How Is Digital Transformation Driving The Customer Experience?

Ethan Hays, GM PathIQ: Digital transformation is a huge topic of conversation across organizations of all sizes across the globe. And I think that it’s almost a bit of a misnomer. Businesses have to transform digitally—but it is not about tools and technology and, and shiny objects. It’s about your customers. It’s about your customers as people and developing the suite of tools and services that allows you to deliver better customer service to those individuals.

How Have Customer Expectations Changed And Which Of These New Behaviours Are Set To Stick Around?

Daniel Sendecki, PathIQ’s VP Content: Customer expectations have changed considerably in the past decade and have accelerated even in the past couple of years. The fundamental change is that consumers are more savvy when it comes to digital marketing. They understand that there is value in the relationship that they have with the brand—so the expectation for personalization persists. If anything, we expect greater personalization and greater targeting out of the brands with whom we interact, because we understand they know things about us. The irony is that just as that expectation is expanding and accelerating, we’re drawing back the amount of information that we have at our disposal to execute on those expectations. So the companies that are going to be rewarded are those that focus on first party data, and growing their first party data assets. The greater your first party data assets, the more you know about a particular customer—and the greater a personalized experience you can provide. That is the interesting intersection or the interesting gap that PathIQ helps to mediate.

What Does A Good Digital Customer Experience Program Look Like?

Jonathan Berthold, PathIQ’s VP Customer Acquisition: So I think a good customer digital experience is something that keeps users engaged, keeps them enthralled, develops a little of that loyalty that will make someone recall a brand two days later.

Can Content Marketing Help (Or Even Drive) Your Brand’s Lead-Generation And Nurturing Strategy?

Jonathan Berthold: I believe content marketing can play a vital role in developing leads and assisting performance marketing campaigns, and just capturing the attention of users and pushing them down the funnel. So when we look at a marketing program, we think of how can we whittle down users from broad interest search, or just considering a concept, to that point where they’re ready to make a decision—whether it’s purchasing something online, filling out a form for more information, or even picking up the phone to, to speak with a representative.

Daniel Sendecki: Brands can use content to provide a better experience for, for customers simply being there to help. And so what we can do as a brand is ensure that we’re in as many places as possible with as much useful information as possible so that a customer can rely on us in that moment of decision.

Jonathan Berthold: We see this in quite a few of the, the more complicated industries where—if users have to compare insurance rates or look at mortgage quotes, or find a broker for an investment opportunity—content marketing really helps and boils down the issues and the problems that they may experience, providing them the right answer so that they can make the proper decision at the end and be satisfied. And I think the way content marketing fits in that mold is to alleviate some of those questions and make them feel a little bit more confident with the decisions they made at the end.