Getting In Touch With Customers
There’s a fascinating study going around from the CMO Council that looks at how marketers are interacting with their customers. To summarize, they’re not.
49% named CRM or database systems as their main information source on customers. 75% don’t have advisory boards or online communities. 30% don’t develop their own customer segmentation. Plus, there are plenty of other insights on the CMO Council website.
From my perspective, every marketer should talk or listen to customers every week. Whether that means walking onto a sales floor as a retailer, reading customer satisfaction survey responses, listening in to a call center, or participating in weekly account manager conference calls, keeping up to date on customer needs, concerns, and input is crucial. Qualitative input helps balance the tendency to rely solely on quantitative input, which many of us practitioners have tended to fall back on.
