A little bit about Peter Crofut:
Peter is recognized as a pioneer and expert in the intersection of data analytics, cloud, and display platform technologies. His thought leadership has been published in Forbes and Think with Google; he also guests lectures at some of the world’s top business schools. As Google’s former Chief Platforms Evangelist, Peter enabled Google’s largest spenders to fundamentally transform digital business, driving more than $1b in incremental revenue. For 20+years in digital platforms (14 years at Google), Peter has worked for and with businesses around the world from his home office in Portland, Oregon.
Online commerce was booming in 2020, and so did consumer reviews. – How can brands better utilize this data to improve their customers’ experience?
By focusing on digital analytics implementation to collect 1p data to better understand customer journeys and improving personalization experiences. Making sure C-Suite decision-makers have the right people/processes/technology in order to roll out enterprise-level analytical solutions to collect clean 1st party data. Finally, ensuring that there is executive-level commitment to begin breaking down silos between IT/ Data Science/Eng and Marketing teams to accelerate digital transformations.
What is one element that must always be considered when working on a CXM (customer experience management) strategy?
Is the enterprise, in fact, looking at the correct data in order to affect change. Do they have the right people, processes, and technology/partners in place to affect change.
Do you think personalization and customer-centricity are going to become increasingly more relevant in the coming year? How so?
Yes, with all the changes to privacy GDPR in Europe and CCPA here in the US, like the state of California combined with the shift in how consumers interact with brands brought about by the pandemic (especially in online retail), brands need to quickly adapt. They need to deliver privacy-friendly personalized customer experiences that consumers want and expect of brands that their customers expect.
What are some of the ways companies can strive to eliminate the CX Gap?:
Be willing to fail fast and start with smaller ideas and pilots. You can then decide how to expand/pivot based on measured outcomes of the CX adjustments you make/ whether that’s customer loyalty, lifetime value of a customer or improved CSAT scores, etc.
What’s the most insightful book you read in 2020?
It’s not a book; it’s an article Google recently published about date ethics and its importance to the modern enterprise.
Peter’s predictions for the future of CX
What are your predictions for trends in customer experience in the coming year?
That best-in-class customer experiences and performance will shift to and be informed by data-driven systems that predict what customers want in order to delight them. Enterprises who better understand this will have competitive advantages.
Last but not least, what is your favorite CX metric?
Great question. There are so many; if I had to choose one, it would be the Net Promoter Score (NPS). The NPS score is a valuable tool for measuring the customer experience and customer loyalty. It transcends single experiences. I like that it asks customers to draw on the sum total of their experiences with your company, not just the most recent interaction…filter recency bias. It’s also a good indicator for repurchasing and growth. I know it’s often considered a “board-level” metric for this reason.
