After noting that it was exploring picture-in-picture (PiP) playback for Instagram Reels back in March, Instagram has now moved to live testing of its new PiP option, which will enable users to continue watching Reels outside the app.

As you can see in these examples, posted by app researcher Radu Oncescu, Instagram is prompting some users to try out the new picture-in-picture option, while there’s also a new toggle for PiP in the playback settings.

To be clear, this is PiP related to video playback, not creation. There are ways to create PiP type videos within IG, but this is a functional option for viewing content, not creating it.

Both TikTok and YouTube already offer PiP functionality, which gives users another way to expand their content viewing beyond the app and can be a good way to continue watching while multitasking. Given the attention spans of modern audiences, this is probably a significant addition, and considering that it is already available in these other apps, it makes sense for IG to follow suit.  

As noted, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri was asked about the possibility of a PiP option back in March, as part of his weekly Q&A session. Mosseri said that he would look into it, and clearly, that has led to the development of the functionality.

Also Read: The 4Ps of Martech Unlocking Marketing’s Tech Revolution

It could help you increase retention rates and get more people watching longer clips, as they’ll be able to switch them to, essentially, background play as they do something else.

Or maybe it’ll just be a handy option for viewing TikTok. Either way, IG’s PiP option looks to be coming soon, and testing is now underway with some users.

Instagram has confirmed to SMT that it is currently testing this with a small number of users.

The post Instagram Tests Picture-in-Picture for Reels Playback appeared first on MartechView.

Protecting business communications has become a critical responsibility in the utility sector, where reliability is paramount and security is essential. Amid mounting pressures—ranging from AI-fueled load growth planning to quantum-era cyber threats—utility executives must rethink how they communicate, especially when sensitive third-party collaboration is involved.

Traditionally, these executives have trusted the security embedded in general-purpose messaging platforms, with a few turning to secure messaging apps that offer additional protections. However, many of these communication options are inadequate, offering limited protection for highly sensitive communications for mission-critical operations. Whether coordinating critical infrastructure design, upgrade, and construction efforts across multiple contractors and engineering firms, or conducting regulatory compliance assessments and reporting over potentially vulnerable networks, utility stakeholders require communication tools that address the increasing complexity, sensitivity, and oversight demands of their operating environment.

Not All Communication Channels Are Equal

Electric utilities have relied on individual communication platforms for decades to handle their organizations’ communication needs. This singular approach made managing and securing the conversations and data flowing across the corporate network easier, which is essential to facilitating business workflows. 

But that approach is no longer sustainable.

The mobile workforce and work-from-everywhere business ethos have upended this model, encouraging multi-platform communications using out-of-band messaging applications. This has resulted in users occasionally selecting communication tools based on familiarity, with consumer messaging apps often winning the preference battle. 

While SMS is typically prohibited for privileged conversations, utility IT staff can do little to prevent the occasional sharing of sensitive information over this convenient platform. Some utilities have brought in secure messaging apps to handle more sensitive communications. However, while more secure than general enterprise communication platforms, these platforms still have limitations in terms of compliance, device management, quantum protection, and/or access control. This situation leads to a troubling path: highly sensitive data and conversations potentially being shared on sub-optimized messaging platforms that lack the protections essential to safe and compliant communications.

That’s where consumer-based secure messaging platforms begin to fall apart in enterprise settings. Despite robust encryption for one-to-one conversations, consumer-first messaging platforms lack critical enterprise controls: identity verification, role-based access, workspace isolation, and regulatory-grade archiving.

What Consumer Apps Miss—and Why It Matters

These consumer-grade messaging platforms are often touted for their security protocols, but in a utility context, several weaknesses become liabilities:

• No participant transparency: Unless someone is in your contacts, these platforms typically display only a phone number, offering no assurance of identity or affiliation.
• Uncontrolled group sprawl: Any participant can add others to a conversation, creating risk without administrative oversight.
• No workspace boundaries: There is no way to confine a discussion to a verified organization or project team.
• No archival compliance: Without embedded archiving functionality, these platforms are incompatible with federal and state requirements for communications retention, especially regarding nuclear, grid stability, or cybersecurity topics.

In short, encryption without governance is not enough. In utility operations, where every message might later be part of an audit trail, board report, or legal proceeding, these shortcomings are unacceptable.

What Modern Utility Messaging Actually Requires

Secure communication must evolve to meet both the regulatory burden and the operational urgency of modern utilities. Today’s leading platforms for utility executives incorporate six core principles:

1. Enterprise-scale encryption: End-to-end security across messages, voice, files, and archives—with scalability across regions and teams.
2. Device and identity verification: Detailed insights into not just who is communicating, but on what device and under what security posture.
3. Zero trust access control: No implicit trust; every user must be authenticated and intentionally added to a workspace or channel.
4. Regulatory-grade archiving: Secure, compliant archiving—even if local users delete content—ensures accountability and legal defensibility.
5. Role-based conversation segregation: Different teams require different access levels. Sensitive topics (e.g., nuclear operations or vendor strategy) must remain isolated from general internal chatter.
6. Post-quantum cryptography: Future-proofing communications against the coming wave of quantum-derived decryption is no longer optional for utilities managing national infrastructure.

Cyber Risk Is No Longer Hypothetical

The risk environment is evolving faster than most business communication tools. With state-sponsored actors increasingly targeting U.S. critical infrastructure—and AI amplifying both phishing and network surveillance—legacy tools are falling behind.

Utilities are especially vulnerable due to the convergence of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT), reliance on third-party vendors, and complex regulatory mandates. From ransomware attacks on regional grids to espionage risks tied to new power generation design options, the communication layer is now a top-tier vulnerability.

As the federal government accelerates programs around AI dominance and the strategic options to meet aggressive demand levels, utility conversations are becoming more sensitive, and more exposed. Decision-makers must ensure the communication channels reflect that reality.

The Bottom Line

Treating message and collaboration security as an afterthought—or relying on apps designed for individual consumers—exposes organizations potentially to regulatory penalties, reputational damage, and national security risk.

For CIOs, CISOs, and operational executives, upgrading to secure, enterprise-grade messaging platforms is no longer about IT hygiene but strategic survival.

When the grid is your responsibility, every message matters. And the platform you choose to send it through can be your weakest link—or your best defense.

The post Is Securing Utility Communications Possible Beyond Consumer Apps? appeared first on MartechView.

The current conversation around agentic AI in advertising is missing the point.

Yes, it will reshape bidding strategies and improve our targeting. However, the most meaningful change is something few are talking about: Agentic AI won’t just change the delivery system; it will rewrite the advertising experience altogether. 

Agentic AI will fundamentally change consumers’ expectations and tolerance levels for brand interactions and the ad industry’s balance of power regarding data. We’re standing on the precipice of a new standard for our industry—where ads are no longer delivering messages but services to be rendered.

Flying Cars, Not Faster Horses

With agentic AI, the ad industry can’t settle for iterative improvement. We can’t give people faster horses when they’re demanding flying cars. If we focus on agentic AI to enhance targeting, bidding, and optimization, the industry will have completely missed the boat. 

With agentic AI, consumers will become accustomed to getting answers, not just being linked to information. An interruption to this flow simply won’t be tolerated by consumers, which will require the ad industry to rethink what it means to advertise entirely.

What will that look like in practice? First, ads must become capable of interaction—responding to questions, providing recommendations, and adapting messages based on user input. Second, they must show up at the right moment and in the right form; contextual alignment will be essential. Third, ads must know when not to show up; advertisers won’t be able to blast impressions everywhere and take a victory lap when they achieve a tenth of a percent engagement rate. 

This isn’t about inserting ads into AI-generated answers. (That’s called spam.) It’s about creating conditions for users to engage with brand agents willingly and on their terms—like getting a helpful recommendation from a trusted source, not being handed a flyer. The future of ad infrastructure must be built around permission-based entry, context-driven prompts, and clear value in every interaction.

Shift Away from Interruption

There’s another major piece to this: data. As consumers lean into AI-driven assistants, these agents will become the most powerful data and consumer intelligence sources the world has ever seen. Brands’ first-party data sets—even those of leading retailers with significant transactional insights—will pale in comparison. This power shift will have profound implications for the future digital ad economy. But it will also free brands from their obsessive pursuits of first-party data at all costs and allow them to spend more time figuring out how to become truly helpful to people.

AI has already upended search and altered the course of the open web. People have stopped searching and started asking. They don’t want to click, decipher, and distill. They want a clear, clean answer, and they want it now. 

In this new environment, brands can’t just shout for attention. They need to behave like guides. If I’m in-market for a car, I don’t want an offer interrupting my experience. I want help making a decision. What should I know? What should I compare? What’s available near me? A brand experience powered by agentic AI can do that. It stops being an ad and starts being a recommendation engine. It’s not a pop-up. It’s a conversation.

There’s a flip side: If the brand’s agent isn’t helpful, it won’t survive. AI agents are built on trust. Users will shut them down when they break that trust by pushing something irrelevant or aggressive.

The Industry Must Think Bigger

A lot of what’s being said about agentic AI today feels like old ideas in new packaging: better targeting, smarter bidding, and dynamic optimization. That’s fine. But if that’s the ceiling of our imagination, advertising is doomed. AI will change consumer expectations and how they interact with content, and the advertising experience will have to evolve accordingly. 

The future of advertising is not optimization. It’s ads as a service. Agentic AI won’t just change how we reach people. It will change why they bother to listen. And the brands that win will be the ones who show up when needed, speak clearly, and offer something valuable—no tap, no scroll, no ask required.

The post Is Agentic AI Turning Ads into On-Demand Services? appeared first on MartechView.

Travel planning has long been a tangled web of disconnected platforms, multiple apps, and endless browser tabs. Travelers juggle flight booking sites, hotel platforms, restaurant reviews, and activity planners, often losing momentum between each touchpoint. This fragmented experience creates friction for travelers and makes it harder for travel brands to build and maintain engagement. 

Now, conversational and agentic AI systems seem poised to resolve those challenges. Achieved not by adding new apps or features, but through their ability to connect every stage of the planning process into a centralized, data-driven interaction that adapts in real time to travelers’ needs. 

The end of travel planning overload 

As travelers demand more streamlined booking experiences, the next competitive edge won’t come from more apps but AI that integrates traditionally siloed functions into one continuous flow. Rather than forcing users to navigate between separate platforms, AI-powered systems handle complex requests through natural conversation. 

This shift is about more than convenience—it’s a reimagining of travel planning itself, and by extension, how travel brands interact with customers. Just as AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini have changed how many people gather information and find answers to questions, AI is transforming travel planning from a scavenger hunt into a guided discovery tour.   

That means that instead of competing for app downloads, companies must focus on creating AI experiences that understand context, remember preferences, and execute complex arrangements through a single intelligent interface. Brands that master this unified approach will capture customer loyalty by becoming the single point of contact for all travel needs. 

Consumer behavior has stabilized around digital-first expectations, with travelers expecting technology to work intuitively. Companies that continue to rely on fragmented experiences risk losing customers to competitors offering more AI-powered end-to-end travel solutions.   

Data-rich interactions drive smarter recommendations 

The power of AI lies in its ability to turn data into value. By analyzing deep customer data—preferences, past behavior, and real-time context—AI systems can deliver smarter, highly personalized recommendations and decisions that drive both conversion and loyalty. Imagine a booking platform that knows, based on a variety of historical and profile data combined with browsing cues, that a traveler is planning a summer seaside vacation, and can automatically recommend a minivan rental and hotel suite large enough to accommodate their family. Wouldn’t that traveler be more likely to convert than if they had received a generic offer?   

Traditional platforms collect vast amounts of data but often fail to connect insights across touchpoints. A user might search for flights on one platform, book hotels on another, and research activities on a third, with each interaction trapped in silos. AI-powered systems change this by creating comprehensive customer profiles that inform every interaction. 

This data integration enables AI to make intelligent trade-offs impossible through conventional interfaces. For example, AI might recommend a slightly more expensive flight because it knows the traveler values shorter layovers or suggest a hotel in a different neighborhood based on known dining preferences. Each interaction makes the system smarter, creating a flywheel effect that improves the system’s ability to serve the customer and strengthens loyalty over time.  

From conversational search to autonomous trip management 

If conversational AI helps travelers search and plan trips using natural language, such as “Find me a flight to Tokyo next month with a window seat and a hotel nearby with a gym,” then agentic AI takes it further by acting on the traveler’s behalf. It can rebook flights if there are delays, suggest restaurants based on dietary needs, or adjust itineraries in real time. This shift turns AI from a simple search interface into an autonomous travel partner that makes decisions and handles logistics without needing user input. 

Travelers are primed for this next evolution. According to Statista, 40% of global travelers have already experimented with AI trip-planning tools, while 12% use AI for both planning and during the vacation. But what does this mean for established travel players? If a single AI agent handles an entire trip-planning experience, do consumers still turn to booking platforms or rely on TripAdvisor reviews? 

This means AI’s role is no longer just in searches and suggestions. It’s in booking, coordinating, and problem-solving, creating a travel experience where planning becomes collaborative rather than transactional. AI becomes the traveler’s co-pilot, handling logistics and monitoring for changes so travelers can focus on the experience, not the mundane, time-consuming details. 

Legacy brands face new competitive pressure 

As big tech giants and AI-first disruptors move deeper into travel, legacy brands face new pressure to strengthen their AI capabilities or risk losing relevance. Companies like Google bring sophisticated technology platforms, mountains of user data, and broad user familiarity that can quickly challenge established travel brands’ market positions. 

Travel brands still have an advantage based on their customer relationships, but this competitive threat requires travel companies to rethink their technology strategies. With this shift accelerating, success depends on travel companies effectively integrating data across touchpoints, investing in scalable AI systems to handle complex scenarios, or partnering strategically where internal capabilities fall short. This transition might seem daunting, but it can start simply, with an audit of existing systems and data. But the important part is to get started—the big tech challenge is not going to abate. 

The challenge is particularly acute for established travel brands with legacy systems, fragmented data architectures, and aging tech stacks. These companies must navigate a tightrope, maintaining existing operations while modernizing infrastructure to support new AI capabilities, often requiring large technology investments. 

The clock is ticking. As AI capabilities advance rapidly and customer expectations shift toward more intelligent, autonomous travel experiences, travel companies must move quickly to assess their AI readiness and develop comprehensive strategies to compete effectively in an AI-driven travel landscape. 

The post Can AI Finally Fix the Travel Planning Mess? appeared first on MartechView.

Amazon‘s operations go into overdrive as the clock strikes midnight on Thanksgiving. For millions of shoppers, Black Friday is a day to score unbeatable deals. But behind every click lies a meticulously orchestrated system designed to deliver those deals seamlessly. The stakes are high, the scale is immense, and for Amazon, it’s an event that tests its logistics, strategies, and technological prowess.

The Black Friday Logistics Machine

The logistics behind Amazon’s Black Friday sales are nothing short of a marvel. Amazon operates over 400 fulfillment centers worldwide, spanning millions of square feet, to meet the demands of its 300+ million active customers. These fulfillment centers, often likened to futuristic cities, buzz with activity as products are picked, packed, and shipped with precision.

These operations amplify during Black Friday. For instance, in 2022, Amazon shipped over 1.5 billion packages globally during the holiday season. At the heart of this efficiency is Amazon’s advanced robotics systems. In the same year, Amazon unveiled Proteus, its first fully autonomous robot designed to move carts of products within warehouses. Proteus was developed to enhance efficiency, especially during peak seasons like Black Friday.

To meet surging delivery demands, Amazon has also expanded its logistics workforce. In 2023, Amazon hired 250,000 seasonal employees across its warehouses and delivery services. These workers supported a fleet of over 100,000 branded vehicles, around 3,000 daily Amazon Air cargo flights, and a vast network of independent delivery partners. However, even with these measures, challenges like weather delays and package theft remain ever-present.

Also Read: Will Google Make Shopping Season Easier?

Delivery Challenges: The Last Mile

The “last mile” of delivery is often the most complicated. Dense traffic poses significant hurdles in urban centers, while long distances between drop-offs can slow efficiency in rural areas. Amazon has combated this with innovations like Amazon Hub Lockers and drone deliveries.

In 2024, the company expanded its drone delivery program, Prime Air, to more neighborhoods in the U.S. “We’ve now delivered thousands of packages via drones, even during high-demand periods like Black Friday,” noted David Carbon, VP of Prime Air. These drones can deliver packages weighing up to 5 pounds in less than 30 minutes, cutting down on traditional delivery bottlenecks.

Prime Day vs. Black Friday: A Tale of Two Sales

Amazon’s Black Friday sales often draw comparisons to its self-created Prime Day, an annual sales event for Prime members. While both events aim to drive massive revenue, their strategies and customer behaviors differ significantly.

Prime Day, launched in 2015, focuses on rewarding Amazon Prime members with exclusive discounts. The event typically features tech gadgets, Amazon devices, and household essentials. On the other hand, Black Friday casts a wider net, appealing to both Prime and non-Prime members with deep discounts across all categories.

Data from 2022 reveals that customer behavior also diverges:

• Prime Day: Shoppers often stock up on big-ticket electronics like TVs and laptops, with a higher average cart value of $162.
• Black Friday: Purchases lean more toward gifts and seasonal items, with an average cart value of $109.

Amazon leverages these insights to tailor its marketing. Prime Day is about exclusivity and brand loyalty. Black Friday is about scale and attracting new customers.

Also Read: Navigating the AI Revolution: A Retailer’s Guide

Amazon’s AI Advantage

The backbone of Amazon’s Black Friday success lies in its cutting-edge AI technologies. From personalized recommendations to fraud detection, AI permeates every aspect of the customer journey.

• Personalized Shopping: Amazon’s recommendation algorithms analyze billions of customer interactions daily to curate tailored product suggestions. During Black Friday 2023, 35% of purchases were influenced by AI-driven recommendations.
• Inventory Management: AI also predicts demand to optimize stock levels. For instance, predictive algorithms ensure that high-demand items like gaming consoles and kitchen appliances are sufficiently stocked. “The key is anticipating what customers will want before they even know it,” explained Srikanth Thirumalai, Amazon’s Former VP of Machine Learning.
• Fraud Prevention: Black Friday attracts shoppers and fraudsters. Amazon employs AI to detect suspicious activity, flagging anomalies in payment methods and shipping addresses. This system prevented an estimated $100 million in fraud attempts during Black Friday 2022 alone.

Customer Support on Steroids

Customer service is another critical pillar during Black Friday. Amazon deploys its AI-powered assistant, Alexa, to handle a surge in customer queries. Alexa processes millions of interactions seamlessly, from tracking orders to answering questions about deals.

Amazon also scales its human support teams, with over 30,000 customer service agents on standby during Black Friday weekend. These agents are equipped with AI tools that provide real-time insights into customer issues, reducing resolution times significantly.

Challenges and Controversies

Despite its success, Amazon’s Black Friday operations face criticism. Labor activists frequently highlight the intense working conditions in fulfillment centers. Reports from 2022 showed that some warehouse employees worked 12-hour shifts with minimal breaks. In response, Amazon increased wages and implemented wellness programs. “We’re committed to improving the employee experience, especially during peak seasons,” said a company spokesperson.

Environmental concerns also loom large. Delivering billions of packages has a substantial carbon footprint. However, Amazon has pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Initiatives like electric delivery vans and solar-powered warehouses are steps in this direction.

Also Read: Personalized Travel Rewards: The Key to Customer Loyalty

Conclusion

Amazon’s Black Friday operations exemplify the intersection of human ingenuity, advanced technology, and logistical brilliance. From its sprawling warehouses to AI-driven systems, the company has transformed Black Friday into a finely tuned spectacle of modern retail.

Yet, the story is far from perfect. Challenges like labor rights and environmental sustainability remain pressing. As Amazon continues to innovate, it must also navigate these issues to ensure its e-commerce dominance is sustainable and ethical.

For customers, Black Friday is a moment of delight. For Amazon, it’s a test of its ability to deliver on a global scale—a test it continues to pass, year after year.

The post Amazon’s Black Friday Magic: Behind the Scenes appeared first on MartechView.

A new global study, Marketers and GenAI: Diving Into the Shallow End from SAS and Coleman Parkes Research, reveals that while 90 percent of organizations plan to invest in generative AI for marketing in 2025, 90 percent of CMOs admit that they do not fully understand GenAI or its potential impact on business processes.

This lack of detailed understanding of GenAI among senior decision makers in marketing may be hindering the eventual adoption of more sophisticated uses of GenAI – uses that could translate to improved organizational efficiencies, sustained marketing effectiveness and ultimately a sustained competitive advantage.

 While 75 percent of marketers are currently using GenAI in their day-to-day work – in fact marketing is ahead of other business functions, including IT, in the adoption of GenAI – many marketers are using GenAI for simplistic tasks like copywriting, editing and content creation, which only scratches the surface of what’s possible. When it comes to more sophisticated marketing use cases, only:

• 18 percent are using the technology to build audiences.
• 16 percent are using GenAI for customer journey mapping.
• 14 percent are using it for price optimization.
• 19 percent are using GenAI for audience targeting.

This is not optimal as marketers report that when they do embrace GenAI, they are seeing strong return on their investment, particularly in terms of personalization (92%), customer satisfaction and retention (89%), processing large data sets (88%), and accuracy in predictive analytics (88%).

Also Read: Why Marketers Should Lead the Generative AI Revolution

“It isn’t surprising that marketers lead the way in GenAI adoption, as it lends itself to experimentation and creativity – both hallmarks of the marketing profession,” said Jenn Chase, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President at SAS. “However, it is disappointing that a lack of understanding of GenAI at the CMO and senior management level is holding organizations back from experiencing the full potential of this exciting new technology. Education and training are critical to overcome this obstacle as GenAI usage not only increases productivity, but it can also improve customer experience and drive business growth.”

The good news is this looks set to change as marketers predict that they will expand their use of GenAI within the next one-to-two years in the hope of saving time and costs (63%), improving risk management and compliance (62%), and enabling more efficient processing of large data sets (60%). One in five anticipate immersive applications such as adaptive virtual reality, rising to three in 10 among those who have already fully adopted GenAI.

While lack of strategic direction from CMOs is an obstacle to successful utilization of GenAI, so too is concern over privacy and trust. Six in 10 (61%) marketers reveal their main concern about GenAI usage is data security, and 61 percent also cite data privacy. These are the top two concerns across all respondents and with good cause. While one-third of organizations have a well-established and comprehensive governance framework for data management, this falls to less than 1 in 10 for GenAI. Those who have fully implemented GenAI for marketing are more likely to have a well-established and comprehensive governance framework, but 4 in 10 do not.

Also Read: Cloud Next ’24: Google Cloud, Mercedes-Benz Deepen AI Partnership

“A significant gap exists between the art of what is possible with GenAI for MarTech, and what is being accomplished today,” said Jonathan Moran, Head of Martech Solutions Marketing at SAS. “The research highlights that most organizations across industries have significant work to do around GenAI education and enablement as well as data governance and compliance – and performing that work will aid in fostering trust between brand and consumer when it comes to the application of AI for marketing and customer experience pursuits.”

The post Marketers See GenAI Potential but Lack Deep Understanding appeared first on MartechView.

Move beyond data dashboards and embrace the heart of CX excellence. In today’s dynamic CX landscape, genuine human connection reigns supreme. Forget numbers and algorithms; it’s about listening deeply, responding with empathy, and building lasting relationships that transcend fleeting transactions.

In this article, we delve beyond traditional metrics and explore the human-centric pillars of CX excellence:

• Championing the customer voice: Ensuring their needs and concerns are heard loud and clear.
• Aligning business goals with customer needs: Making their satisfaction the true driver of success.
• Cultivating a collaborative spirit: Breaking down silos and fostering a unified CX vision.
• Embracing continual evolution: Adapting to changing customer expectations and market trends.
  

Prepare to reimagine your customer interactions and unlock the transformative power of genuine human connection. The ever-evolving world of CX awaits, and the path to lasting relationships starts with one simple truth: people matter most.

“In the ever-evolving landscape of customer experience, our compass isn’t just data or trends; it’s the genuine human connections we forge. At the heart of every strategy and innovation lies a simple truth – when we listen closely to our customers and respond with empathy and agility, we build lasting relationships, not just better experiences. That’s the true north of Customer Experience excellence.” 

Blending Roles in CX Work

In my journey as a CX Champion, Problem Solver, and Influencer, I’ve realized these roles are interconnected like gears in a well-oiled machine. As a Champion, I advocate for CX’s pivotal role in business success. This advocacy lays the groundwork for my problem-solving, where I tackle specific CX challenges. Influencing comes naturally as I share these solutions and insights with the broader community. It’s about continuously learning, applying, and sharing – a cycle that keeps the CX world spinning.

Also Read: 5 UX Trends to Watch This Year

Moving Beyond Traditional Metrics

Companies often rely on metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). While important, they don’t always paint the full picture. To truly gauge CX’s impact, we must look at customer lifetime value, retention rates, and employee engagement levels. For instance, a study by Bain & Company shows that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%. Companies should embrace a holistic view of metrics, connecting customer behavior and feedback directly to business outcomes.

Common Pitfalls in Building a Customer-Centric Culture

One major pitfall is viewing customer-centricity as a departmental function rather than a company-wide ethos. This narrow approach can lead to disjointed customer experiences. Another pitfall is not adequately investing in employee training and development. Employees are the frontline ambassadors of your CX vision. Without their full understanding and engagement, even the best-laid plans can falter.

Key Steps for Tackling Complex CX Challenges

Firstly, understand your customers deeply through data and feedback. Then, align your business objectives with customer needs. Implement a cross-functional team approach to ensure all departments contribute to the CX vision. Regularly review and adapt your strategies based on customer feedback and market trends. Remember, a successful CX strategy is not set in stone; it evolves as your customers do. Here’s a comprehensive guide:

• Deeply Understand Your Customer:
• Gather Data: Collect data from various touchpoints – surveys, social media, customer service interactions, and purchase history.
• Analyze Feedback: Look for patterns, preferences, and pain points in the feedback. Use qualitative and quantitative methods for a comprehensive understanding.
• Create Personas: Develop customer personas to represent different segments of your audience, helping to tailor experiences to specific needs.
  
• Align Business Objectives with Customer Needs:
• Review Business Goals: Ensure your business goals consider customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Integrate Insights: Use customer data to inform business strategies, ensuring they meet customer expectations and solve problems.
• Communicate Objectives: Communicate how aligning with customer needs will drive business success to all stakeholders.
  
• Implement a Cross-Functional Team Approach:
• Form Diverse Teams: Include members from different departments (marketing, sales, customer service, product development) in CX initiatives.
• Encourage Collaboration: Foster a culture of collaboration with regular meetings and shared platforms for communication.
• Set Shared Goals: Establish common objectives for these teams to improve CX.
  
• Regularly Review and Adapt Your Strategies:
• Monitor Feedback: Continuously track customer feedback and satisfaction metrics.
• Stay Updated with Market Trends: Keep an eye on industry trends and competitor strategies.
• Be Flexible: Be ready to adapt your strategies based on new insights or changes in the market.
  
• Remember the Evolutionary Nature of CX Strategy:
• Embrace Change: Acknowledge that customer preferences and market conditions will evolve.
• Iterate Constantly: Regularly revisit and refine your CX strategy to stay relevant and effective.
• Encourage Innovation: Promote a culture where new ideas for enhancing CX are always welcomed and explored.

Bridging EX and CX

Companies like Southwest Airlines and Salesforce have excelled at linking EX with CX. They focus on creating a positive work environment and culture that empowers employees, which, in turn, reflects in their customer interactions. Salesforce, for example, boasts high employee satisfaction rates, which correlate with its reputation for exceptional customer service. The key is understanding that happy, engaged employees naturally lead to happy, satisfied customers.

Breaking Down Silos for Collaborative CX

Leaders must foster a culture of open communication and collaboration. Encouraging cross-departmental projects, shared goals, and regular inter-departmental meetings can help. It’s also about ensuring everyone understands the common CX vision and how their role contributes to it. A McKinsey study found that companies with strong cross-functional collaboration are 1.5 times more likely to report revenue growth of 10% or more.

Also Read: AI Transforms Employee Experience, Driving Customer Success

Building an Agile CX Strategy

An agile CX strategy is all about responsiveness and flexibility. It involves continuously monitoring customer feedback, market trends, and internal performance metrics. Companies must be willing to pivot quickly based on these insights. This could mean adjusting policies, retraining staff, or even overhauling a service channel. Agility also means being innovative and open to experimenting with new approaches to enhance customer experiences.

The post Building Lasting Customer Relationships in the Humanized Age of CX appeared first on MartechView.

Within the survey approaches, you may develop a variety of sorts, such as a general feedback survey or a Net Promoter Score survey. Each focuses on a different part of your customers’ experiences, yet they all try to comprehend their feelings.

What is a customer effort score (CES)?

A service statistic called the Customer Effort Score (CES) measures customers’ efforts to connect with your organization. These encounters might involve how difficult it is for them to utilize your product or service or how simple it is to address a problem with your customer care representatives.

If consumers need to browse several knowledge-based articles to get the one they need, they will spend a lot of work. Still, they will spend less effort if they can phone a service representative and have their refund completed immediately.

There is ample proof that a particular experience’s simplicity is sometimes a more significant predictor of client loyalty than merely gauging consumer happiness. Additionally, customer loyalty is an absolute cornerstone of successful companies in an increasingly competitive market.

Because of this, CES is well-liked by customer success teams. You ask the buyer to rate the convenience of their experience rather than how delighted they are.

With the publication of an HBR article titled Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers in 2010, the Customer Effort Score gained prominence. The essay is instructive—if not for the high caliber and breadth of the study, then at least for the surprising conclusion: The most straightforward approach to developing customer loyalty is not impressing your consumers but making it simpler for them to accomplish their goals.

When to use customer effort score

Knowing when to utilize CES surveys is crucial since it may hugely influence success to know how much effort customers make to engage with your company.

Following a transaction or subscription-related contact

A smart approach to get information on how much a client puts into completing their purchase is to send them a CES survey after they have engaged with your company and ultimately made a purchase.

They will have just completed an action, so the details you requested are still fresh in their minds. For instance, set it up so that, as clients reach the page confirming that their transaction has been processed, a poll cleverly asks them about their overall experience.

CES is often assessed by sending consumers an automated post-interaction survey asking them to score a specific statement on a set scale, depending on the interaction they just finished.

Also Read: Beyond NPS: Why Customer Feedback Needs a 360-Degree Revolution

Immediately after your customer service team or any other service-related encounter is finished

Sending surveys at any regular frequency makes little sense because CES surveys expressly ask consumers to assess the amount of effort they put into alleviating a pain issue.

Instead, businesses will send them immediately following a customer care interaction, such as after an email support case is handled or after a service-related experience, like reading a knowledge base article, to see how successful it was in fixing the issue.

Customers who have to call your company for troubleshooting should instantly receive CES questionnaires when their problem has been fixed. This will determine how hard they tried to contact you for a solution.

To supplement product teams’ UI and UX testing

The overlap between product and customer success teams’ use of the Customer Effort Score (CES) is intriguing. Product teams are starting to utilize CES to obtain feedback on how effectively the UI supports new feature uptake and pinpoint instances where consumers feel confused and lost.

There are two ways to present your CES surveys.

Likert Scale

A Likert Scale is a numerical rating scale with five to seven points corresponding to pertinent terms like “very tough” or “extremely easy.” Higher numbers indicate greater work, whereas lower numbers indicate relatively easy/low effort. 

The survey’s instructions for Likert Scale questions that occasionally contain numbers inform customers of the possible range of answers. 

Emoticon Ratings

Although emoticon ratings are less common than Likert Scales, they are nonetheless useful indicators for consumers since they allow them to connect effort level to cheerful or sad expressions. 

Regardless of your approach, it’s crucial to remember that the questions you use should be unique to the aspect of the organization you’re trying to examine. The query should be focused on that contact, for instance, if you want to know how much work goes into opening a customer support ticket.

Customers can also be asked open-ended questions after giving their first response to help them understand why they gave a particular score.

You should know your average score after a sizable number of survey replies. Let’s discuss how you can determine your CES score.

Customer Effort Score Calculation

Your customer effort score is determined by multiplying the total number of survey replies by the sum of all customer effort ratings. The outcome will show you the typical level of effort clients make while dealing with your company.

Customer Effort Score = (sum of customer effort ratings/ Total number of survey responses)

The procedure is slightly different if you’re utilizing emoticons. For your internal analysis, you should give each emoticon a unique number. For instance, you may connect three to a sad face and one to a happy face. The greater figure represents the average amount of effort made by your consumers. You would next compute the average number of persons who chose each face.

Also Read: Building Lasting Customer Relationships in the Humanized Age of CX

What is a good customer effort score?

There is no unambiguous industry standard for customer effort scores. Nevertheless, based on how you set up your survey scales, average effort ratings that tilt more in one of the two directions show where your company is in terms of customer experience.

If your scale, for instance, rates one as low work and seven as substantial effort, a score of three indicates that consumers aren’t facing any major obstacles. Six, on the other hand, signifies frequent customer difficulty.

Your CES provides important data for analyzing usability and overall experience. Despite your best efforts, however, it does not tell you how pleased your consumers are with your company. Before launching your first CES survey, you should be familiar with all of the benefits and restrictions of this statistic.

A Customer Effort Score provides a robust measure because it lets you know how simple it is for consumers to connect with your company. This is probably your desired aim since you want to simplify their lives.

There is no customer feedback survey whose responses give you all the necessary information. Choose the best option after determining what is appropriate for your company and the information you need.

The post All You Need To Know: Customer Effort Score (CES) appeared first on MartechView.

Acquia, the digital experience leader, announced new capabilities for Acquia Site Studio, the low-code Drupal website builder. Now, developers and marketers are empowered to create and manage digital experiences for traditional Drupal websites and headless applications using the same content. This allows marketers to create engaging digital experiences from a single content platform, reducing demands on development and IT resources. 

Acquia Site Studio is widely known for offering the most intuitive visual page building and content authoring experience available for Drupal. In a traditional website build, Site Studio allows non-technical users to create components, layouts, and content without the need for PHP and JavaScript. Now, with the launch of the new JSON:API for Site Studio, JavaScript and front end developers can easily access the content and layouts created via Site Studio in decoupled or headless apps to create more engaging, interactive digital experiences.

“As more teams adopt a hybrid approach combining headless and traditional applications, we’ve created a way to easily leverage the same content everywhere” said Jim Shaw, SVP and General Manager, Drupal Cloud at Acquia. “This new capability will make it easier for both developers and digital marketers to create and manage content across multiple digital channels.”

Organizations such as Bayer Consumer Health, Hologic, Paramount, and Zscaler leverage Acquia Site Studio to create Drupal applications that meet custom business needs and take advantage of the advanced functionality of Drupal, yet are easy for marketers and content creators to use. 

The new feature requires Acquia Site Studio 7.4 and above and use of a modern version of Drupal. 

The post Acquia Site Studio Introduces Capabilities to Create Drupal and Headless Applications appeared first on MartechView.

In the swirling storm of modern retail, with the high street buffeted by economic, technological, and social changes, there emerges a beacon of opportunity for retailers: curating brilliant and memorable digital customer experiences.

As we edge closer to yet another Black Friday, the pivot to online is no longer just an option; it’s the cornerstone of retail survival and differentiation.

One might wonder why the emphasis on the digital realm, especially when the tangible allure of brick-and-mortar stores has been the heart of shopping for centuries. Well, glancing at some hard numbers illustrates the dramatic transformation of the retail landscape…

According to a survey by Adobe Analytics, online sales during Black Friday continue to rise. In 2018, online sales accounted for $6.22 billion – a rise of 23.6% from the previous year. Fast forward to last year, and sales hit a record $9.12 billion in 2022 – a 2.3% increase from the previous twelve months.

The digital realm isn’t the future; it’s the dynamic present.

Impeccable digital experiences are vital

The digital domain has often been a turbulent sea for traditional high-street retailers. The behemoths of e-commerce, with their vast product ranges, aggressive pricing, and rapid delivery promises, have often outmaneuvered them. Yet, amidst these Goliaths, the David-esque charm of outstanding digital customer experiences offers a compelling advantage.

Let’s dig deeper into why, especially on high-velocity shopping days like Black Friday, crafting an impeccable digital experience is not just desirable but vital:

• Engaging the Empowered Consumer: Today’s consumers are digitally savvy, well-informed, and, most crucially, empowered. They’re not just looking for products; they seek experiences, stories, and connections. According to a PwC report, 73% of consumers point out that experience is a significant factor in their purchasing decisions, underlining the role of emotional engagement in the buying process. For retailers, their digital platforms must resonate with consumer aspirations, values, and emotions.
• The Fleeting Nature of Digital Loyalty: consumers are a click away from many choices online. The digital landscape can be ruthless; a single subpar interaction can result in an abandoned cart and drive a consumer to a competitor’s arms. A study by Salesforce revealed that 76% of consumers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations. In such a scenario, the emphasis should be on predictive personalization, intuitive design, and real-time customer support.
• Bridging the Digital-Physical Divide: Contrary to popular belief, the rise of digital doesn’t spell the end for physical stores. Instead, it’s an invitation for integration. Click-and-collect services, virtual trial rooms, and augmented reality shopping experiences blur the lines, offering customers a seamless journey. This synergy is paramount for high-street retailers aiming to extend their brand experience from the physical to the digital.
• The Way Forward Amidst Modern Struggles The modern retail environment is rife with challenges – from managing the high overheads of physical storefronts to navigating the unpredictable waters of global events like pandemics. However, amidst these challenges lies the undeniable promise of the digital realm. As we approach Black Friday once again this year, it’s clear that success won’t just be about discounts and deals. It will be about how effectively retailers can woo, engage, and retain customers in their digital domains.

So, as the dawn of another Black Friday approaches, it beckons retailers not just to participate but to lead with distinction in the digital sphere.

Touching on the words of Maya Angelou – the American memoirist, poet and civil rights activist – who said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Those retailers who internalize this and craft memorable digital encounters will be the ones who truly shine…

Sabio Group is a global digital experience transformation services specialist with major operations in the UK (England and Scotland), Spain, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and India.

The Group delivers solutions and services seamlessly, combining digital and human interactions to support outstanding customer experiences (CX).

Through its technology and that of world-class technology leaders such as Amazon Connect, Avaya, Genesys, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Twilio and Verint, Sabio helps organizations optimize their customer journeys by making better decisions across their multiple contact channels.

The Group works with major brands worldwide, including Aegon, AXA Assistance, BBVA, BGL, Caixabank, DHL, loveholidays, Marks & Spencer, Rentokil Initial, Essent, GovTech, HomeServe, Sainsbury’s Argos, Telefónica and Transcom Worldwide.

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