Time and again, research is showing that consumers have little intention of going back to their pre-Covid ways of interacting with brands.

Last year, Forrester stated only 15% of businesses were “digitally advanced”. Fast forward to today, and every company discovered that digital is critical to business growth and customer experience (CX) success. Marketers now have what they always wanted—consumers are engaging more via digital. Now, does your brand have the digital intelligence and emotional quotient (EQ) to hold up your end of the bargain and give customers the relevance they demand?

Consumers have gone digital, and they aren’t going back.

Now that consumers have gotten a taste of what it’s like to order groceries on a mobile app and have someone bring their order directly to their car, or even deposit a check on a mobile app for the first time, they don’t want to go back. 

Acquia’s CX Trends Report found that 84% of consumers have used digital channels more in 2020 and 48% of organizations have created more content for customer engagement. Acquia CMO, Lynne Capozzi, noted in response: “Covid-19 has thrown most organizations a curveball, but the results of this study show just how resilient marketing teams are in shifting to digital and improving the customer experience. Even though marketers are trying to do more with less, technology has created opportunities to connect with consumers on a personal level—at a time when their digital engagement is higher than ever.”

“Technology has created opportunities to connect with consumers on a personal level—at a time when their digital engagement is higher than ever.” — Lynne Capozzi, CMO at Acquia

Brands are creating more customer engagement content, but is it working?

A recent Salesforce study revealed that 83% of consumers feel most of the brand messages they receive aren’t applicable to their individual needs and interests. In this new stage of the brand-customer relationship, it’s not enough to be smart and good looking—you’ve also got to be a good listener and have the EQ to respond to the consumer’s individual needs.

An individual’s EQ allows us to provide valuable, real-time communications to each other in our own interpersonal relationships.  In a similar fashion, digital CX must bring EQ into play.  Someone who’s creating an online banking account for the first time shouldn’t get the same messaging and CTA as someone who’s been paying a bill through your app for five years. And you certainly can’t be messaging me about the value of your high-touch, in-person services the day after my state has initiated a major Covid shut-down. The velocity of change has never been higher, and the need to make content and messaging updates that are relevant to both the time and the individual is critical.  Brands that meet these customer demands will survive…but brands that transform their CX by incorporating EQ into their content will not just survive, they will thrive.

The velocity of change has never been higher, and the need to make content and messaging updates that are relevant to both the time and the individual is critical.  Brands that meet these customer demands will survive…but brands that transform their CX by incorporating EQ into their content will not just survive, they will thrive.

Harmonizing IT, Marketing and Digital together makes next-gen CX content really sing. 

Listening and data intelligence comes from your IT systems, but relevant messaging is designed by Marketing and delivered by Digital channels. In such an interlinked ecosystem of messaging, channel, and data, content updates are only as fast as the slowest link.  As such, it is ever so critical to align these three functions with aid of systems that enable seamless collaboration towards a shared business goal of improving CX. It is why we’re seeing such a focus from SundaySky customers on investment in their DXPs: fine-tuning how IT can make data available to Marketers, Digital can make channel placements easy to access, and Marketers can use those tools to produce relevant messaging with agility. 

At Acquia’s Engage event in October, we presented a joint vision of how the next generation of CX, powered by data and intelligence, can help brands thrive in this new digital realm. Check out this short video to see how brands can integrate SundaySky’s video-powered experiences into Drupal sites easily, use Acquia’s Marketing Cloud to efficiently manage video campaigns, and use data and media assets in Acquia’s cloud to create consistent video experiences across all channels and journeys.