Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service

Customer values, contact points, and behavior are growing diverse and complex. There is more focus on the relationship of trust between customers and businesses. Customers have growing expectations on the businesses they interact with, which extends to demands for disclosure of ethical measures oriented around sustainability. Companies must transform their marketing to build the competitive edge that will allow them to adapt to these changes, and so continue to be preferred by their customers.

However, many companies have faced pressure to cut marketing budgets and personnel in response to factors such as COVID-19 and inflation. This has weakened their executive marketing foundations, requiring them to also rebuild their marketing functions to develop a competitive edge.

Companies need a dependable method to transform their marketing functions. They must understand their customers and create an integrated customer experience based on improved productivity utilizing generative AI and robotics, and a real-time customer approach. The key to achieving this is to re-create the organization to function as an organic whole and to develop the agility required to adapt to consumers. A marketing transformation is not just a problem for marketing departments. Organizations must pursue it at the company level.

Smartphones have penetrated over 90% of households, and online services have permeated our daily lives. Customers believe that using digital tools to access products and services is a natural part of life. They will make use of real channels where necessary and expect seamless communications across channels. Companies can no longer provide services simply in response to requests from customers. Instead, they need to use the information they gain through ongoing relationships with customers to provide services at the right time, through the right channels, and at low-cost. It is also essential for companies to improve inter-departmental cooperation and take the initiative to communicate with customers as the situation demands, to continuously improve customer retention and value provision.

Contact centers must cut operational costs through better prediction of received calls, efficient response time, and optimized personnel deployment and also improve customer satisfaction, for example, by using generative AI to support operators. Companies also face pressure to use new channels to stay in contact with customers, such as social media and messaging services. In field service operations, it is important for companies to prevent the loss of business opportunities stemming from from inconsistencies in service levels or inadequate inter-departmental communications caused by the individualization of important skills. It is critical to establish internal resource management and operational processes for personnel and parts, accurately gather data, and coordinate quality and accounting information.

Striving to “enhance customer engagement and retention” by understanding customer needs, carrying out smooth provision of services and building a deep relationship with the customer is the key to business growth.