But making customers happy is often easier said than done.

The sheer volume of data and the fact it’s often scattered across different systems within an organisation can make this challenging to achieve. Inefficient systems, disconnected data, manual processes, plus a shortage of talent and resources all stand in the way of an organisation becoming a customer company.

So how will your business meet the growing expectations of customers? They’ll rely on IT.

Unlike ever before, organisations have the power to place customers at the centre of everything they do. From enabling personalised touchpoints to curated buying experiences, IT makes all this possible. With a single platform that connects your data and systems, creates a complete and harmonised customer profile, and securely automates processes at scale, IT empowers organisations to drive success, deliver impact, and delight customers.

Unlock the power of AI

To become an intelligent customer company, your employee and customer experiences must be powered by AI. IT leaders agree: 84% believe that generative AI will help them better serve customers, and organisations are thus accelerating their AI adoption. 

But this isn’t just a flashy trend. AI has proven to have a strong ROI. AI solutions have boosted revenue growth and reduced costs for 67% and 79% of organisations, respectively. Today, AI has become a priority for 67% of IT leaders.

Through the power of the right AI technology, like Einstein GPT and CRM Analytics, organisations can make smarter predictions, serve up better recommendations, and generate more personalised interactions for customers — no data analyst required.

Eighty-five percent of customers expect consistency across their interactions with an organisation. With the power of AI, you can build the seamless interactions they’re craving. Here’s where AI-powered chatbots, apps, and self-service portals can come in.

In recent years, chatbot usage has increased from 43% to 58%. With this technology, companies can generate personalised responses to customer inquiries and streamline the creation of self-service knowledge articles. This means fewer manual tasks, better customer experiences, and more time to concentrate on innovation.

Hello, improved buying experiences and increased productivity!

But generative AI has emerged in ways that not only support customer interactions but help other parts of the organisation perform their jobs better and faster. Consider how developers are now using generative AI to help write code.

To unlock the power of AI, you need:

• Reliable and trusted customer data to build a harmonised customer profile
• Pre-built, custom, or public AI models — ideally a combination of these — to feed your data into so insights can be leveraged into automated actions
• A single platform with security and governance built-in to enable both innovations and increased customer trust. 

AI is the key to being able to create more personalised experiences to delight your customers with each interaction. From being able to automatically categorise customer service cases for improved live interactions to prioritising sales deals to reduce time in closing sales leads, AI can empower your teams to deliver more for your customers.

AI is only as good as your data

Connecting clean data is critical to unlocking AI capabilities. Only with reliable and trusted data, pulled together on a single platform from service, sales, and other relevant sources, can AI even perform as intended. Remember: good in, good out. 

But for years, the promise has been that with more data, we’d know exactly what we needed at the right moment to deliver amazing customer experiences. It’s a critical component of becoming a customer company. But this reality is still far out of reach for many organisations.

The amount of data generated each day continues increasing. By 2025, there will be 100 zettabytes of data in the cloud with the amount forecasted to double by 2026. 

An organisation’s data is often siloed in a host of different systems. To connect and harmonise it can require specific, costly, technical expertise, and there are also security and compliance concerns to consider.

It’s no wonder that 36% of IT teams say that their struggle to integrate siloed data is hindering their digital transformation efforts.

Right now, data is being generated faster than IT’s ability to integrate it, let alone harmonise it and derive meaningful insights. Today, 33% of business leaders say they struggle to generate insights from all their data.

What is data when you aren’t able to translate it into value?

To tackle the task, you have to connect to data from any system quickly and securely. But this shouldn’t be done with custom code — that will only increase technical debt. Rather, create, use, and reuse data integration assets, like APIs and connectors, on a platform with DevOps and security built in.

Since modern enterprises use up to 500 API on average, a uniform API strategy will help you manage and secure all of your previous integration efforts and easily help you create and reuse new ones.

Similarly, having the means to manage the data in a consistent manner helps minimise potential errors by establishing processes and policies for usage and building trust in the data being used to make decisions across your organisation.

To realise the full value of your data, you need to go from data collection to data that drives action by:

• Harmonising your data into a consistent format to create a unified customer profile 
• Connecting your customer profile to the engagement layer your customers care about
• Using your data to enable your organisation to deliver great experiences

Simply having lots of data won’t allow you to get any value from AI. But with a single platform to manage data, integration, reuse, security, and DevOps, you can harmonise and transform your data into something that triggers action and helps you deliver high-impact results for customers.

AI + automation drives efficiency

The number of projects IT is asked to deliver continues to increase — currently at a rate of roughly 40% year-over-year since 2021. With ever-growing project lists, IT leaders often struggle to prioritise when demand outpaces time, budget, or both. 

But it’s not just about the number of projects. Customer expectations are on the rise. Eighty-eight percent of customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as the product or service it’s delivering. 

So how do you deliver exceptional customer experiences more efficiently?

By leveraging the insights from AI and taking a data-driven approach to automation. In fact, 72% of companies are prioritising automation as their strategic priority, with 95% of technical leaders specifically prioritising process automation.

With data-driven automation, data insights can be transformed into action that will grow revenue, improve collaboration, and boost productivity. Today, 49% of companies are using automation to coordinate across business units resulting in better integration of customer data and improved customer experiences. Tools like Workflow Builder in Slack are helping teams not just build shortcuts, but streamline processes to alleviate pressure on IT and relieve them of manual tasks.

Further, 90% of customer service employees have seen an increase in productivity after enacting data-driven automation initiatives. Seventy-four percent of companies’ employee time by reducing manual processes through automation. 

Eighty percent of companies that are combining automation with valuable customer insights to deliver workflows and better customer experiences are seeing significant revenue increases. 

To deliver this type of impact through automation, you need to:

• Be able to connect to all your systems — cloud, on-premises, hybrid, or legacy — even with the average number of apps rising (currently at 1,061!)
• Activate RPA to extract data from legacy systems and assets, like docs and images, that would otherwise require manual work to access
• Make it possible to reuse existing data and integration components, such as APIs and connectors 
• Enable the use of low- and no-code across your organisation so even non-developers can participate in self-serve automation projects

Through data-driven automation, organisations can resolve customer service cases more quickly, improve efficiency, and further deliver great customer experiences to drive business impact. 

Deliver better customer experiences with automation

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AI depends on governance and security

Connected, harmonised data allows you to unlock AI and automate it. The one steel thread that must be present throughout is how to enable all this securely. In fact, security concerns hinder 70% of automation initiatives.

Successful customer relationships are built on trust. Therefore, securing customer data and satisfying regulatory compliance must be top of mind for IT as part of laying the foundation for building a customer company.

The role of IT in securing customer data is vital. A breach of data can often damage a customer relationship beyond repair. But like ripples on the surface of the water, the effect grows. The average cost of a data breach is $4.35 million.

When there are security concerns, how can you identify them and resolve them quickly?

Most importantly, organisations must enable access to data. Only then can teams begin to deliver better customer experiences. But with growing access to data, there are increased security risks. IT teams must be able to successfully govern all of the tools being deployed as part of the AI strategy. 

With real-time visibility into the health of your application network, you can holistically monitor all your APIs, integrations, and microservices in real time, enabling data governance across the enterprise — even across self-serve and automation tools. As a result, organisations accelerate issue identification and root-cause analysis to ensure resilient infrastructure and high performance.

Developers need the right data and environment where they can test effectively, iterate rapidly, and deploy safely. 

To establish oversight and ensure complete visibility into data governance across the enterprise, you must: 

• Have a space for your developers to work effectively without affecting production or inviting security risks, making it easy to track changes, seamlessly integrate with version control, and effectively handle release management  
• Mask data and leverage security best practices like end-to-end data encryption to secure sensitive information (like de-identifying PII) giving your developers realistic datasets to test, without compromising security
• Employ tools like universal API management to enable consistent data governance across systems and users 

When you can control who has access to which data and affirm that person’s identity, your company has a greater chance of guaranteeing security integrity. Then, more nuanced cases such as masking sensitive data in sandbox environments or safely monitoring events add that extra layer of protection.

A proactive data strategy keeps security and privacy top of mind. And, with a platform where security and central governance are built-in, you can accelerate development and release cycles while protecting your data at every step.

Be empowered with AI

• AI empowers organisations to deliver powerful customer experiences by driving efficiency through automation and building trust by securing customer data. All of this contributes to building an intelligent customer company — and it’s up to IT to deliver.
• From product design to marketing to customer support, AI will transform the customer experience at every touchpoint. Armed with the right tools, IT can lead the organisation to become an intelligent customer company.

Act on your data transformation

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In 2007, after delivering close to 1 billion DVDs into customers’ mailboxes, Netflix realised its customers would prefer something different — inexpensive, simple-to-access entertainment they could watch on demand. Netflix recognised it needed to be more customer focused, even when it meant disrupting its own business model. What is customer focus? Obsessive knowledge of both what your customers need, and how to deliver it. 

For Netflix, it was a smart move. The company’s video streaming service not only proved to be hugely popular, it also changed how we consume television and movies altogether. Rival DVD rental business Blockbuster failed to adapt to meet the changing market. The rest is history. 

In an era of changing customer expectations and increased market competition, it’s more important than ever for businesses to have razor-sharp customer focus.

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What is customer focus?

Customer-focused businesses are built around customers’ needs. Becoming one involves concentrating on how every interaction helps the customer, rather than how it helps your business.

Putting customers at the heart of everything you do as a business places you in a better position to build relationships, help customers to achieve their goals, and increase customer satisfaction (all key benefits of a robust CRM).

Yet many companies are falling at the first hurdle, as they fail to understand customers’ needs and expectations, or to adapt to their actions and behaviours.

According to Salesforce’s “State of the Connected Customer” report, 73% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations, but only 51% believe companies generally do. Similarly, 62% of customers expect companies to adapt based on their actions and behaviours, but just 47% believe companies generally do.

What are some examples of a customer-focused organisation?

Fast food giant McDonald’s is known for listening to what customers want and responding accordingly. The restaurant chain introduced an all-day breakfast after feedback on social media and through online surveys suggested widespread interest in breakfast items all day. The company has continued to let a customer-focused mindset guide in-store innovation, rolling out easy-order kiosks to reduce waiting time, and partnering with delivery service Uber Eats.

Dollar Shave Club is another company that turned a simple insight — consumers found buying razors expensive and a hassle — into a clever business idea. Subscribers of the service receive razors on a regular basis for a set monthly fee. The company launched in 2011, receiving a major boost in 2012 when a YouTube video starring co-founder Michael Dubin went viral. Unilever has since acquired it in a deal reported to be worth $1 billion.

Even small ideas can make a big difference. When designers at GE Healthcare realised that children were terrified of the company’s magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems — with as many as 80% needing sedation before a scan — they set out to make them less frightening.

Unable to redesign the multimillion-dollar machines, they focused on the experience, transforming the MRI suite into a kids’ adventure story. They applied colourful decals to the surfaces of the machine, and machine operators were given a script to lead their patients through the adventure. In one version, the MRI is a pirate ship. In another, the MRI is a spaceship transporting the patient into space. Since the redesign, the number of children needing sedation has fallen dramatically and patient satisfaction scores have increased to 90%.

How do you build a customer-focused culture?

To build a truly customer-focused culture, you first need to ensure you understand your customers and their needs. This involves collecting disconnected sources of customer data into a single, 360-degree view of your customer and, of course, being able to put that data into action to deliver better experiences. 

These six tips will get you started:

1. Listen to your customers

To really get to know your customers, put yourself in their shoes and ask:

• What are their needs?
• What’s driving their decision-making?’
• What are their goals?
• What are they feeling?

For example, knowing that a customer’s primary goal is to save time at work and spend more time with family can help you find them the right solution.

Enabling a sense of customer empathy. Take a walk in your customers’ shoes to help you gain a new perspective on aspects of your business you’re not close to. For example, you may believe focusing on a product’s high-tech specifications is the best way for a sales representative to seal a deal. But customers may be more interested in hearing how it will help make their life easier.

Although sales and customer service staff are on the front line dealing with customers, improved customer focus should be a company-wide priority.

Create opportunities for non-customer-facing staff across the business – from the CEO down – to spend time with customers or handle service calls to learn from customers firsthand. Gather and analyse data — such as web analytics, attrition rates, and product use patterns — to gain insight, and invite customers to provide feedback.

Surveys are a great way to find out what your customers really think about your business. Or set up a customer advisory board to meet several times a year and discuss industry trends, business priorities, and strategy. Share results of customer feedback throughout your business.

Social listening — monitoring what’s said about your brand online — can also be a useful tool for building a customer-focused mindset. Look for direct mentions of your company or products on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media, and try these strategies for social listening.

• Check for direct mentions and hashtags featuring your brand and products. Don’t forget common misspellings. You know how to spell your company or product name, but customers may not.
• Monitor the hashtags your customers use. The terms you use may not reflect how your customers discuss your company or industry. Follow thought leaders, industry influencers, or companies who represent your ideal customer. Track the hashtags they use.
• Track competitors’ activity. Do you know what customers are asking your rivals? If the same questions keep coming up, consider whether you should address them in your own blog or marketing content.
• Ask your audience for feedback. Want to know something specific? Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have polling tools. Or, simply ask your followers open-ended questions.

2. Make space for ideas

According to the “State of the Connected Customer” research, 62% of customers now expect companies to adapt based on their actions and behaviours. This increases to 67% among Millennials and Generation Z.

Many businesses have traditionally left new ideas to a select group, but great ideas can come from anywhere. In fact, organisations including Unilever, Ikea, and Lego now actively involve customers in problem-solving and new product development through co-creation platforms and initiatives. 

As organisational consultant Simon Sinek said, “The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.”

3. Break down internal barriers

Silos, swim lanes, bubbles. Organisational experts may use different terms, but the core problem is the same: Customer data lives in multiple systems owned by different departments, which leads customers to have a disconnected experience when dealing with your business.

While 78% of customers say they expect consistent interactions across departments, their expectations are falling short: 59% said it typically feels as though they’re communicating with separate departments, not one unified organisation. About two-thirds (66%) of customers said they often have to repeat or re-explain information to different representatives.

Disjointed data is a significant barrier to creating the more valuable, personalised experiences customers are looking for from businesses these days. 

Breaking down silos is easier said than done. But to be truly customer-focused, businesses need to work toward building a complete 360-degree customer view. In doing so, they will be able to deliver unified cross-channel customer engagement.

4. Unlock your data

Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) raise the bar for business. Many consumers and business buyers are prepared to pay a premium for differentiated, first-to-market products and services, putting businesses under pressure to get ahead.

Seventy-five percent of customers expect companies to use new technologies to create better experiences. A similar proportion (74%) expect companies to use existing technologies in new ways to create better experiences.

This might mean using a customer’s browsing and purchasing history to make personalised recommendations. Or sending push notifications to a customer’s phone offering a discount on products they’ve browsed. It could also  mean using chatbots to collect and qualify information so agents have more time to spend solving customers’ problems.

5. Appoint a customer-focused advocate

Customer focus can get lost in the day-to-day business of, well, running a business. That’s why appointing a chief customer officer (CCO) is a great idea.

The CCO’s role is to be the voice of the customer and ensure that customer focus is maintained throughout your organisation. They use data and research to champion customers’ needs, help guide the design of products and processes, and identify where teams need to improve their customer focus skills.

They also ensure that having a strong customer focus results in tangible benefits to your business, including increased customer satisfaction, less customer churn, and greater revenue.

6. Create opportunities for learning

Although building a customer-focused culture isn’t something you do overnight, implementing these strategies will set you on the path for success. 

Keep employees updated on progress, invite their ideas and feedback, and provide access to resources such as Salesforce Trailhead training modules to help them develop customer-focus skills. Options are many, including the basics of customer journeys and improving customer service agents’ communication skills.

Ultimately, by creating a culture where customers’ needs are at the heart of every interaction, businesses create a compelling offer for customers and a significant competitive advantage. But there is another reason businesses should make customer focus a priority.

Technologies are disrupting whole industries at an unprecedented pace. Understand what your customer needs to anticipate disruption, or even drive it. As history has repeatedly shown, it’s better to disrupt yourself than drag your heels while someone does it to you. Just ask Blockbuster.

See more data about the efficacy of customer focus

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To learn more about how businesses are optimising their digital-first experiences, Salesforce 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. With 68% of customers saying 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 to more 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 customers say that companies should offer new ways to get existing products or services, such as digital versions of traditionally in-person experiences, while 83% of customers expect 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 data to 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 on substantial changes in customer engagement, but it also changed how teams and organisations operate. Work-from-home, restricted travel, and insufficient collaboration tools shed light on inefficiencies within organisational structures and processes. More than 50% of service professionals say 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 companies embrace 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 by downloading the Digital Trends report.

This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the Salesforce blog.

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Of course, how to deliver those differentiated experiences transformed as life moved online and economic uncertainty moved in. Our fourth State of the Connected Customer report, based on a global survey of over 15,000 consumers and business buyers, details how, and provides invaluable insights for business leaders navigating their paths back to growth.

The report details key elements of customer engagement in our radically changing times, including: 

Earning trust pays dividends

People want to do business with brands they can depend on. While that was true before 2020, it’s an undeniable fact in a world taken by pandemic, social justice movements, and environmental crises, among other issues. Eighty-two percent of customers agree a company’s trustworthiness matters more than it did a year ago.

Like most relationships, gaining trust doesn’t happen overnight. Businesses must earn trust through their actions over time, and it’s not getting any easier to accomplish. Sixty-one percent of customers say it’s difficult for a company to earn their trust – 7 percentage points higher than the previous year.

Evolving customer expectations present an opportunity for businesses to get closer to the audiences they serve through their actions. How are they showing up and what are they saying on issues beyond their particular industry? Ninety percent of customers say how a company acts during a crisis reveals its trustworthiness. And, this year, 56% of customers say they’ve reevaluated the societal role of companies. Customers want to see brands prove they’re interested in more than simply surviving through the pandemic and other crises. They want to see good corporate citizens making a difference in the communities they serve.

A company’s ability to build trust is inherently linked to its values. Customers expect brands to share their values and communicate honestly and openly. Brands that turn their back on doing the right thing risk taking a hit to their bottom line. Consumers will take their business elsewhere. The majority (62%) of customers say they have stopped buying from a company whose values didn’t align with theirs.

Empathetic, unified teams build differentiated engagement

Whether customers shop for themselves or on behalf of their companies, they expect interactions with brands to not only be convenient and digital first, but also infused with empathy and understanding. To no surprise, our survey results show customers want organisations to relate to their specific needs and expectations at every touch point. And they are making purchasing decisions based on personalised experiences.

There’s never been a more critical moment for companies to know their audience and relate to what they’re experiencing. Brands that get this – and actually invest in appreciating their customers’ varied perspectives – can gain a competitive advantage by delivering connected and contextualised engagement. While 66% of customers expect companies to understand their personal needs and expectations, only 34% say they usually do so. Moreover, more than half (52%) of customers expect offers to always be personalised.

So, how can companies get it right? One important way is for brands to ensure everyone under their roof has real-time information. When customers engage with a company, they shouldn’t have to worry about reaching the right person. Our research shows 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. However, 54% say it generally feels like sales, service, and marketing don’t share information.

“Disconnected experiences used to inconvenience customers,” noted Tiffani Bova, Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. “They still do, but they cause so much more damage in our current environment because they signal insensitivity.”

Prior to 2020, customers were well on their way to becoming more digitally dependent in their interactions with brands. From Amazon to Hulu, more and more customers grew accustomed to having their wishes granted at the push of a button. In a socially distanced environment, those same customers – and many new converts – have come to view digital engagement as not only a convenience, but a necessity. Brands, in turn, have had to accelerate their digital transformations.

In just one year, online customer interactions grew from 42% (2019) to 60% (2020). While the sharp increase is, in part, a reflection of our overnight transition to a socially distanced society, the upward trend shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most brands were already in the midst of transforming their digital capabilities to cater to customers. COVID-19 just gave those plans a push. Customers agree, with 88% saying they expect companies to accelerate their digital initiatives because of the pandemic. Furthermore, 68% of customers agree that COVID-19 has elevated their expectations of brands’ digital capabilities.

In 2020, people are living and working much of their lives online. In fact, the vast majority (68%) of consumers say they’re online more often than not. As a result, they’re looking for companies to provide more digital options. Fifty-four percent would like companies to introduce new products or services in response to the pandemic. 

“To me, this really drives home the point that, yes, digital transformation is essential, but we need to think about it as part of something bigger,” observed Brian Solis, Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. “The companies that use this moment to understand not just how to digitise their existing businesses, but how technology can drive new, innovative experiences that set them apart will prove more resilient as we move into the next normal.”

More insights to explore

The findings uncovered by our research reveal a customer base that craves personalised, digital-first experiences from brands they can trust. As our world continues to adapt and shift day by day, business leaders have an opportunity to use this knowledge to revamp how they engage their customers. In addition to the broad trends covered above, this research offers insights across demographic subsets and geographic boundaries. To further dig into this data, check out our interactive Tableau dashboards.

Want to learn more?

Download the ‘State of the Connected Customer Report’ and get insights from 15,000+ global consumers and business buyers on a new era of customer engagement.

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This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the Salesforce blog.

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