Customer experience is a top priority for businesses and marketing teams today as consumer expectations continue to rise. A positive customer experience promotes loyalty, helps the business retain customers and encourages brand advocacy.
However, remote and hybrid work environments created dispersed marketing teams that impacted their ability to drive high quality CX. Optimizely recently conducted a survey focusing on dispersed marketing teams and, not surprisingly, concluded that that marketing creativity is critical to driving strong customer experiences and engagement.
In the survey, 91% of marketers said remote and virtual work has impacted their ability to deliver exceptional customer experiences. The survey also analyzed which factors about remote work and dispersed teams created the greatest barriers to driving high CX. Nearly all (92%) marketers agreed that dispersed teams have impacted:
- The ability to develop creative ideas,
- The ability to optimally execute marketing campaigns,
- Collaboration with members from other teams such as IT, finance, etc., and
- Collaboration with other marketing team members.
Marketers agree they need a seamless digital experience on the back end to bring creative ideas to life, deliver top customer experiences and generate increased revenue for the business. Marketing is increasingly dynamic, and speed to market comes down to the ability to effectively collaborate and communicate with teams.
“Remote and hybrid work won’t be going away anytime soon, and senior marketers need to apply strategies and technologies that combine the art and science of marketing to ensure they continue inspiring creativity in their marketing teams, and in turn, drive strong customer experiences,” said Kirsten Allegri Williams, chief marketing officer at Optimizely,
What is needed to drive creativity and CX in a remote/hybrid world? In a hybrid working environment, marketers need the proper technology to effectively drive creative ideas and business growth, whether it’s ensuring all the right data and assets are in place or enabling real-time collaboration and virtual brainstorms.
There are certainly ways to overcome the challenges marketing teams face – specifically, implementing the right technology solutions. Marketers have found a variety of technologies helpful.
- 42% of respondents say leveraging content marketing platforms to ease the creation and delivery of content to the right audiences was most useful.
- 40% invested in or leveraged existing content management tools/ systems and hosted team-building exercises or games to spur creativity.
- 38% have offered wellness and/or mental health resources or sessions.
- 33% say video collaboration tools and tools that capture ideas and notes in one central location and idea capturing tools like Microsoft Word were most useful.
- 31% say experimentation platforms and tools to test new ideas were most useful
- 28% say chat collaboration tools were most useful.
Almost all marketers surveyed say nothing replaces in-person collaboration, and two-thirds will continue to take a hybrid approach to work most of the time, increasing the need for the marketing resource management tools.
Investing in the marketers’ experience is important to empower teams to drive the best results. Marketers need to have access to the proper tools to facilitate creativity, spark innovation and drive business growth.
Edited by
Erik Linask
