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Marketing and sales at the service of king customer in a digital age

In best-of-class organizations, marketing, sales, customer service, and other customer-facing functions work together with the customer at the center.

In practice, however, doing so remains a challenge for many businesses. There are differences between sales, marketing, and customer service. Yet, unfortunately, these differences often still result in missed opportunities, hurdles for sustainable business growth, and, most importantly, customer dissatisfaction. Primarily a lack of collaboration around the customer results in an inconsistent and substandard customer experience.

The priority for sales and marketing organizations is to ensure – along with all customer-facing services such as customer service – that an optimal customer experience becomes more than an empty promise. It is the essence of the digital transformation of sales and marketing.

When (potential) customers are using various channels and sources throughout their buying journey and lifecycle as they do today, technologies are indispensable to achieve that transformation.

Customer-facing functions such as customer service, marketing, and sales have long used digital tools where data, optimal data management, and the blurring of “boundaries” between digital and physical environments and touchpoints take center stage.

But those technologies and tools offer no real solution if they cannot be used together in a truly customer-centric approach. Moreover, the culture, underlying processes, and various data sources must be approached differently if we want to put the customer and customer experience first.

Technology is merely an enabler, and customer preferences change fast. Learn more about how sales, marketing, and customer relationship management go through these transformations and how an increasingly ‘digital customer‘ wants to be served in a seamless channel-agnostic and device-agnostic way in our articles on sales and marketing.

We look at customer experience, digital customer experience, customer service, digital marketing transformation, sales transformation, the changing buying journey, marketing technology (martech), and sales technology such as customer data platforms, CRM, marketing automation, and AI-enabled sales tools. Moreover, we cover various techniques to improve marketing ROI, sales efficiency, customer lifetime value, and customer satisfaction.