Why collaboration is key to unlocking the new customer experience

The rise of data—and the death of the sales funnel

Today, winning over customers means orchestrating experiences that inform and personalize brand interactions along each person’s unique, self-carved path of engagement—not forcing them through a traditional sales funnel. The potential payoff for this step is big: According to Deloitte research, brands that do it well nearly doubled revenue increases in 2022.

A company’s ability to serve up positive experiences across changing touch points, timelines, and tastes rests entirely upon its ability to intake, process, and deploy data to the right platforms and channels. However, marketers and CX teams remain hamstrung by data capabilities that have fallen short of expectations:

• Too much data, not enough information. The first-party data that organizations are working with is often one-dimensional (e.g., spend) and derived from limited, often error-laden internal sources—rendering it unactionable.
• Undifferentiated insights. Companies lack the data infrastructure to integrate insights from diverse data sources, which prevents them from completing their understanding of the customer. They may know what a customer is doing, but not why, leaving only rudimentary findings to work with.
• Privacy regulation. Ever-changing privacy laws and customer preferences are forcing marketers to rely more on first-party data, making it increasingly difficult to personalize experiences.

CDOs and tech leaders are essential to helping their marketing and CX counterparts navigate these complexities; however, first, they must change the way they work together.

The cost of the marketing-IT data gap

Perhaps the most striking data-related challenge to CX is the gap in understanding between tech and marketing functions. According to Deloitte research, one in four product marketing leaders say their businesses don’t have the right systems in place to track customer data across touch points. Yet leaders in IT and CX departments almost unanimously say those systems are, in fact, already in place and available.

One in four product marketing leaders say their businesses don’t have the right systems in place to track customer data across touch points.

Nonetheless, CMOs are accelerating the move to new digital technologies, feeling pressure from the business to innovate with data and drive growth through personalized experiences. To succeed, they need CDOs and other tech leaders to expand their roles in driving CX, leading the data initiatives that will underpin the next wave of personalization. Without CDO oversight on data governance, management, and use, organizations risk costly rework to resolve compliance and reporting issues—compounded by new privacy laws—as well as overinvestment in unnecessary technology and costly customizations.

How CDOs, IT execs, and data experts can jump-start change

Organizations with close business partnerships between marketing and IT see significant success when it comes to scaling CX solutions. In a recent interview with Deloitte for The Wall Street Journal’s “CMO Today” column, Senior VP and Chief Digital Officer Eric Phillips of Delta Air Lines shared how collaboration is helping the business deliver personalized traveler experiences.

There are several ways tech leaders can break down silos and begin partnering with their marketing and CX leaders:

1. Start with business strategy. What kinds of experiences does the brand need to create to fulfill its broader strategic vision? Make sure IT/tech is included in these brainstorms so they can start planning for the first- and third-party data, architectures, technologies, and platforms necessary to bring them to life.
2. Evaluate your segmentation approach. Tech leaders can help marketers understand what’s possible in terms of microsegmentation , dynamic segmentation, and other more precise, personalized targeting techniques, given the limitations of the company’s IT ecosystem.
3. Create a single, enterprisewide source of data with governance rules. Work with your CX and marketing teams to define how the organization will intake, clean, store, process, and deploy it in marketing efforts.
4. Explore intelligent applications. These AI-powered tools help nontechnical users use data effectively and with autonomy. Enlist help from subject-matter specialists on how best to utilize the tools for maximum effectiveness.
5. Develop a test-and-learn approach. Ideally, prior to a large-scale implementation, organizations can “fail fast and often.” This test-and-learn approach will allow teams to test innovative ideas, decipher the results, and then leverage or alter the approach in order to achieve the desired outcome.

A united front for a new era of experience

To sync positive experiences across touch points, timelines, and changing tastes for the customer, organizations must first sync their internal marketing and tech teams. Success will be driven by a strong data strategy and a united front of integrated people, processes, and technologies, with CDOs and IT leaders at the helm.

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