Recently, I attended a marketing meetup where a CEO talked a program at his company aimed at increasing customer satisfaction and therefore revenue. It was a company wide initiative to make each customer touchpoint focus on customer centricity and collect customer feedback. They acted on the feedback and watched revenues grow. Albeit over time. Yet also consistently and repeatedly.
Marketing often leads this type of initiative. To be success it also needs full commitment from the CEO.
In the Q&A I asked for his viewpoint on whether marketers are in a good position to drive this type of program. Did he find that a lot of marketing professionals these days rely on data and don’t often talk to customers. Should they be relying on data so much. Should marketing lead this when sales, service and success connect more with real customers.
He said definitely. Data and tracking are important. So is talking with customers. Marketing needs to look at both quantitative and qualitative data. Tracking data points like NPS. Collecting direct customer feedback using surveys and interviews. Marketing knows and understands the customer so marketing leads the project. They then involve the other teams in the organization.
In a post session breakout I talked with a marketer that led focus groups. She felt confirmed that he mentioned those are still important. As a data person, I felt confirmed that he said data is good. The quiet intuitive voice inside said the key point was that he said both were important.
The secret sauce is you need both qualitative and quantitative data.
He also talked about having a way to measure the impact. They did measure revenues as well as customer satisfaction. They saw increases to both in tandem.
What do you do in your company? Do you have a cognitive bias towards one or the other type of customer feedback? Are you open to different ways of collecting feedback?
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