Report: Customers Raising the Bar for Marketers to Meet Growing Expectations

As marketers work to achieve a number of goals, including customer satisfaction, new research suggests that the list of buyer demands continues to grow.

Salesforce recently published its “State of Marketing Report,” which revealed that customers now have more demands of marketers than ever before. More specifically, 84 percent of customers say that being treated like a person – not a number – is “very important” to winning their business. About 83 percent of business buyers said the same.

In response, marketers are focusing on improving the customer experience. About 54 percent of respondents – specifically high-performing marketers – said that they now lead customer experience initiatives across the business. The top priority among all marketers surveyed was to “engage with customers in real-time.”

Sales Teams, Marketers, and the Customer Experience

As customer demands and expectations continue to rise, previous research suggests that marketers and sales personnel are teaming up more frequently to meet these standards.

The “What Does Sales Need and Want from Marketing?” white paper from Televerde recently shed light on how marketers and sales teams are working together to achieve similar objectives. Statistics showed that the majority of sales reps (62 percent) believe they are aligned with the marketing team at their company.

Overall, 18 percent of sales professionals believe that sales and marketing are now very aligned at their companies, which bodes well in terms of achieving similar goals.

“The relationship between sales and marketing drives revenue and maintains customer engagement, so it needs to be a huge priority for businesses,” said Ray Kemper, chief marketing officer at Televerde.