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Kochava And Cuebiq Partner To Measure The Impact Of OOH Advertising In Driving App Downloads

For the First Time, Brands Will Have the Ability to Accurately Attribute OOH Campaigns to App Downloads, Similarly to Mobile or Desktop

Today, brands can better understand the effectiveness of out-of-home (OOH) or digital out-of-home (DOOH) in driving app downloads than ever before. Kochava Inc., the industry leader providing real-time data solutions for mobile and connected devices, announced a partnership with leading consumer insights and measurement company, Cuebiq to combine Cuebiq’s location intelligence with Kochava’s install data to improve attribution for OOH advertisers.

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Unlike with digital channels, such as mobile or desktop, marketers have struggled to better define the value of ads offline, especially in attributing a billboard or sign to a mobile app install. Now, Kochava and Cuebiq are partnering to make Cuebiq’s vast dataset and ability to measure dwell time available to the industry-leading Kochava mobile attribution engine. This partnership provides marketer insight into which audience segments encountered a specific OOH campaign with great precision. The result is industry leading attribution combined with precision location and dwell time data so that the effectiveness of OOH campaigns in driving app downloads can be measured just like digital campaigns. Kochava’s mobile attribution analytic tracking enables marketers to measure and analyze user behavior, target high-value users, and re-engage them on connected devices.

“Advertisers want to know which marketing activities are delivering the best value,” said Antonio Tomarchio, founder and CEO, Cuebiq. “By partnering with Kochava, we are able to create a sophisticated data analysis that allows for more accurate evidence of OOH’s effect on KPIs, such as app downloads, to drive more informed business decisions.”

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“By connecting the devices that physically passed a billboard within a specific time range, and comparing device location with those devices that installed within a set time frame, we can fairly accredit an app install to an OOH ad,” said Charles Manning, CEO, Kochava. “Our partnership with Cuebiq provides accurate install time measurement for marketers to better understand how their out-of-home media is performing.”

Cuebiq continues to be committed to leading the way in privacy compliance and finding new and improved ways to protect consumer privacy. Both GDPR and CCPA compliant, it follows a future-proof, privacy approach, in which users can opt in or opt out of data sharing on their devices. Additionally, Cuebiq only collects first party data, versus bidstream data sources, which are incredible risks to brand safety and brand reputation.

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MediaMath Commits To 100 Percent Accountable & Addressable Digital Media Supply Chain By End Of 2020

Announces Source by Mediamath: Delivers Full Transparency, Modernized Commercial Terms, and Supply Chain Tech Standards

MediaMath, acclaimed independent advertising technology company for brands, pledged to clean up the digital media supply chain by committing to a 100 percent accountable and addressable supply chain by the end of 2020, righting the wrongs of a digital advertising industry that evolved rapidly over the last decade with no purposeful design. With the launch of SOURCE by MediaMath, today’s news represents a meaningful industry step toward helping brands and agencies reclaim powerful results from digital marketing with less effort. The industry must create an environment that is accountable and addressable, and a place where the interests of brands, agencies, content owners, and technology providers are aligned.

“We set out to change marketing for the better. Unfortunately, the purity of our industry’s intentions when we built the digital infrastructure have gotten lost in fraud, waste, and irrelevance. It’s created more ads instead of good ads and minimized the value of quality supply in its purest and most transparent form,” said Joe Zawadzki, CEO, MediaMath. “As some of the earliest pioneers of programmatic, we feel called to help fix what’s broken.”

“Simply put, instead of brands being able to focus on growing and deepening direct customer relationships, much of their time is sucked up with the operational and service burdens of a broken ecosystem,” Zawadzki added. “The supply chain must be rearchitected to fuel growth and health for brands and free creatives to create, and in turn operate a more trustworthy ecosystem with aligned incentives for all.”

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SOURCE by MediaMath brings brands and agencies closer to the original, pure source of their media and is:

  • Accountable:Real impressions on real media properties. A transparent and fraud-free supply chain from trusted content owners that gives brands full visibility into supply path mechanics and costs, modernized terms of trade, and supply chain technical standards that improve how every piece of advertising functions.
  • Addressable:Real humans that brands can reach with real ads, at scale. A single view of who a brand’s customers and prospects are—and the ability to access more of these audiences—across desktop, mobile, and TV through a consistent, portable user-level ID, always prioritizing privacy and consumer respect. Effectively, connecting signal throughout the supply chain allows content owners and advertisers to more effectively communicate their needs and transparently agree upon goals.
  • AI-Powered:Cleaner data using the power of computation to draw meaningful insights and detect real trends from huge data sets in a way that requires less effort to achieve. The power of AI is the ability to make high-quality decisions fast. But for machine learning to work in the way it’s intended, it needs good data – no more garbage in, garbage out. AI enables a cleaner supply chain, empowering agencies, brands and content owners with trusted, actionable and real-time data.

Content owners and technology companies are partnering to create the SOURCE ecosystem, not only providing full visibility into supply path mechanics and costs but building new infrastructure and commercial terms for the industry. MediaMath unveiled in June its partnership with Rubicon Project to architect a direct and transparent digital supply  infrastructure.

With the rise of streaming TV capturing a larger share of both traditional TV and digital budgets, the SOURCE ecosystem can, for the first time, define what truly programmatic TV looks like – blending all the benefits of accountable and addressable digital connections with the attention commanded by the largest screen – the TV. MediaMath’s partnership with market-leading Telaria, the complete software platform that optimizes yield for leading video publishers, creates meaningful technical connections between buyer and seller to enhance both sides of the transaction, making every impression accountable and measurable while layering in best-in-class addressable targeting and reach extension capabilities across the digital video and CTV landscape. This new initiative builds on Telaria’s industry-leading transparency program, launched in 2018.

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“SOURCE is a movement for the entire industry, propelled by the commitment our partners bring and our shared desire to clean-up the supply chain, and in return we will work to improve the economics around doing so for them,” said Jeremy Steinberg, Global Head of Ecosystem, MediaMath“For too long, content owners have not been incentivized to protect the quality of their real estate. SOURCE puts brands, agencies, and content owners alike back on equal footing, all sharing a common goal to engage consumers across the globe and earn their trust.”

SOURCE offers brands and agencies a fully accountable media environment and fully addressable audiences. Together, an accountable and addressable environment creates stronger return on investment while lowering brands’ and agencies’ levels of effort to attain those results. The impact extends to insights and the ability to better negotiate across the supply chain with content owners, buyers and technology partners as well.

SOURCE by MediaMath also extends MediaMath’s partnership with White Ops. Announced in June, the partnership protects some of the world’s largest advertisers, agencies and content owners from sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) before it is purchased. The White Ops bot mitigation platform detects, prevents and outwits bot populations of every level of sophistication to provide transparency and build trust and accountability across the advertising ecosystem.

SOURCE by MediaMath sets new global industry standards for media performance and significantly improves engagement as brands and agencies tap into a premium, highly curated supply chain driven by market demand for addressable and accountable audience reach.

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Engagio Announces Orchestrate, the First B2B Engagement Marketing Solution to Enable Multi-Channel Plays Across People and Accounts

Solution Expands on ABM Automation to Redefine How Marketing and Sales Work as a Team Across Account Journeys to Win New Business and Drive Customer Growth

Engagio, the leader in B2B marketing engagement software, has launched Engagio Orchestrate, a new solution that enables revenue teams to design and automate high-impact plays across channels such as advertising, sales engagement, marketing automation, direct mail, and CRM. Part of the Engagio B2B Marketing Engagement Platform, it is the first and only account-based marketing (ABM) solution that enables companies to target people, accounts, and buying groups at every stage of the account journey.

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“As buying becomes increasingly non-linear, the traditional model where Marketing generates and passes new business leads to Sales is looking increasingly outdated,” said Jon Miller, CEO of Engagio. “Rather than a hand-off baton pass, winning Marketing and Sales teams today operate as a team, working together to create pipeline, win deals, and drive account growth. The Engagio Orchestrate solution is the first marketing technology that takes the best parts of traditional lead-based demand generation and combines it with the best of account-based marketing to foster this kind of integrated teamwork.”

With Engagio Orchestrate, B2B marketing professionals can now:

  • Run cross-channel, cross-department plays that advance people and accounts through their buying journeys
  • Use data sourced from multiple systems, including CRM, marketing automation, website, third-party intent, and corporate email (Microsoft Exchange/Gmail) to create precise audiences of people and accounts, segmented by persona, industry, account, job, buying stage, engagement or non-engagement, and many other criteria
  • Launch actions and sync audiences to sales and marketing systems, including advertising, marketing automation, sales engagement, direct mail, website personalization, conversational marketing, and more
  • Update audiences automatically as people and accounts move through their unique journey, delivering more relevant interactions, ensuring each person gets the right experience across channels, and reducing wasted advertising spend

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Marketers are using Engagio Orchestrate to 1) streamline plays such as automatically activating advertising or sales campaigns for target accounts that go cold, 2) reach out to target accounts that show “surging” interest for their solutions, 3) alert account executives to new engagement from executives at target accounts that were previously lost, and 4) nurture open opportunities that stall out.

“With Engagio, we have a consistent view of people and accounts that lets us measure engagement and program impact, and align marketing and sales into a tight team,” said Emily Ketchum, Global Marketing Operations at Fuze, the leading global cloud communications and collaboration software platform designed for the enterprise. “Now, with Engagio Orchestrate, we can manage audiences of people and accounts and launch relevant actions across channels, ensuring the right message at each stage of the customer journey. Best of all, it all works automatically, saving hours I was previously spending to create and upload lists manually.”

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Petra Industries Unveils Next-Generation B2B Ecommerce Platform, Powered by OroCommerce

Petra Industries, a leading consumer technology distributor, announced the launch of an innovative new B2B ecommerce platform, unveiled as part of the largest website overhaul in the company’s 34-year history.

Petra’s new digital presence builds on decades of innovation and experience in distribution and ecommerce. “The new Petra.com is all about creating an online foundation that will allow us to deliver a world class digital experience to our customers and vendor partners.” says Josh Williams, Petra’s director of marketing.

At the heart of the new Petra.com is a state-of-the-art B2B purchasing platform called PetraCentral™, powered by Oro Inc.’s ecommerce platform, OroCommerce.

Named No.1 B2B ecommerce platform by global research firm Frost and Sullivan, OroCommerce is purpose-built with complex B2B digital commerce use cases in mind. The platform provides a comprehensive set of out-of-the-box features, which greatly reduces total cost of ownership and product deployment time.

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“We have worked closely with Oro to develop a platform that gives our customers a modern and efficient purchasing experience,” says Williams. “PetraCentral™ has the convenience of consumer ecommerce sites but is specially designed to suit the unique needs of our customers’ businesses.”

PetraCentral™ features new user-management options that give customers more control over how their organization makes purchases, including who can place orders, and what items they can buy.

Additionally, customers can now view product variants and take advantage of matrix ordering, which allows multiple product variants to be purchased from a single screen. Along with these innovative solutions, PetraCentral™ features in-depth product sorting, enhanced autocomplete search suggestions, and multiple shopping lists to streamline the purchasing experience.

“The new shopping list feature is one of the most advantageous tools for our customers,” says Williams. “Customers can create and work on multiple shopping lists simultaneously, save shopping lists for later, and quickly purchase from previously saved lists.”

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The new Petra.com also aims to educate vendor partners and customers on the resources and services available to them, in a move that Petra Industries president Tate Morgan says will both help customers and pave the way for Petra’s future growth.

“Petra has set a new industry standard for how B2B distributors can modernize their ecommerce operations,” commented Yoav Kutner, Oro’s co-founder and CEO. “Our team was pleased to collaborate with Petra to build a truly integrated, user-friendly B2B ecommerce platform tailored for their unique needs.”

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Verishop Selects Akeneo to Deliver Product Experience Excellence Amid Rapid Growth

Technology Solution Helps Verishop Deliver Accurate, Consistent, and Relevant Product Information with Efficiency and Scale

E-commerce company Verishop has selected Akeneo as its product information management (PIM) solution provider to help the startup scale with speed and efficiency. From writing code to launching the online-shopping platform in just six months, Verishop was able to easily deploy Akeneo’s PIM to manage product information for the 4,000 SKUs at launch — a number that has increased daily since.

“Akeneo’s PIM solution helps us deliver on our promise of ensuring consistent product experiences across the entire purchase journey,” said Jason Bosco, Verishop’s vice president of technology. “We aim to be the go-to place for shoppers to rely on for brand and product discovery, paired with convenience and customer service.”

Verishop was co-founded by former Snap Inc. CSO Imran Khan and former SVP of Amazon’s Quidsi business Cate Khan with the goal of reinventing the online-shopping experience with a focus on convenience, curation and discovery. A true lifestyle brand, Verishop hand-selects products in the women’s and men’s fashion, beauty, and home categories from more than 300 global brands, while delivering a premium shopping experience with free one-day shipping and free returns.

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Akeneo’s tools have ensured that Verishop customers receive accurate, up-to-date, and consistent product descriptions when they shop, and that they are able to discover products matched to their specific needs. This improves conversion rates, reduces product returns, and enhances customer experience. The technology is trusted by brands including Sephora, Fossil, and Staples CA.

Verishop initially implemented Akeneo’s community tools to improve the productivity of its catalog managers and soon upgraded to Akeneo’s cloud-based SaaS enterprise solution. That allowed the company’s managers to unlock advanced features including the ability to create reference titles that allow common product information such as color, care instructions and tax code to be shared among related products, and an enhanced rights management function that gave administrators security and control as Verishop expanded its team of product data managers.

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Akeneo’s enterprise PIM solution also features an AI-powered product data intelligence tool that automates SEO-ready product information curation and enrichment, saving catalog managers precious time and enabling faster time-to-market for new product launches. That nimbleness, paired with the ease of use for non-technical staff, was important to Verishop, and could be implemented swiftly and seamlessly into Verishop’s rapidly growing online ecosystem.

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SalesTech Star Interview with Cris Kuehl, VP of Analytics and Client Insights at Sitel Group

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Tell us about your role and the team/technology you handle at Sitel Group.

As the VP of Analytics and Client Insights at Sitel Group, I lead a team of Data Experts responsible for the development and execution of data-driven campaigns to improve the customer journey. Leveraging deep contact center data derived from every touchpoint on the customer journey, I get under the hood of customer experience (CX) programs to better understand client challenges, successes, and areas for growth opportunities.

At Sitel Group, which technologies drive your Contact Center and Customer Experience?

Sitel Group has used CallMiner’s Analyze and Coach technology to provide actionable insights that improve efficiency and customer satisfaction. The technology has helped achieve these results by providing understandable data insights from every contact center call and identifying which agents the coaches should focus on improving most. CallMiner’s technology has allowed Sitel to transform agent performance through Data Analytics and therefore improve customer experiences for their clients.

We also use NICE inContact’s CXone suite to provide our various locations with Omnichannel routing for voice, chat and email all on one platform. It helps us cut down on time for external transfers between agents and makes a faster and better experience for the customer.

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What is the current definition of Marketing Analytics for digital campaigns?

Marketing Analytics is how we analyze the key data points for a campaign and come up with outcomes to improve our strategy moving forward. There are many important aspects of Marketing Analytics for digital campaigns, but first and foremost, organizations must make sure that they are measuring the right data. They need to uncover and capture the right data sets to analyze their goals and objectives and therefore create improvement for future campaigns. If you’re not measuring the right data you won’t be successful. Throughout the campaign, it’s critical to continue reevaluating the data you’re measuring and make adjustments accordingly. Finally, once it’s time to analyze the data, organizations must ensure they are looking at this data tactically to see what has been successful and what areas need improvement.

How can an organization build a successful Contact Center?

A successful contact center comes down to the people working there and the training and coaching the company provides. At Sitel Group, we integrate technology that helps us analyze 100% of customer interactions and use real-time analytics to help understand where the agent needs additional coaching and training. Analyzing customer interactions also help the brands we work with improve their strategy. With this, we can identify what points in the customer journey are creating the most frustration or difficulty for consumers and provide solutions that help improve the path to purchase and beyond.

How are BPOs evolving with MarTech and Salestech tools?

Overall the industry is becoming more and more data-driven. As we discussed, the technology available to us today helps us create better customer service agents, and therefore create better service for consumers, making brands look their best as well. Customer service has become a stand out factor in consumer satisfaction and retention. With new Technology and Data Analytics, we’re now able to target specific areas of the journey to decrease customer churn, increase efficiency in the customer service process, drive loyalty and even boost Sales.

How can marketers leverage AI ML and Data Science to achieve benchmark CX goals?

A recent survey Sitel Group conducted found that nearly all employees believe that the employee experience impacts CX, so when looking to achieve benchmark CX goals it really starts with employees. Customer service agents’ jobs are not easy, often dealing with frustrated or angry customers, so it’s essential that companies provide their employees with the training needed to make them the best agents and provide them with the confidence that creates a better employee experience. Using Data Science and AI, we’re able to better understand customer interactions and identify trends. One area that this is particularly useful is in measuring sentiment. AI can pick up on certain keywords and phrases for different customer emotions. Monitoring and analyzing those trends are key to improving customer service and therefore achieving CX goals.

What are the challenges in fully maximizing media performance across digital platforms?

There are so many different platforms, with new technologies invented nearly every day, so one of the biggest challenges for many organizations is keeping up and ensuring they are targeting the correct audience on the correct platforms. For example, Gen Zs may be more interested in using a chatbot or a chat function on a website, while Gen Xs may prefer to email in their questions. This is why data is so important – knowing your audience is critical and Data Analytics can help identify trends and sectors that help ensure digital platforms are used in the way that best matches the needs of the different audience segments.

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What does it take for an organization to build true Customer Intelligence?

Looking at customer interactions it one of the most important aspects of building true Customer Intelligence. At Sitel, we leverage 100% of customer interactions to gain the best possible data to inform our clients about trends and challenges with their target customers. Looking at every channel from email to chat to phone calls is needed to gain a real picture of the customer and understand their needs.

How do you differentiate between various data points- Audience, Customer, Intent, Sentiment, and Big Data?

Audience is the segment of consumers that our client is trying to reach – this is absolutely one of the most important pieces of data brands and organizations need in order to put a strategy in place, as it sets the tone for the rest of the data points. Customer data refers to the actual individuals buying or interested in our clients’ products. These are the consumers that we can work to best understand as our agents interact with them on a daily basis. Intent data is similar to engagement, it’s a critical piece of understanding what makes customers buy a product, or lose loyalty in a brand.

Sentiment refers to data related to emotions – it can measure anger, professionalism, frustration, and so much more. This data is particularly useful in gauging how employees should react and providing better coaching experiences.  All of these areas feed into Big Data – the larger data sets that we use to identify overall trends and challenges and create recommendations to increase brand loyalty, reduce churn, expedite the path to purchase, etc.

What are your predictions about your market/customer base in the next 3 years?

Although it is already a major component in Data Analytics, I believe we’ll continue to see AI and predictive analytics play a larger and larger role in the industry. As AI continues to get smarter there will be so many additional applications within the customer service industry and in analyzing the data itself. With the increase in AI and Predictive Analytics we’ll also need to invest in the growth of more Data Scientists – while the intelligence aspect of AI is getting smarter, we’ll still need the human touch to really get to the bottom line of the data and understand how to create initiatives to improve areas spanning from predictive modeling to data presentation.

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Thank You, Cris, for answering all our questions. We hope to see you again, soon.

Cris oversees all aspects of Sitel Group’s Speech Analytics solutions across the globe. In this role, Cris is responsible for managing relationships with CallMiner, as well as client successes in partnership with our operational leaders. Cris brings more than 10 years’ experience in analytics including with both Business Process Outsourcing as well as in house.

While at Sykes, Cris was responsible for transformational alignments for key business partners such as AT&T, Kodak and USAA. Most recently, Cris served as Director of Speech Analytics at Charter Communications where he was responsible for the strategic and tactical execution of the speech analytics solutions including quality automation and customer intelligence and insights for 35,000+ FTE.

sitel Logo

Sitel Group’s 75,000 people across the globe connect many of the world’s best-known brands with their customers – 3.5 million times every day. As a global customer experience (CX) management leader, we apply our 30+ years of industry-leading experience and the entrepreneurial spirit of our group’s founders to deliver omnichannel experiences through voice, chat, social media and more to customers of our 400+ clients across all verticals – from Fortune 500 companies to local startups.

Our group’s breadth of capabilities – powered by our ecosystem of experts including Innso, Learning Tribes, Sitel, Sitel Insights and TSC – go beyond business process outsourcing (BPO) to support every stage of the customer journey. We are redefining the contact center and improving business results by pairing innovative solutions – such as self-care and automation – with the human touch, emotion and empathy of our people.

As a CX platform, we are powered by experts to deliver tailored CX solutions to fit our clients’ needs through our consultative, customer-centric approach adding value at every touchpoint – regardless of location, channel or time of day.

AXA Insurance Revolutionises Digital Customer Service With RingCentral Engage Digital

A Single Dashboard, Managing a 50% Month-On-Month Increase in Digital Interactions, with a 10X Increase in Case Resolution.

RingCentral, Inc., a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, collaboration, and contact centre solutions, announced that, AXA, one of the world’s largest insurance providers, is using RingCentral Engage Digital, a platform that manages every digital interaction with customers, to revolutionise its digital customer service offering. The new platform and approach has led to:

  • A 50% month-on-month increase in digital interactions,
  • 10x increase in case resolution,
  • 50% reduction in time to reach a resolution

AXA, which has 107 million customers in 61 countries, realised that modern customers prefer using digital channels to engage with the company’s services. In response, the company embraced new digital channels with the sole aim of delivering frictionless service and support that truly puts customer needs first.

AXA has now incorporated Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, and WhatsApp messaging services into the customer journey, with plans to add chatbots in the future. Now, when a customer Googles or visits the company’s main contact page, they can now get in touch four different ways beyond voice, whereas two years ago, customers could only contact AXA via telephone.

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Making digital customer service great for customers and agents

But simply adding channels is not enough to deliver a great experience for customers or agents. Customer service agents need to be able to engage with customers in them, and review previous interactions, wherever they took place in one place, as part of their customer identities.

The RingCentral digital customer engagement platform automatically recognizes over 70 languages across all channels. It then leverages an AI-based smart routing engine so agents can efficiently manage customer interactions across all digital channels via a single interface. Plus, it automatically merges customer identities across channels so agents see a complete view of the customer and can easily understand the historical context.

“The previous customer service solution we were using didn’t provide any context of previous communication, so agents had no insight into interactions with the customer,” explains Sarina Blatter, head of back office customer care for AXA Switzerland.

Christoph Schröder, head of front office customer care for AXA Switzerland, expands. “Our agents had to search each digital channel to see if a customer had written a message or a comment on a Facebook post, for example. It was painful and difficult to track the interactions.”

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A single dashboard for all customer interactions

Today, AXA’s agents appreciate the ability to handle all digital channels through a single interface, giving them an easy-to-use solution that enables them to better and more quickly help customers. When customers make contact on one of the digital channels, the message pops up in an agent’s RingCentral Engage Digital dashboard. Agents can immediately answer questions but have time to provide answers if multiple messages come in at once. This is far different to handling customer service on the phone, where agents can only respond to one customer and are expected to immediately provide answers to any question. In addition, the single dashboard eliminates the need for agents to switch applications or screens, and makes it easier for them to find and provide answers to previously asked questions.

When AXA started using RingCentral Engage Digital in 2018, its customer service team handled about 100 messages per month. Twelve months later,  AXA’s customer service handles about 4,000 messages a month – and that is increasing rapidly. RingCentral Engage Digital has significantly improved agent productivity with a ten-fold increase in case resolutions and 50% drop in the time taken to reach a resolution.

Harald Felgner, digital experience designer, UX innovation for AXA Switzerland, concludes with this thought: “Social media messaging services represent the next paradigm of interactions with customers. These types of interactions are a game changer. Without a solution like RingCentral Engage Digital, it wouldn’t have been possible for our company to enable one-to-one interactions with customers on so many touch points.”

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SocketLabs Names Keith Hontz as CEO

Former SAP Executive to Lead Next Phase of Growth

SocketLabs, the industry leader in high-volume email delivery offered in both SaaS and on-premise deployments, announced the appointment of Keith Hontz as its Chief Executive Officer to lead the next phase of business growth and market expansion. He will take the helm of SocketLabs effective today and will work closely with company founder John Alessi, who will remain with the company acting in a strategic advisory capacity.  In his initial 100 days as the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, Hontz has played a transformational role driving new business, enterprise customer renewals and a strategic relationship with SAP as an SAP PartnerEdge partner, including the introduction of a new SAP App Center listing for SocketLabs Email Service for SAP Marketing. Hontz previously worked for over two decades as Global Vice President at SAP in numerous roles across consulting, presales, product management, sales and sales leadership with a focus on its Customer Experience business prior to taking the CRO role at SocketLabs.

“Joining SocketLabs from SAP has enabled me to provide this amazing tech company with an extensive network of beneficial relationships, sales leadership tools, organizational management strategies and best practices for business development as it pertains to cloud computing, which have already proven to be impactful,” said Hontz. “I look forward to leading the next phase of business growth with our talented team of email delivery professionals while expanding market share for SocketLabs in my new role as the company’s CEO.  John’s vision, strategy and leadership at SocketLabs over the past 12 years in serving thousands of satisfied customers prior to my arrival has been nothing short of spectacular and I look forward to building on the proven track record of success exhibited by our industry-leading high volume email delivery platform.”

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Hontz’s work experience in enterprise application software and deep network from his time at SAP makes him uniquely qualified to take on the position of CEO at SocketLabs. His executive trademark to date has been the ability to uncover new business and potential growth areas in support of digital transformation for enterprise customers across all industries. Prior to SAP he spent six years at DuPont Information Systems, where he was a project manager focused on CRM Database Marketing and related systems. He holds an MBA from the University of Delaware, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from James Madison University.

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In the next phase of SocketLabs’ strategic growth plan, Hontz will oversee the company’s goal of expanding into additional global markets and acquiring new enterprise customers who will benefit from its reliable service offerings. The newly minted CEO will also represent the company at two Customer Experience events in the coming week centered around the SAP Customer Experience Live event in London on October 3, 2019. In addition to exhibiting the SocketLabs platform and its capabilities at CX London, Hontz will also speak alongside industry-leading panelists at his company’s own event, “The Science of Customer Experience,” taking place on October 1, 2019.

Hontz will focus on identifying new growth opportunities, strategic partnerships and driving new innovations to build on SocketLabs strong reputation for providing high quality service, and he will continue to support the expansive roster of clients that Alessi helped secure during his tenure.

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Leverage Real-Time Intelligence With the Right Data

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Jornaya LogoIf every consumer took the same path to purchase for their wants and needs, your Marketing would be effortless. But we know people are different and their behaviors are unique. This is especially true when it comes to making major life purchase (MLP) decisions—those big decisions that require a lot of time and research to make, such as buying a house or deciding on an insurance policy.

Consider the mortgage consumer journey, which often begins months before a credit score is even pulled. Or the life insurance journey where consumers research and visit numerous sites across multiple device types. These consumers are comparison shopping and submitting lead forms on a number of different sites. This means you don’t get a full view of your customer, which complicates sending the right message at the right time.

Creating wonderful, relevant consumer experiences is really hard, and especially so within the world of major life purchases. This is why leveraging real-time intelligence about the lead and consumer’s behavior is so critical. We find from our research it’s the secret sauce for relevant and wonderful consumer experiences.

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Behavior

Consumer behavior is one of the biggest drivers in ad tech. It’s also an essential differentiator in the lead space if you know how to harness the data collected around the comparison shopping event. The technology exists today to glean far more information from consumer behavior, from the moment a person raises their hand that they are  in market; all the way through to when they submit a lead form and through eventual conversion, if the tracking technology is in place to capture this valuable data.

There are big dollars in the right data when you know how to mix your industry metrics. In fact, organizations that leverage customer behavioral insights outperform peers by 85% in Sales growth and more than 25% in gross margin. Performance marketers who think outside the static data box get the best and most actionable picture of the consumer and overall intent. That translates into better experiences and more sales.

Customer Intelligence

By the time a prospect arrives at an online lead form, they’ve already been exposed to online and offline impressions through search results, social marketing, display and mobile ads, affiliate efforts, and email messages. They’ve likely visited other content rich sites and filled out other lead forms. True data currency comes only when you get a full picture through a data backbone that runs the length of that engagement.

Real-time data combinations create a far more intelligent and actionable marketplace for all players, empowering the marketer to make better decisions and drive performance.

Gaining a clear picture of your prospects through the use of third-party data will greatly improve your ability to personalize your Marketing and increase win rates. Marketers can create better strategies and market to consumers as if they know them by combining first-party data with third-party data from data-as-a-service (DaaS) providers. With that customer intelligence, each engagement attempt can be done in a thoughtful and meaningful way.

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Lead Generation

The lead generation industry is in a perfect position to dynamic datasets. In the past, lead data was confined to somewhat static snapshots, with lead verification and lead scoring standing as the best tools available to aggregators and advertisers. With literally hundreds of new data points available to the marketer, it’s now possible to add in behavioral, engagement, and intent metrics raising the bar to get the precise value of every lead.

Real-time lead gen data mashup examples include:

  • Consumer Origin: Know the facts about the consumer’s path from inception to the present moment.
  • Lead History: Know the lead’s path, and get information on the exact time elapsed, as the lead passed through the supply chain to you.
  • Consumer Behavior: Understand the consumer’s intent and engagement level.
  • Demographics: Match a consumer profile with age, gender, income level, and other data points.
  • Fraud Risk: Gauge the likelihood that a lead is a real consumer.
  • Compliance: Ensure brand and federal compliance at a lead by lead level.

MLP marketers who combine ad tech data and lead insights obtain a multidimensional and highly detailed real-time picture of consumer behavior. This clarity and accompanying actionability allows marketers to take smarter actions and make safer decisions when engaging prospects and customers.

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CGS Survey Reveals a Blend Of Automation and Human Interaction Will Drive Meaningful Connections Between Customers and Brands

Over 70% of US Consumers Are Less Likely to Use a Brand If Customer Representatives Are Unavailable

 CGS, a global provider of business applications, enterprise learning and outsourcing services, announced findings from its 2019 CGS Customer Service Chatbots & Channels Survey. The results showed that consumers willingness to use AI as a go-to resource is waning as they struggle to have productive interactions.

CGS surveyed more than 1,000 US consumers to better understand their preferences around customer service interactions. Consumers were surveyed as to what scenarios they are most concerned with, what channels they are more likely to use when dealing with stressful situations and how they feel about automation. Key findings from the survey include:

Brands must balance millennial expectations and the anxieties of older consumers by offering a hybrid approach

As automation becomes widespread, there’s a clear age gap in its acceptance. The survey found that 86 percent of consumers prefer to interact with a human agent, and 71 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to use a brand if it didn’t have human customer service representatives available. Findings show that many individuals still view speaking with humans vs. interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) as the best option for resolving issues. Only 30 percent believe that chatbots and virtual assistants make it easier to address customer service issues. However, for respondents under the age of 35, confidence in AI-based solutions jumps to 43 percent. The younger generations might be warming toward automated channels but buy-in from the over 35 group will likely be slower and require a blend of human and automated options.

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Consumer confidence in AI-based interactions will rise with more transparency

Consumer anxiety around AI-based interactions could tie back to current trends. When asked how they perceive the term AI as it relates to customer service, the majority of respondents (over one-third) felt that AI was “maddening,” it’s unable to fully address their needs or said it’s just downright sci-fi futuristic. AI-based interactions are essential for companies to scale their service needs, but brands need to consider the best use cases for this next-gen technology and be transparent with their customers as to how they are using it. For example, robotic process automation (RPA) can significantly reduce the time customer service agents spend doing manual tasks such as retrieving customer records and give them more availability to handle more sensitive or complex customer interactions. With more transparency as to the use of AI in the process and strategic deployment, consumer confidence in this technology will rise.

Consumers may be showing signs of chatbot-fatigue or backlash, causing a desire for more human interactions

With retail companies offering one-day delivery, it may seem like consumers favor speed above everything else. However, when it comes to customer service, the survey found that consumers want more than convenience or speed. The 2018 CGS Global Consumer Customer Service Report showed that half of the respondents looking for a quick answer would choose chat over all other channels. In 2019, only 29 percent picked that method of communication; and 40 percent of respondents chose the phone or voice option first. Additionally, a majority (65 percent) of respondents believe that using AI for customer service has some negative connotation, ranging from bad customer service to it being incomplete in its follow through or effectiveness. Companies looking to integrate AI in customer service must consider that consumers do not see AI as complete, helpful, knowledgeable or empathetic as a human support agent, necessitating a balance of agents and automated channel options.

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As more companies look to automation and AI-enabled chatbots to improve productivity and customer service response time, it should not be done at the expense of the customer journey,” said Steven Petruk, president, Global Outsourcing division, CGS. “From our survey, it appears that this transformation to AI-driven technology may be occurring faster than the consumers’ willingness to embrace it. It’s critical to consider which demographics the company is serving, and then apply the best tools to serve them. Even with automation, customer service still requires a human element in the touchpoint cycle.”

Across the globe, companies are feeling the pressure of heightened service demands. With a recent report by PwC showing that 54 percent of US consumers think customer experience at most companies needs improvement, the findings from CGS only reinforce that companies must find a balance in offering a high-tech and high-touch customer experience. To view the full findings, see our infographic: https://www.cgsinc.com/en/resources/infographics/2019-CGS-Customer-Service-Chatbots-Channels-Survey

With optimized call center resources to serve global clients, CGS offers a unique hybrid approach through automation and live agents in its contact centers located in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Its AI-enriched chatbot and RPA technologies complement the customer support services provided by thousands of multilingual call center agents. CGS supports many of the world’s industry-leading global brands from retail, hospitality, healthcare, technology and telecom. CGS’s innovative, scalable and flexible business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions include technical and customer support, telesales, channel enablement and back office support.

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