Expert Advice for Marketing Leaders on MarTech, AI, & CX
Articles and insights about customer experience for CX and marketing professionals.
Personalization is what you infer. Customization is what customers choose. If you want durable engagement, treat preferences as a first-class product surface, not a settings page nobody trusts.
This article was written by Greg Kihlström for CustomerThink. If your
customer stays with you in a downturn, is it because they love your brand?
Or is it because they just don’t have the energy to try someone else again?
In the relentless pursuit of customer loyalty, we marketing leaders are often caught in a familiar cycle. We build intricate points-based programs, optimize our funnels for retention, and pour resources into personalized communications, all in an effort to keep customers from straying. We treat loyalty as an outcome to be engineered, a line item on a P&L to be maximized.
For decades, the contact center has occupied a specific, and often siloed, space in the enterprise org chart. It was the necessary, if not always beloved, cost center—a reactive function designed to triage problems and, hopefully, mitigate customer frustration. As marketing leaders, we’ve often viewed it as a parallel, but separate, track to our proactive brand-building and demand-generation efforts. We build the brand promise; they deal with the operational reality when things don’t go exactly as planned. This entire paradigm, however, is being dismantled and reassembled at a startling pace, and the catalyst is, unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence.
We are entering an era where the brand is less defined by its advertising and more by its operational excellence. The consumer, now accustomed to near-instant gratification, has little patience for supply chain disruptions, delayed orders, or poor communication. The paradox we face is that as AI potentially atomizes the customer journey across infinite touchpoints, it also provides the tools for unprecedented levels of personalization and proactive service.
Expedia’s research reveals how emotion, authenticity and the right mix of video and human-guided content inspire traveler wanderlust and drive bookings. This article was written by Greg Kihlström for MarTech.
The transformative potential of AI in customer experience (CX) is undeniable. While the hype around AI can be overwhelming, its practical applications are already reshaping how businesses interact with their customers. For marketing leaders, understanding how to effectively leverage AI is no longer optional, but a critical competency for success.
New Qualtrics research shows AI in customer service is falling short, with
one in five consumers unimpressed. This article was written for CMSWire by
Greg Kihlström.
This article was written by Greg Kihlström for CMSWire. Connected insights turn consumer understanding into faster cycle times, stronger ROI and lasting customer loyalty.
The ground beneath our feet is shifting. As consumer behaviors evolve in response to economic pressures, tried-and-true marketing strategies are losing their effectiveness. Brands are scrambling to adapt, seeking new ways to engage customers and drive sales growth in a climate of uncertainty.
