Hi Dmitry, tell us about yourself, your background?
I’m 31 years old, a father of 2 kids, and have a beautiful wife. It’s important to describe because my family helps me to keep life in balance. I have worked in the marketing field for over 9 years, and for the last 6 years, I have been working with different startups as a marketing manager and CMO. It was a different market — ad tech, web analytics, marketplace, marketing agency — Belkins and SaaS product — Folderly. The last 2 companies are where I work now.
Online commerce was booming in 2020, and so did consumer reviews. – How can brands better utilize this data to improve their customers’ experience?
Customer experience is what brands will fight for in the future. I believe that in the near future, there will be less competition between product features; Brand power and Customer experience importance will grow instead. Brands should listen to the audience’s feedback and react immediately. Consumer reviews are a very powerful tool for both B2C and B2B. Modern customers read reviews before purchase, and it’s an axiom. So I suggest that all brands maintain a good quality of reviews — processing the bad ones and generating more reviews from satisfied customers. You should monitor your competitors’ reviews, too. They can give you good insights for growth points.
What is one element that must always be considered when working on a CXM (customer experience management) strategy?
I think the most important elements are being honest with your customers and perpetually increasing customer satisfaction.
Do you think personalization and customer-centricity are going to become increasingly more relevant in the coming year? How so?
Sure, this world revolves around people, not products and brands. It’s just as simple as that.
What are some of the ways companies can strive to eliminate the CX Gap?
Companies should aggregate and work with data. I think we should find a way to analyze data in real-time, making predictions of customer needs. Automated machine learning systems with omnichannel can help us.
What’s the most insightful book you read in 2020?
“The Goal” novel by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. This book is about operations and setting the right goals. I find it very useful. At Belkins, we grow by 200-300% from year to year in people and revenue. So it’s crucial to build a management system that can be stable with hyper-growth.
Dmitry’s predictions for the future of CX
What are your predictions for trends in customer experience in the coming year?
Personalization with data privacy, more emotional marketing and communication, and accelerating the satisfaction of needs. People hate waiting nowadays.
Last but not least, what is your favorite CX metric?
For me, the most important metric is customer satisfaction because it influences CTV, churn rate, and NPS.
