers: Some of the biggest social-media influencers aren’t human — they areAI-designed models.
Lip-reading: While the average human accurately lip-reads 54% of the time, a deep network created byOxford and Google DeepMind scientists, LipNet, reached a 93%success score in reading people’s lips.
Creating AIs: Given the ability AI has to quickly process large data sets, it’s able to create child AI applications thatoutperform human-created AIs.
Listening: Whether it’s adding items to your shopping list, or producing meeting minutes from our Zoom calls, AI applications can more accurately capture and process what they hear than many humans.
When you hear stories like this, it’s easy to feel uneasy. Like many of us, as Roose was writing about the inroads AI was making, he got worried about his own replaceability as a journalist. He embarked upon a path to research how we can avoid being replaced by robots, which is the premise of the book and the bulk of his presentation.
How to future-proof your career
Now an important question: What can we do as individuals to protect ourselves from being replaced by AI and robots? First, the bad news: Pretty much every job as it exists today can, in some way, be automated. In all honesty, there isn’t any technology-proof job or career path for the long-term.
Now, the good news: Human creativity and resolve is at an all-time premium. And it’s not limited to big “C” creatives like (insert your favourite artist, composer, scientist, or performer).
This is not a time to panic — it’s a time to build on the roles and capabilities that can be automated to deliver new value at every level. Upskilling is now for everyone. We are all students again. Creativity, empathy, critical thinking, collaboration, data science, resilience, adaptability, and other “not-so-soft” skills are ranked as critical for everyone in apandemic worldand beyond.
As AI drives down the price of goods and automated services, it also increases the value of human goods and human experiences. It rewards those that are good at creating these new things in collaboration with machines.
With this in mind, there is one primary thing you can do to make your job a little more future-proof, regardless of what it is: not so ironically, be human.
The best way to differentiate yourself is through your humanity and creativity, not your productivity. Accentuate the human labor involved in what you do or what you make — whether it’s making a ceramic bowl, providing customer service, selling a technology product, or how you show up in any given moment to be present, aware, and ready to participate.
Think beyond using AI and automation to work as fast, at scale, and cheaply as possible. That’s what everyone else will do. Make that human touch more visible and more value-added. This is what the human economy is about: experiences and feelings that machines cannot replicate. Experiences are personal on every side. That’s what makes them special. They involve human beings and in reality, it’s that humanity combined with meaningful experiences, that we’re going to seek out and pay a lot for.
This post was originally published on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
What is a Relational Database? Features & Uses
A relational database is a type of database that stores and organises related data points. Data is organised into tables that are linked based on shared data. They are the most common type of database used by businesses today.
A database like this enables you to search across one or more tables with a single query. It also helps you understand the connections across your data so you can make better business decisions.
Relational databases are ideal for complex data analysis and operations. In a non-relational database, tables can share the same data but they can’t ‘relate’ to each other. With a relational database, they can.
One use of a relational database is connecting tables for customer data and transactions. A business will have both data sets but they may be siloed. A relational database brings these together.
For example, in the customer table, there may be fields for:
Customer ID
Customer Address
Customer Email, etc.
In the transaction table, there may be fields such as:
Customer ID
Transaction Amount
Item Purchased, etc.
As both tables contain a Customer ID, the tables can be related. This means a warehouse team can find the Customer Address that corresponds to the Customer ID, without this information being recorded as a separate data point on each transaction. Relating these data sets can also be used to produce reports, such as a customer statement.
We explore the features, uses, and benefits of a relational database below. Plus, we outline LIKE.TG’s relational data features.
Features of a relational database
Relational databases need ACID characteristics.
ACID refers to four essential properties: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability.
These features are the key difference between a relational database and a non-relational database.
Atomicity
Atomicity keeps data accurate. It makes sure all data is compliant with the rules, regulations, and policies of the business.
It also requires all tasks to succeed, or the transaction will roll back.
Atomicity defines all the elements in a complete database transaction.
Consistency
The state of the database must remain consistent throughout the transaction.
Consistency defines the rules for maintaining data points. This ensures they remain in a correct state after a transaction.
Relational databases have data consistency because the information is updated across applications and database copies (also known as ‘instances’). This means multiple instances always have the same data.
Isolation
With a relational database, each transaction is separate and not dependent on others. This is made possible by isolation.
Isolation keeps the effect of a transaction invisible until it is committed. This reduces the risk of confusion.
Durability
Durability means that you can recover data from a failed transaction.
It also ensures that data changes are permanent.
Uses and benefits of a relational database
Relational databases are often the backbone of a customer relationship management (CRM) system — such as LIKE.TG.
But tracking customer transactions is just one use case for a relational database. There are many others. We even use some in everyday life. For example, when you withdraw money from an ATM, your bank balance may instantly update on your mobile app if it’s using a relational database. This is because this scenario’s data point (“Account Balance”) is consistently updated across all platforms.
There are multiple benefits of using a relational database over a non-relationship database. And many of these affect other systems, including LIKE.TG.
Some of the main advantages of a relational database are:
Data consistency
As mentioned when we outlined ACID, a core part of a relational database is consistency.
A relational database model ensures that all users always see the same data.
This improves understanding across a business because everyone sees the same information. This ensures that nobody makes business decisions based on out-of-date information.
Data working together
All the data in a relational database has a ‘relationship’ with other data. Columns are built in a way that makes it easy to establish relationships among data points.
Data working together gives a more holistic view of all your data — including your customers.
Data flexibility
Relational databases allow for flexibility. Users can change what they see. And it’s easy to add additional data at a later time.
A relational database also allows for a subset of data to be viewed. This means you can hide certain data if some users only need access to a specific set of columns or rows.
Relational data features in LIKE.TG CRM
LIKE.TG’s CRM is built on a relational database.
LIKE.TG calls its tables “objects”. And these objects can relate to each other. These relationships can be used to share information and create connected views of data.
There are two types of relationships in LIKE.TG:
Lookup relationships
This is the most basic relational connection in LIKE.TG.
A lookup relationship links two objects so that you can “look up” one object from the related items on another object. Lookup relationships can be one-to-one or one-to-many.
A standard one-to-many relationship is an Account-to-Contact relationship. This allows you to connect several Contacts to a single Account.
A one-to-one relationship is when only one set of data needs to be related. For example, if you’re in real estate, you may have a Property object and a Home Seller object. The Property only has one Home Seller, so there is only one set of data that needs to be related.
Parent-child relationships
Parent-child relationships are harder than lookup relationships.
With these, one object is the parent, while the other is the child. The parent object controls some of the behaviours of the child object, such as who can view its data. It also means if you delete a parent object, you delete all the associated child objects.
As an example, you may have a parent-child relationship between Property and Offer. All offers are exclusive to one property. Should the property be taken off the market, you can remove the Property object to delete all of the associated offers from your system.
Parent-child relationships are used when objects are always related. When objects are sometimes related, this is a lookup relationship.
Why choose LIKE.TG
LIKE.TG gives you all the benefits of a relational database with the enhanced features of a CRM. Plus, LIKE.TG is taking CRM to the next level, with innovations such as LIKE.TG Einstein which utilises artificial intelligence.
LIKE.TG Customer 360 is the world’s #1 CRM system. It brings sales, service, marketing, commerce, IT, and analytics together. And it’s all made possible by a relational database.
The Future of Commerce – Connected Data, Headless, and More
If 2020 was a year of turbulence for commerce, the future of commerce is all about momentum.
The mass acceleration to digital has changed the customer experience forever, providingmore channels, choices, and flexibility. But each new offering sets the customer expectation bar a little higher, increasing the pressure on companies to deliver more at a faster pace.
To help teams prepare for what’s ahead, Lidiane Jones, LIKE.TG’s executive vice president and general manager of Commerce Cloud, offers her perspective on the future of commerce.
How has commerce changed over the last year?
Our customers are turning away from traditional channel planning and embracing a digital-first approach that brings more flexibility. Digital is also leading our customers to use their physical spaces in more intentional ways.In automotive, for example, dealers can know a lot about customers who research vehicles online before they ever walk through the door.
As I mentioned atDreamforce 2021, digital transformation is here to stay and commerce teams are betting on customer-centric experiences throughout all of it. Even B2B sellers are trying to understand the end user of their products. That’s not just to develop a better relationship with buyers, but to understand the feedback from their customers’ customers.
The key to all of this is data. More and more, companies are looking for full ownership of their data to get true insight into what shoppers or buyers want.
How can brands take the buying experience to the next level in 2022?
I recommend that brands step back, figure out their unique value proposition, and then apply the right strategy that will capture customers and keep them coming back for more.
Building a greatcustomer loyalty programis an important trend, but the approach depends on the brand. For some companies,sustainability is important. Their customers want to know if the brand is socially responsible. In other cases, it is about promotions or other financial incentives. It can also be about personalised experiences or social connections, like what brands a shopper’s friends are considering.
That could be a very different approach for some brands. How are teams preparing for the future of commerce?
Our Commerce Cloud customers talk a lot about choice and flexibility, which is something a fullheadless commerce implementationoffers. More and more, commerce teams are moving away from traditional architectures and choosing headless because it gives them the freedom to be agile and deliver compelling experiences faster across any kind of engagement channel, from social to mobile. Over the last 12-18 months we’ve focused on building the tools our Trailblazers need to build a connected experience where data isat the centre of everything.
Creating those highly personalised experiences across the customer journey can be really challenging. So, we are excited to give our customers the chance to deliver the most complex interactions withLIKE.TG CDP.
Speaking of planning, we’re getting close to the holiday shopping season. How can brands prepare for spikes in demand?
Profitability during peak shopping periods is all about preparation. Two things are top of mind for our customers. First, when you hit that peak demand, you’re wondering, “Will I have enough products? Will I have the right inventory to fulfill those needs?” You never want to be over or under. You want to be as close to what your demand is as possible, so having the data and tools to plan is essential.
The second thing is, “Am I going to be able to deliver in time for the customer’s needs?”
A lot of shoppers wait until the last minute to order. With ourlocation-based inventory capabilities, our focus has really been anchored to helping customers plan inventory effectively. They need to be prepared for what their demand is going to be and then optimise delivery times so they can meet consumer expectations in a cost effective way.
Beyond retail, what online buying trends do you see next year for other industries?
If you want to sell digitally with confidence, you have to be as immersive as possible. That’s why we’re seeing an incredible acceleration in emerging technologies. In automotive and manufacturing, we’re seeing a huge adoption of 3D virtual reality (VR) capabilities to help people research what they want to buy. Video selling for furniture is another example. You actually want to talk to someone before you buy a very expensive piece of furniture.
Another fast-growing trend is theinnovation across payments. If you are trying to buy a product that’s really expensive, or if you’re making a large B2B purchase, you want more flexibility in your cloud cash flow. Giving customers new payment options is a smart way to build repeat business and customer loyalty.
Speaking of social responsibility, how can brands become more sustainable and use this as a competitive advantage?
We have the responsibility and the opportunity to build businesses that are more sustainable.Net Zero Cloudgives companies a better view of how sustainably they’re running their businesses.
Commerce teams specifically worry about keeping waste to a minimum. A waste of inventory is a waste of resources. It’s more than a matter of financial hardship. We’re excited to create opportunities for environmentally conscious brands that want to adapt their business models to operate more sustainably.
The trend in retail, for example, is to buy products back and resell them. Some brands have customers who are really passionate about this. It’s become a great revenue source. But more importantly, it’s an embedded strategy that supports sustainability in a genuine way.
LIKE.TG Commerce Cloud empowers you to create seamless ecommerce experiences that inspire and convert today’s connected shoppers. Learn more about Commerce Cloud.
This post originally appeared on the US-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
6 Signs Your Business Needs a CRM
As your business grows, you might find that some of your processes are starting to show their weaknesses. Here are six signs that your business would benefit from a CRM system.
When people talk about Customer Relationship Management (CRM), they are usually referring to a system that helps with contact management, sales management, productivity, and more.
The goal of a CRM is simple: improve business relationships. By managing your customer information all in one place, you can track your customers’ journey from start to finish, right from the first interaction.
Small and medium-sized businesses face a huge range of challenges. These include: acquiring new customers, increasing sales revenue, simply finding the time to run their business, and so much more. CRM can help with all of these.
CRM can also help you address some of the challenges businesses have faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, enhancing digital customer experiences, or improving collaboration between remote workforces.
One more thing: operating your business without a CRM may be costing you money. By using a CRM, you can automate repetitive tasks, free your sales teams up to find more prospects, generate more leads, and win more deals.
So, how do you know when your business needs a CRM system? Drawn from our new CRM Handbook, here are some of the signs to look out for:
For details on this infographic, please click here.
Bringing the Power of Hyperforce to Indonesia
We’re delighted to share that Hyperforce is coming to Indonesia in late 2023. Delivered through our partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), any business will be able to deploy LIKE.TG apps and services in the region by leveraging the scale and agility of public cloud computing.
“Digitisation is the key to developing deeper relationships with customers and building a flexible workforce,” said Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ASEAN, LIKE.TG. “We are proud to bring the benefits of Hyperforce to organisations in Southeast Asia. With Hyperforce, organisations can unlock the ability to host data locally with the scalability of the public cloud as they grow and pursue innovation.”
LIKE.TG, Reimagined on Public Cloud
Hyperforce is a reimagination of our platform architecture built to securely and reliably deliver the LIKE.TG Customer 360, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Industries, and more, on major public clouds.
A complete re-architecture of LIKE.TG, Hyperforce delivers a powerful and scalable platform to support the success of our global customer base. Key features include:
Performance at B2B and B2C scale. With the elasticity of 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 limits users to appropriate levels of access to customer data, protecting sensitive information from human error or misconfiguration. Encryption, at rest and in transit, comes standard, ensuring 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.
The Next Chapter for LIKE.TG Customers
LIKE.TG is committed to accelerating our customers’ digital transformations by empowering them to grow, fast and at scale, on our trusted platform.
Through our partnerships with major public cloud providers like AWS, LIKE.TG will continue to deliver Hyperforce around the world. We will empower our global customer base to enter new markets and succeed from anywhere, while ensuring customer trust by remaining compliant with local regulations.
How To Find, Win, and Keep New Customers in 2022
Building a customer base has always been a big test for startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). This has become an even greater challenge over the past two years.
What’s changed? Customers now expect more from businesses than they did before.
They desire a richer experience when they are shopping online or have a question. They also want to access personalised services at any time, and are much more likely to deal with companies that meet their needs.
Keeping up with changing customer expectations affects the vast majority of modern businesses. In fact, 72% of participants in this year’s global State of Marketing report said that meeting customer expectations has become harder over the past year. The same survey found that the greatest challenge businesses faced in 2021 was delivering real-time customer engagement.
There are similar insights in LIKE.TG’s latest Small and Medium Business Trends Report, in which SMBs highlighted the key challenges they are facing:
Personalising customer engagements
Providing a connected experience
Responding to enquiries quickly
This shift means businesses need to think afresh about how to find, win, and keep customers.
Instead of traditional advertising and marketing, many find that improving how they collect and analyse customer data delivers the best results.
Already, 85% of small businesses use data to drive their customer engagement, according to the State of Marketing survey. Just 38% of respondents are satisfied with the completeness of their customer data.
The good news is that there are tech tools that can help SMBs collect better data and use it more effectively. Consider using these tools to identify, attract, and retain new customers in 2022 and beyond:
FIND customers with Pardot and Marketing Cloud
For most SMBs, finding customers is one of many competing priorities. If you’re focused on developing a product or service that people will love, there’s often not much time left for identifying leads.
That’s when solutions such as Pardot and Marketing Cloud can be very useful. They help SMBs create meaningful connections with customers, capture high quality leads, and achieve more conversions. Already, 2.8 million SMBs rely on Pardot to help them find customers.
There are several ways that Pardot and Marketing Cloud can help you find more customers:
They allow you to automate a wide range of processes, thus improving efficiency and freeing up resources.
They work seamlessly with LIKE.TG, enabling SMBs to effectively use the data they have already gathered.
Data Studio provides sophisticated marketing analysis.
With Pardot and Marketing Cloud, you can quickly build personalised, data-driven email campaigns. You can reach customers on their preferred channels, which should speed up your return on investment.
Pardot also generates insightful ROI reporting, so you can understand which elements of your strategies are working.
These features deliver real results. With Pardot, customers have seen sales revenue increase by 34% and marketing effectiveness increase by 37% on average.
WIN customers with Sales Cloud
As customers seek businesses that truly ‘know’ them, SMBs respond by accelerating their investment in sales tech. Fifty-three percent of growing businesses surveyed in the SMB Trends Report said they have already done this.
Many of those businesses are adopting Sales Cloud, one of the modules that runs on the LIKE.TG platform. Sales Cloud provides companies with the tools needed to modernise how they sell and how customers buy in a digital-first, work-from-anywhere world.
Some of the most powerful features are:
Rich customer activity timelines that allow you to track sales opportunities and move forward faster.
Advanced automation for most daily sales tasks, including activity tracking and email alerts.
A mobile app that allows you to access, manage, and update CRM data on the go.
Sales Cloud powers every aspect of your sales process with a 360-degree view of the customer. With all your customer data in one place, your sales team can contribute to each sale. No more spreadsheets, searching through emails, or looking for a sticky note. You can also take advantage of AI-powered sales tools to automate day-to-day processes. This frees up your sales team to concentrate on winning more deals.
Like other LIKE.TG products, Sales Cloud has an intuitive interface that makes winning a customer a hassle-free process. It also features real-time dashboards to empower and accelerate your decision making.
KEEP customers with Service Cloud
For many SMBs, retaining customers after the first sale is perhaps the most challenging aspect of growing a customer base.
As customers become more selective, it’s far from certain that one sale will lead to another. In fact, more than half of all SMBs around the world have now invested in customer service software, according to the SMB Trends Report.
The data speaks for itself. Ninety-one percent of customers agree that a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to make another purchase. More than 70% of customers say that they have made a purchase decision based on the quality of the customer service. Fifty-eight percent have said that their customer service expectations have risen over the past two years.
LIKE.TG’s Service Cloud solution is the ideal choice for businesses hoping to establish and maintain high levels of personalised customer service. It allows SMBs to:
Engage with customers on their favourite channels
Serve them faster with automated workflows
Deploy AI-powered chatbots for 24/7 responsiveness
Service Cloud also makes it easy to set up self-service options for your customers. That way, customers can easily access knowledge articles, information about their accounts, and community support 24/7.
Get the tools to succeed in 2022
The past two years have tested customer-focused businesses around the world. 2022 seems likely to be another challenging year.
The SMBs that successfully build their customer bases will be the ones that deliver excellent customer experiences.
As you move forward, let LIKE.TG be your trusted partner. LIKE.TG has the solutions you need to find, win, and keep new customers.
Read more about the LIKE.TG tools available to small and medium-sized businesses.
Introducing New Made-for-Singapore Digital Skills Learning Paths
Businesses are grappling with many challenges today. These include the transition to a work-from-anywhere world and the reimagining of core strategies that can meet changing stakeholder expectations. Businesses have to figure these out, all whilst driving growth and innovation.
At LIKE.TG, one of the challenges we are particularly passionate about tackling is digital skills and workforce development. With companies around the world rapidly transitioning to digital-first models, the demand for employees with digital skills has soared. However, current efforts to upskill and reskill talent is not keeping pace with this demand, and there is still more to be done.
Our newly launched LIKE.TG’s Global Digital Skills Index reveals a growing global digital skills crisis: 76% of the world’s workforce feel unequipped for the future of work. This sentiment resonates with 71% of respondents based in Singapore.
At the same time, only 29% of Singapore’s workforce say they are actively pursuing training on digital skills now. While 79% of respondents in Singapore have ‘advanced’ or ‘intermediate’ social media skills, just 34% feel prepared for the workplace digital skills needed over the next five years.
The good news is that the appetite to learn is there. Nearly half of Singapore’s respondents say that they plan to learn new skills to help them grow in their current careers.
Businesses need to take the lead
In Singapore, there has been a lot of progress in expanding the breadth and depth of digital skills training over the last few years. However, according to LIKE.TG’s Digital Skills Index, it is clear that all nations, including Singapore, need to sustain and step up investment in digital skills urgently.
Now, more than ever, businesses need to take the lead in collaborating with governments, partners, and communities to tackle the growing digital skills crisis.
At LIKE.TG, we are committed to providing equitable access to digital skills through a range of initiatives. These include:
Trailhead, which has helped more than 3.7 million people, including over 85,000 in ASEAN, learn new skills for the future of work
Our Trailblazer Community, which empowers people to learn alongside LIKE.TG peers and experts
We also work with universities and government agencies like SkillsFuture in Singapore and Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) in Thailand to help workers reskill and upskill.
Taking a step further with new made-in-Singapore Trailmixes
To get more people in Singapore excited about starting their digital skills journeys, we are excited to launch six new bespoke Trailmixes, or learning paths, on our free online learning platform Trailhead.
Each Trailmix is focused on a specific in-demand digital skill. Completing one will earn you a special Singapore-themed badge that you won’t find anywhere else.
Raffles Trailmix
Like the founding of modern Singapore, all great stories start somewhere. Begin your learning journey by brushing up on these personal skills.
Skills focus: Personal development skills
Merlion Trailmix
The Merlion: actual mythical creature, or successful marketing campaign? Learn how to devise your own digital marketing strategies here.
Skills focus: Digital marketing
Downtown Trailmix
The LIKE.TG ecosystem will create 18,600 jobs in Singapore within five years. Jump into our cloud and find out what the buzz surrounding cloud computing is all about.
Skills focus: LIKE.TG cloud
Mandai Trailmix
Count the birds, bees, and other flora and fauna you can find at Singapore’s biggest wildlife parks — then crunch those numbers like a pro.
Skills focus: Data analytics
One-north Trailmix
Master user experience (UX) basics at the one-north innovation cluster, where start-ups with sleek modern products call home.
Skills focus: UX Design
Jurong Quest
Blaze a trail and open up a new frontier of opportunities with these cutting-edge skills and technologies.
Skill focus: Artificial Intelligence (AI)
SME leaders, share these Trailmixes with your teams. If you want to take it a step further to kickstart your organisation’s digital transformation journey, check out the Productivity Solutions Grant programme, which offers subsidies of up to 80%.
Join Trailhead and our Trailblazer community
Whether you’re just starting out in your career, or are a mid-career professional looking to stay sharp, these Singapore Trailmixes provide a variety of starting points. There’s also a balanced range of difficulty for anyone looking to upskill or reskill.
Don’t learn alone! Grab a few friends or co-workers as you hit the trails and keep each other motivated on your learning journey.
After you complete these six modules and pin the exclusive badges proudly to your profile, you might feel more confident about tackling more advanced topics.
At that point, we recommend you fully immerse yourself into the hundreds of modules that Trailhead has to offer. Don’t forget to join the Trailblazer community to earn resume-worthy credentials and connect to opportunities worldwide.
We can’t wait to see what you’ll learn and build!
Hop over to Trailhead and check out our new Singapore Trailmixes today!
Hybrid Work: How OfficeMate Supports Its Customers to ‘WorkAnywhere’
The nature of work has changed. COVID-19 forced companies across Asia to move to remote work. Now, some of those same companies are adopting hybrid work models. That means many employees are engaging in a mix of remote and office based work.
This is a reality OfficeMate understands. The Thailand-based office supplies provider knows its customers’ needs have changed. OfficeMate is changing with them.
“Our business is not limited to office spaces,” explains Apipoj Piasak, Head of Data and Digital Platform at OfficeMate. “Cafés, restaurants, hotels, homes, and beaches have all become workplaces.”
Mr Apipoj says OfficeMate is using digital transformation to provide a more customer-centric service journey. It’s a concept the company calls ‘WorkAnywhere’.
He explains the company’s new service model has been built and tailored to support all businesses, workers, and lifestyles.
“Our aim is to deliver a hygienic, rejuvenated, and digitised work environment that unlocks the human ability to deliver the best performance from anywhere.”
For OfficeMate, that means giving customers access to more than 100,000 products and services across a wide range of business needs. Products like masks, air purifiers, and sanitation items help customers maintain hygiene workplaces. Equipment like laptops and WiFi routers enable remote work.
Growing with digital transformation
OfficeMate has been one of Thailand’s best-known retailers for more than 26 years. It began as a product catalogue and call centre business. Today, the company operates a vast network of more than 100 stores across the country.
The company’s digital transformation journey began six years ago with Service Cloud. After evaluating multiple vendors, OfficeMate chose LIKE.TG to implement an end-to-end solution to support its business growth.
This included implementing internal workflows, and using Service Cloud dashboards and reporting to track customer service cases. The company also analysed data to improve customer service and satisfaction.
This helped the company become more than a standard office supplies provider. It enabled OfficeMate to partner with businesses of all sizes and types. It also supported the company’s more recent shift towards a customer-centric service model.
Connecting with customers
As the company continued to grow, OfficeMate executives implemented Sales Cloud, Digital Engagement, Communities, and LIKE.TG Knowledge solutions to deliver new customer-centric service channels. It also empowered employees with the LIKE.TG Mobile App to manage all interactions on the go.
Customers are able to connect with OfficeMate in several ways. For example, new ‘Call Shop’ and ‘Chat Shop’ innovations are blurring the lines between physical and virtual stores. The aim is to make shopping as easy and convenient as possible for all customers.
‘Call Shop’ connects customers with a shopping assistant who guides the customer experience via a phone call. ‘Chat Shop’ enables customers to text queries to customer service staff via the real-time LINE chat app.
“Now, instead of simply selling products to our customers, we listen to their needs and try to understand what they are looking for,” Mr Apipoj explains. “OfficeMate has become our customers’ personal shopper to source all the products they need for their businesses with only a few clicks.”
Stepping into a digital future
The results of OfficeMate’s customer-centric transformation have been strong. The company has improved service times, created more cross- and up-sell opportunities, and is closing sales faster. OfficeMate’s Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) has also improved.
As OfficeMate continues to step into its digital future, Mr Apipoj says customer data will help the company propose the right offer or service at the right time.
The company also plans to introduce Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to further personalise shopping experiences with a chatbot.
Along with advanced warehouse automation, Mr Apipoj says this will help to connect all online and offline channels.
“Part of our goal is to build a seamless digital customer journey that delivers the best customer experience,” he concludes. “We believe this will give us the power to meet all future challenges.”
How Does LIKE.TG Use Slack To Collaborate and Connect?
On July 21, 2021 LIKE.TG completed its acquisition of Slack. This brings together the #1 CRM and the trailblazing digital platform for the work-from-anywhere world.
Businesses need to be successful from home and office — especially in this era of flexible work. Slack makes workflows seamless and supports the way people naturally work together: in real-time or not, in-person and remote, structured and informal. LIKE.TG and Slack bring together all your teams with the apps and data they need in a single, collaborative workspace. Plus, Slack Connect functionality lets internal teams engage more productively with external partners, vendors, agencies, and customers. So you can deliver the exceptional experiences that help grow your business.
Slack is also changing the way we work here at LIKE.TG. We have new ways to connect anywhere, anytime. We’re building greater transparency into everything we do with teammates, stakeholders, partners, and customers. We’re sending way fewer emails, and we’re using features like Huddles for impromptu voice chats.
In short: We’re collaborating in real-time.
What does this collaboration and communication look like in practice? We talked to Samuel Steele, Head ofStrategic Sales Programs Office, ASEAN, and Mildred Chow, Creative Services Professional, Strategic Sales Programs Office, ASEAN, both LIKE.TG employees based in Singapore. They gave us an idea of how they use Slack in their team, and how it’s changed their approach to work.
Of course, the best place to have this conversation was on Slack!
For details on this infographic, please click here.
3 Ways Technogym Thailand Provides Exceptional Customer Experience
79% of consumers surveyed for the fourth edition of the State of the Connected Consumer report say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.
This principle certainly holds true for Technogym Thailand. The fast growing business is on a mission to help people live better and integrate wellness into their daily lives. Its products include a range of fitness equipment as well as digital technologies that promote health and wellbeing.
These products are popular with both businesses and consumers. Consumer sales were especially strong over the last two years as more and more people set up home gyms. Even so, the business knows the experience it provides is critical to its ongoing success.
“To ensure the business’ sustainability and continued growth, we need to provide customers with the best possible experience,” said Surachet Amornrattanavej, Managing Director of Technogym Thailand.
Here are three ways Technogym Thailand is delivering on its goal and delighting customers at every turn.
Empowers teams with a connected view of the customer
Customers today expect a consistent experience, even as they move between different channels and interact with different departments. However, delivering this experience is easier said than done. Technogym Thailand realised early on that having the right data was key.
“When it comes to brand perception, consistency is important. That’s why we chose to partner with LIKE.TG and invest in CRM in the early stages of business,” said Surachet. “We wanted to move all our data onto one platform so every department could access the same information and communicate the same message to customers.”
Technogym Thailand now has a 360-degree view of customers, including a history of every sales and support interaction. This information empowers teams to deliver a consistent and personalised experience at every step of the customer journey.
Delivers personalised and efficient field service
Technogym Thailand offers installation services as well as other post-sales support to help customers maintain their fitness products. The field technicians who provide this support are effectively the face of the brand. They are there for customers when they need help the most and trusted to deliver a superior service.
“It’s no longer enough to just go out and fix a customer’s problem. We need to provide an excellent experience from the moment a customer calls to report an issue through to the point of resolution,” said Surachet.
Technogym Thailand has equipped employees with LIKE.TG Field Service to make this experience as seamless as possible. Now, when a customer reaches out for help, a customer service agent can quickly raise a case and capture the key information needed to solve their problem. The agent can then create a work order and dispatch a technician with the right skills to do the job.
Technicians themselves have information at their fingertips to provide a more personalised service and resolve most issues their first time onsite. This includes details about the customer, their current issue, and any spare parts that may be required.
Adapts to evolving customer needs
COVID-19-related restrictions and safety concerns have made it more difficult for people to visit gyms and other fitness centres during the pandemic. Many consumers have consequently chosen to create or upgrade their home gyms, leading to an increase in sales for Technogym Thailand’s home fitness equipment.
As a result, Technogym Thailand has had to manage a spike in new installations as well as regular repairs. At the same time, it needed to ensure employee and customer safety by minimising time spent onsite.
Technogym Thailand used LIKE.TG to adapt and keep pace with customer needs. For example, the business has empowered customer service agents to work remotely and resolve customer issues over the phone. While field technicians have continued to attend to more complex problems, they’re equipped with everything they need to make site visits quick and efficient.
Like all businesses, Technogym Thailand knows it must continue to be agile to handle customers’ changing expectations. That includes being ready to support and interact with customers across any channel they choose.
For this reason, Technogym Thailand has extended its support channels to include WhatsApp, LINE, and social media. The business is also exploring ways to enhance customer engagement.
“Our customers’ needs are changing all of the time and it is really important to me that we’re able to adapt,” said Surachet. “LIKE.TG gives me the confidence that we can stay up to date and ahead of the trends.”
What Is a LIKE.TG Architect?
LIKE.TG helpsover 150,000 customersacross a range of businesses, nonprofits, and institutions connect with their customers. People around the world rely on ourcustomer relationship management (CRM) platformto keep their business running. A LIKE.TG Architect is vital to any complex or large-scale LIKE.TG implementation.
What is a LIKE.TG Architect?
ALIKE.TG Architecthelps design and deliver solutions for enterprise-grade customers using LIKE.TG products. The primary responsibility is to recommend the best solution for a given set of requirements and articulate the trade-offs involved in choosing one solution over another.
With LIKE.TG, there is never just one way to solve a problem. It’s the LIKE.TG Architect’s responsibility to choose the solution that will hold up over time, that will scale as the number of users increases, and won’t acquire lots of technical debt or require manual changes as time goes on.
A LIKE.TG Architect’s job doesn’t stop at solving technical problems. An architect brings technology, people, and processes together usinggovernanceand expert communication and listening skills to ensure solutions truly meet the needs of the business.
The most successful LIKE.TG implementations involve architects.A study by 10K Advisorsfound 82% of customers who reported the highest return on investment (ROI) in their LIKE.TG spend said they always work with an architect on their teams.
What skills does a LIKE.TG Architect need?
A successful architect is a big picture thinker and also an in-depth problem solver. An architect must have broad and deep technical knowledge but they also need to possess listening, communication, and presentation skills.
You might be surprised to learn that you don’t need to be a developer to become an architect. However, an architect needs to know how to read code and recommend coding best practices since they are often managing teams that include developers. Most importantly, an architect must know when to code but also when not to code. Having expertise in thedeclarative (clicks not code)side of the platform can separate a good architect from a great one.
Architects often bring knowledge and expertise in integrating LIKE.TG with other technologies and vice versa, as well as experience with governance and development operations. Ultimately, architects blend their technical expertise and business acumen to empower business and IT to work together towards a stronger future.
What does a LIKE.TG Architect do?
A LIKE.TG Architect is a trusted advisor and leader who partners with business stakeholders and executives to design a vision and architecture for a solution to a business problem. Often in the position of the technical team leader, they help educate the team with technical best practices. They also translate business needs to a technical vision that teams of low-code or pro-code builders can execute on. Architects also build proofs-of-concept (POCs) that teams can further iterate on.
An LIKE.TG architect will design the organisation strategy and data model for a LIKE.TG implementation. They will put technical solutions in place for identity and access, implement data and process integrations, anddesign solutionsthat account for large data volumes and data privacy needs. They’ll also identify the optimal solution for a business requirement and recommend using clicks, code, or a combination of both depending on the business use case. As highly experienced problem solvers, architects are often the final escalation point for any production issues.
An architect can also act as an influencer. They are the trusted technology leader at the table and are often tasked with building buy-in for new solutions. While an architect might not know the answer to every question a business stakeholder might ask, they are experts on LIKE.TG product capabilities and can think quickly and act fast. Their soft skills allow them to understand all stakeholder needs and communicate with them in their language.
What are the career prospects for LIKE.TG Architects?
The LIKE.TG Architect career path is one of the fastest-growing in the LIKE.TG ecosystem. In the past five years, the demand for LIKE.TG architects has seen a1,292% annual growth rate.
There are a variety of different LIKE.TG architect roles. Depending on your interests or skill level, you might gravitate towards one in particular.
Demand for LIKE.TG technical skills continues to grow.Studies showthe LIKE.TG ecosystem will produce 4.2 million jobs by 2024, with architect roles demanding an average salary of $123,000 USD.
What credentials and certifications are relevant for the job?
There are variouscertification paths for a LIKE.TG Architectthat recognise specialised knowledge and skills, as well as growing expertise using the LIKE.TG platform.
TheLIKE.TG Certified Technical Architect (CTA)solves complex, large-scale customer challenges to produce secure, scalable, and high-performance solutions that maximise the full potential of the LIKE.TG platform.
LIKE.TG Certified Solution Architectsdesign domain-specific, multi-cloud solutions on the LIKE.TG platform that power personalised, frictionless customer experiences that maximise business value.
Finally, an architect is a visionary. They build systems that will last, that others can maintain and that will scale as the business grows. They are often ambassadors for new technology and always plan for the future, thinking three-to-five years out when recommending a solution.
This post was originally published on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
What Is a LIKE.TG CRM Implementation Partner?
Companies of all sizes are accelerating their digital transformation initiatives, in response to changes in customer behaviours. Many are interested in implementing integrated, access-from-anywhere solutions. These include customer relationship management (CRM) solutions such as those offered by LIKE.TG.
Exploring a LIKE.TG CRM solution is one thing. Knowing which products, applications, and configurations best suits your business is another matter. This is why almost all LIKE.TG customers turn to dedicated experts to ease their entry into the world of LIKE.TG. These experts are implementation partners. There is a vast network of LIKE.TG implementation partners that help businesses achieve their CRM goals.
Let’s look at some of the most common questions people have about working with a LIKE.TG implementation partner. I’ll also share how you can get the most out of the partner relationship.
What is an implementation partner?
In simple terms, an implementation partner is an organisation that has been reviewed and approved by LIKE.TG to implement CRM solutions on LIKE.TG’s behalf.
Each implementation partner specialises in particular areas, industries, or applications. This means that there’s a partner that caters to every need, challenge, business, product, industry, region, and step along the LIKE.TG journey.
Why engage an implementation partner?
Our CRM solutions cover the entire spectrum of business operations. These include sales, marketing, service, and sustainability. Each product can be bolstered by add-on applications and platform-to-platform integrations.
In other words, the capabilities of the LIKE.TG ecosystem are endless. The challenge is to select the right product with the configurations and integrations that best suit your needs.
A larger company may already work with multiple technological solutions. They may need assistance in figuring out how a LIKE.TG product, say, Marketing Cloud, can integrate with their existing systems without causing friction.
A smaller company may be scaling quickly and know that continuing to work with spreadsheets will not support this growth. They may realise that they need to automate their processes, or it’s time to develop more personalised customer experiences. Implementing a CRM solution for the first time can feel daunting.
It is challenging for internal teams or employees with no experience with LIKE.TG to consider all the variables and implement a new and highly configurable CRM solution. Hiring a full-time employee to take charge of the implementation process can also be expensive.
These are some of the situationally specific reasons that 90 percent of LIKE.TG customers rely on partner applications and experts.
When is the right time to engage an implementation partner?
In a nutshell: as early as possible.
As with any significant investment, you need to do your due diligence. First, figure out what needs should be met, gaps should be closed, or issues should be addressed. In the case of LIKE.TG implementation, you formulate a vision of what you want to achieve, which is the ‘what’. Next, determine the ‘how’, which is the most complicated part.
As soon as you figure out your goals, it’s time to bring in a partner. The right implementation partner won’t just facilitate the ‘how’, but they’ll also help crystalise the ‘what’. They’ll help you clarify your success metrics, understand what is realistic, and advise on appropriate products. Finally, they’ll lay out a logistically sound timeline for your implementation journey.
Bringing in a partner late in the game almost always ends in missed opportunities in terms of scope and understanding. The relationship between a customer and a partner is close and collaborative. The only way to ensure smooth implementation is when the journey begins together.
How do I know which partner is right for me?
Certifications and credentials come into play, as does the specific expertise of that partner.
Some partners have generalised LIKE.TG capabilities. More often than not, they specialise in particular areas or functions of the CRM solution. Some might specialise in Marketing Cloud and customer data platforms (CDP). Others might specialise in harnessing the combined powers of Sales Cloud and Einstein.
Another factor, which has come to the forefront in recent years, is value alignment. People want to work with organisations that share their values. For example, they may choose to work with an organisation that champions diversity and equality, or prioritises sustainability.
Regardless of whether or not these things are top-of-mind for you, it’s important to shop around. Meet with multiple partners. Get a feel of who they are and the way they work. This is an important relationship, so don’t settle for anything less than the right fit.
The best and most comprehensive resource on both partners and products is the LIKE.TG AppExchange. There, 124,000 experts and 4,700 applications are at your fingertips. You can browse certifications, specialisations, and customer reviews.
What challenges might I encounter during implementation?
I can’t stress enough that bringing in a partner as early as possible reduces the chance of many challenges emerging down the line.
What’s also important is to be clear on what you want to solve and how you measure success over time. Most instances of confusion or dissatisfaction come from a lack of understanding on the part of the customer or the partner.
If both parties aren’t on the same page, then assumptions can be made, and misunderstandings on timelines and capabilities can arise. This makes objectives and success benchmarks harder to reach. As a customer, you need to be as transparent as you want your partner to be. Never be afraid to ask questions more than once. The implementation process can be highly technical and seeking clarification is natural.
Just as you place the customer at the centre of your business, partners place you at the centre of theirs. They measure their success by delivering exactly what you need. Customer success equals partner success. You should always keep that in the back of your mind throughout the process.
Any successful relationship in life thrives on open, honest communication from the outset. An implementation partnership is no exception.
How 3 Customers Successfully Digitally Transformed Using LIKE.TG
Digital transformation is an iterative process. How quickly you see results depends on the vision that you have for your business, and the metrics you are targeting.
If you’re just starting out with your own digital transformation, it can be difficult to see how the long-term benefits are worth the effort. The good news is that many others have been through the process, and a lot can be learned from their experiences.
Below, we hear from three businesses of varying sizes about their business visions, the steps they took in their transformation journeys, and the results they got.
AFDigital uses LIKE.TG to enable data-driven human connections
Founded in the Philippines in 2011, AFDigital began as a digital marketing agency. Since then, it has evolved into a multi-cloud LIKE.TG and MuleSoft implementation partner.
The vision
AFDigital uses a ‘glocalised’ approach. That means they support a physical, on-the-ground presence in key markets with a well-resourced Philippines-based delivery centre. Pauline Pangan, Founder and Managing Director, believes this model has been particularly effective in meeting their customers’ changing needs.
“Our goal is to help our customers redefine the human experience with LIKE.TG technology. That’s why we are constantly investing in building our capabilities,” says Pangan.
The transformation
The company started out using a collection of unconnected apps to manage their business, before investing in a full LIKE.TG Customer 360 deployment.
“We expanded our use of Sales Cloud, and started using Service Cloud,” explains Co-Founder and CEO Robin Leonard. “Then we started to use the single customer view in LIKE.TG as our platform for delivery, sales, service, and marketing.”
AFDigital uses Marketing Cloud to power all the company’s nurture journeys. It also deployed Experience Cloud and built an ecommerce platform with Store Connect during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finally, it uses Tableau for data analytics and reporting.
“I am a strong believer that what you cannot measure, you cannot manage,” says Pangan. “LIKE.TG enables us to measure and manage the metrics that matter to our shareholders, our customers, our employees, and our partners.”
The results
AFDigital has seen an impressive 380% growth in Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) over the last two years.
It has also doubled its customer retention rate over the last 12 months, and the opportunity conversion rate has increased from 28% to 52%. Perhaps most impressively, the company has achieved 900% revenue growth since investing in LIKE.TG.
The company can also use the enormous success of its own digital transformation as a case study to share with potential prospects.
“We achieved all this amazing success because we invested time and money to build the right processes. I always tell our customers that LIKE.TG is already solving the business problems of tomorrow. The only limit in the value we can squeeze out of the technology is our imagination.”
Anantara Vacation Club improves its customer service experience with LIKE.TG
Anantara Vacation Club’s vacation ownership programme was created in 2010 with a single property in Phuket. Now, it spans nine luxury Club-owned resorts across Southeast Asia and New Zealand.
The vision
Anantara Vacation Club has built an impressive customer base of more than 14,000 Club Points Owners in less than a decade. To help provide consistent customer experiences worthy of the luxury brand, it turned to LIKE.TG.
“When we had 500 to 1,000 Club Points Owners, we could still manage the process manually,” says Matthijs de Man, Director of Club Services and Innovation and Anantara Vacation Club. “But when you start getting 200 to 300 enquiries a day, it becomes unmanageable.”
The transformation
Prior to LIKE.TG, customer service agents dealt with enquiries through email, which was inefficient and time consuming. That’s when de Man and his team turned to Service Cloud for end-to-end customer management, from the moment of booking to the end of the stay.
“For a Club Points Owner, it’s a seamless experience,” says de Man.
Club Points Owners in China can now also log enquiries and communicate with customer service agents through the social media platform WeChat. Integrated Live Chat case management through the Club’s website has opened another in-demand customer communication channel.
“Our entire customer service team has the same access to Club Points Owners’ information – whether they contact us through our call centre, WeChat, Live Chat or email,” de Man explains. “Club Points Owners now get a consistent experience through any channel they choose to use.”
The results
Service Cloud had an almost immediate effect on the Club. The Club Points Owner base grew by an incredible 200 per cent following the deployment. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are down from around 10 hours to less than two hours.
Overall customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) never dip below 87 per cent and are as high as 94 per cent in the Japanese market. Chinese Club Points Owners also rate the Club’s customer service highly with CSAT scores consistently around 90 per cent.
“The best thing about Service Cloud is that our employees now have a clear understanding of everyone they are talking to, and an essential view of all their previous interactions with us” says de Man.
M1 reinvents itself to become a digital-first telco
Now in its 25th year, digital network operator M1 has brought numerous innovations and achieved many firsts in the Singapore market. In 2019, it was privatised and became a key pillar of Keppel Corporation’s (Keppel) connectivity business. It then started work to digitally overhaul all its processes and offerings, with a customer-first approach.
The vision
“Our vision is to become a digital-first telco and provide new made-to-measure personalised experiences for our customers. We want to set a new standard for what a digital experience looks like in our industry, ” said Nathan Bell, Chief Digital Officer.
The transformation
M1 has rolled out Sales Cloud to B2B sales reps and is using Service Cloud in its contact centre. It is using Tableau CRM to provide data insights that can be used to provide customers with personalised recommendations.
M1 also plans to leverage Marketing Cloud to provide customers with hyper-personalised offers and promotions. Combined with Datorama, this will provide real-time insights so that M1 can adapt campaigns to customers’ individual interests.
To realise the full potential of its digitalisation, M1 has used MuleSoft to integrate LIKE.TG with its Operations Support System and other technologies.
“Omni-channel is being redefined and we see increasing fluidity between channels, with customers moving more frequently from one to the next. LIKE.TG will help us keep pace with our customers and ensure a consistent experience, no matter which blend of channels they use,” said Bell.
The results
Throughout the transformation process, M1 has seen more than 1,500 employees learn new skills.
“When implementing new technologies, adoption is typically a push exercise and you have to convince people why they should get onboard. In this case, it was different. Everyone wanted to know what they could do to help get this out to our customers fast. LIKE.TG enabled us to deliver an incredible outcome and one that’s sustainable as we move into the new norm,” said Bell.
Most importantly, this outcome will support M1 in accelerating decision making and increasing relevance while realising its goal to be a digital-first telco. Ultimately, this leads to an improvement in the way it serves customers.
How SMEs in Singapore and Thailand Embrace Digital Transformation
How can your business find success in an all-digital future? Now that 2022 is here, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) should take time to learn from the past year and plan for the future.
The past year has forced many SMEs to change how they operate and embrace an all-new digital world. Customer expectations have also changed. For example, 61% expect to spend more time online than they did before. Contactless ways of interacting with businesses, such as online ordering and curbside pick-up, are here to stay. Flexible working has become more common, and 70% of SMEs have already created plans to manage future crises.
Governments and local communities have stepped up to help SMEs. In Singapore, LIKE.TG is now a pre-approved vendor under the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) programme. The PSG offers grant support of up to 80% funding to SMEs to sustain their business and continue to grow. Customers such as Knorex have utilised this grant to help their digital transformation.
In a world swiftly moving towards a digital future, Singapore and Thailand are leading the way. In our latest Small and Medium Business Trends Report, we surveyed over 2,500 SME owners and leaders. They come from a range of industries around the world, including technology, financial services, professional services, healthcare, retail, and more. Around 12% of these were from Singapore and Thailand. It’s clear from their responses that they are ahead of the curve when it comes to embracing technology:
For details on this infographic, please click here.
How To Make Customer Loyalty the Driving Force of Your Business
Loyal customers will spend around 31% more with your company than new customers. That makes customer loyalty incredibly important for driving revenue.
Customer loyalty isn’t just about selling more. It’s also about the emotional relationship you build with your customers. Loyal customers trust your brand, recommend it, and return to buy again and again.
Customer loyalty is built on positive customer experiences. It is often formalised in customer loyalty programs that reward and incentivise your most valuable spenders. Customer loyalty programs are also a reliable way for businesses to obtain critical first-party customer data, and produce entirely new revenue streams.
These benefits are elevating the importance of customer loyalty programs within many organisations. However, many brands are still not leveraging the full power of customer loyalty.
1. Take an organisation-wide approach to customer loyalty
Customer loyalty should not be limited to marketing campaigns. Brands need to integrate loyalty programs into the entire customer lifecycle — from customer service to product returns. This will help to embed customer loyalty into the brand’s DNA, and create significant competitive differentiation.
To do so, brands need a connected ecosystem. That means providing a single, shared view of the customer across the organisation. This will not only enable better customer experiences. It will also help brands collect first-party customer data.
As Google prepares to remove support for third-party cookies, marketers must lead the switch to gathering first-party data. Loyalty programs will become one of the primary methods brands use to collect this vital customer data. This will further accelerate the elevated status of loyalty programs as the data they create becomes part of the brand’s balance sheet.
2. Provide premium benefits and exclusive experiences
According to a 2020 McKinsey survey, members of paid loyalty programs are 60 percent more likely to spend more on the brand after subscribing. The survey also found that paid loyalty programs drive higher purchase frequency, basket size, and brand affinity compared to free loyalty programs.
Paid loyalty programs can create an entirely new revenue stream for brands. This involves moving past a points-based program to focus on premium access, exclusive products, and special pricing.
Loyalty programs can also help brands maintain customer engagement outside of seasonal sales periods. For example, a leading swimwear brand uses its customer loyalty program to engage with customers beyond their busy summer-sales season. The brand uses customer data to personalise year-round customer communications, which are triggered throughMarketing Cloud Journey Builder. This has increased members’ average spend by 20%.
3. Create a connected, frictionless loyalty ecosystem
Third-party loyalty ecosystems are empowering organisations to extend the value of their loyalty programs beyond what a single brand can offer. For example, ShopBack connects 30 million shoppers with around 10,000 merchants and partners, in-store and online. The connected rewards and discovery platform drove more than $3.5 billion in sales across Asia-Pacific.
Future loyalty programs will also require customers to do less. Embracing a 360-degree customer view will enable brands to remove friction from their loyalty programs and use them to create additional value in the customer journey with superior experiences.
Connected communities will be another key element of future loyalty programs. Loyalty programs that are able to create new communities will be able to drive more frequent and deeper connections with consumers.
Leverage the full power of loyalty
The future is bright for customer loyalty programs. To leverage the full power of loyalty, brands must change the way they think about customer loyalty. Customer loyalty programs will no longer be about how loyal customers will be to the brand. They will be about how loyal the brand is to the customer.
For customer loyalty to become a driving force of business, the customer must be at the centre of the business at all times. This can be achieved with a 360-degree customer view that brings your entire organisation closer to the customer.
5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Advertising Sales
Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting real in the marketing suite. When asked where they planned to invest this year, marketers ranked AI as their #1 priority, according to our most recentState of Marketing Report. AI adoption is surging: 84% of marketers reported they use AI somewhere in their acquisition and retention engines, up almost three times over just two years ago.
What are these intrepid marketers doing with AI? Reported uses are expanding rapidly, from enhanced personalisation to improved segmentation, insight discovery, predictive modeling, and process automation.
Advertising technology also rode the wave of big data-driven AI adoption, as programmatic platforms revolutionised the process of buying and selling digital ads. Programmatic ad sales are soaring, from $60 billion in 2019 to an estimated $97 billion in 2022,according to eMarketer. It may seem from some angles that ad sales would become a kind of self-driving car, requiring the occasional redirect but not much else from the salesperson.
How do these salespeople feel about the impact of AI on their world? Two words: cautiously optimistic. On the one hand, 86% of sales executives see AI as having a positive influence on their future roles, according toour latest research. However, 68% of the same executives voiced concerns, primarily about the ongoing relevance of their current jobs. Thirty-one percent said automation might ultimately hurt the “art” of selling, as human-to-human relationships are replaced by optimised digital touchpoints.
Five reasons to be happy about AI in ad sales
Despite a natural fear of the unknown, there are good reasons to believe AI will make the business and — yes — the current jobs of ad salespeople better. It augments selling while leaving people to do what they do best: be human.
AI can level the playing field for both advertisers and publishers, giving even hard-working salespeople who don’t work for Fortune 100 tech or media companies the tools they wished they’d had in the past. These AI-driven superpowers can help sales professionals improve both their effectiveness (how well their product works) and their efficiency (speed and productivity).
1. Better data unification and harmonisation
With the impending deprecation of the third-party cookie in Chrome and Apple’s ongoing privacy changes, marketers are looking to first-party data to power their programs — including media programs. An impressive 88% of marketers said first-party data was a strategic priority for them in 2021, according to Merkle’s 2021Customer Engagement Report. For publishers, first-party data iskey to buildingaudiences that advertisers need; and for advertisers, first-party data is increasingly important as a seed for matching, targeting, and lookalikes.
However, first-party data is often fragmented and poorly organised, as well as complex. For example, 64% of customers start a purchase journey on one device and finish on another, perLIKE.TG research. Marketers face a daunting average of 12 major sources of customer data, up 20% from 2020, according to our State of Marketing Report. Often the data sitting in these sources contain inconsistent identification information (IDs), out-of-date information, and eccentric taxonomies.
AI can often be combined with a solution such as aCustomer Data Platformto greatly improve identity matching. Algorithms can be applied to perform “fuzzy matching” on IDs and resolve discrepancies. AI can also be used to make sure data from different systems is mapped to a common data model to ensure consistency.
2. Stronger segmentation and audience discovery
Customers of today, especially digitally nativemillennials, say they expect relevant experiences: that is, messages that are useful and timely in the context of their digital lives. Delivering a personalised experience requires both organised data and intelligent algorithms to find segments and uncover needs that are difficult to uncover using manual methods.
AI excels at smart segmentation — uncovering groups of customers and prospects who have attributes in common — at a scale and depth that isn’t possible for human analysts. AI algorithms can traverse billions of rows of customer data looking for patterns that might mean the difference between a valuable publisher audience and the same old “18-to-35 mom.“
For example, imagine a publisher with an established audience of science fiction enthusiasts. Suppose there is a significant subgroup of people who prefer robot-driven stories to human-driven stories, but there is no way to tell that without combining data from content analysis, web analytics, social listening, email, and commerce. Without AI, the publisher would sell a broad “Sci-Fi Lovers” segment. With AI, they can hyper-target “Gear-Head Sci-Fi” to — say — a campaign for a futuristic new vehicle.
3. Natural language interfaces with technology
Few areas of AI have more potential for impact on our lives than natural-language processing (NLP) and image recognition. Already we’ve seen the rapid rise of conversational chatbots in service. Voice interfaces are familiar to any of us who have ever asked Alexa totell us a jokeor told Siri that we’re in the mood for sushi.
Voice is already built intocall centre softwareand some analytics tools, but marketing technology is at the beginning of the adoption curve. Imagine an ad salesperson never having to touch a keypad again or — even better — have to click through drop-downs and menus looking for exactly the right command to select.
AI can reduce these time sinks, as speech recognition approaches 95%+ accuracy and voice navigation becomes commonplace. Efficiency will increase (less key clicking), and so will completeness (less reason to procrastinate in updating call records or ideas). The outcome is less time spent searching and updating and more time spent selling.
4. More efficient back-end processes and production
We’ve already mentioned how AI can help automate manual data plumbing and “munging” tasks such as ID mapping and harmonisation. It can also help make salespeople more efficient by prioritising their efforts, sifting through tasks and leads, and focusing their efforts.
One of the first areas of the sales process to benefit from AI waslead scoring. Despite initial reluctance from some sales teams —“What can a machine tell me about a good lead? I know one when I see one!”— many now routinely use algorithms to improve their priority lists. The same is true for tasks from summarising call notes to planning thebest wayto get from one customer meeting to another, in which order.
For ad salespeople, AI can help match available inventory with direct-sales opportunities that are most likely to close, minimising time spent on frustrating low-likelihood leads.
5. Improved measurement and optimisation
Accelerated by the pandemic, digital advertising’s rise has been impressive.More than halfof all ad spend is now digital, with an increasing proportion flowing through the largest platforms and publishers. AI can help to ingest and analyse all that data in a way that helps both publishers and advertisers estimate the impact of campaigns on desired outcomes, such as sales.
Measuring the impact of multi-channel campaigns requires ingesting information from dozens of sources and applying complex models to determine which creative elements, channels, devices, publishers, and tactics (such as time of day or ad size) made an impact. “Noise” can include factors such as competitive moves —Did they run a sale at the same time? Was there a new product launch?— the economy, and even the weather.
AI is well suited to help ad salespeople separate signal from noise and identify what works and what doesn’t. Some leadingAI-driven toolsalready provide automated optimisation recommendations based on the historical performance of marketing and ads.
AI excels at automating tasks that are mundane, and also at sifting through daunting amounts of data at dizzying speed. Humans do not. By letting the AI assistants do what they do best, we are already making ad sales jobs less artificial and more intelligent.
This post was originally published on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
