CMO 100

Wishing Big in B2B

What our biggest desires reveal

about the need to combine innovation with emotional intelligence

While a personal genie isn’t a modern luxury of business marketers, the ability to make wishes come true by finding real, solid solutions is more achievable than we might imagine.

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3 WISHES OF CMOSIf only we had more time — to achieve what we want, foster better collaboration and enhance customer experiences ...

In February, we launched the gyro CMO 100 panel to seek the opinions of 100 chief marketing officers and heads of marketing from across the United States. Our first survey results concluded that comedy was the CMOs’ favorite movie genre, which didn’t surprise us, since we know that humor is an effective marketing tool.

With our second survey, completed in March, it was time to get serious. We wanted to know what wishes our gyro CMO 100 panel had for their day, their teams and their customers.

Whether the panel wanted more time or increased opportunities for their team or better experiences for their customers, we weren’t surprised to find that what marketers want the most stems from the challenges they face every day.

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IF YOU HAD ONE WISH,* WHAT WOULD IT BE, IN THE CONTEXT OF ...

48 %

39% 57%

17% 17%

13% 13%

9% 4%

9% 4%

4%

4%

4%

4%

35%

17%

Have more time

Take advantage of performance and development opportunities Improve customer experience

Discover ways to better educate customers

Increase customer loyalty

Increase customer size or buy-in

Stand out with greater offerings

Increase collaboration Achieve better collaboration with customers

*Responses are paraphrased for calculation purposes and not intended to be interpreted as exact participant responses to open-ended prompts.

Assemble the right talent

Have more time

Love what they do

Improve customer experience

Impact my own personal growth

Obtain the recognition they deserve

Achieve personal goals

Achieve business goals

YOUR TEAM

YOUR DAY

YOUR CUSTOMERS

WHAT DO CMOS WISH FOR THE MOST? MORE TIME AND BETTER EXPERIENCES.

Insights from the latest gyro CMO 100 survey show that CMOs want it all — more time and better experiences — without having to sacrifice one for the other. So, we accepted the challenge: How can aspects of marketing be more automated or intuitive to give us more time in the day to focus on innovation and creativity, ultimately creating better experiences for our teams and clients?

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I’D WISH FOR ... MORE TIME.

I’D WISH FOR ... PERFORMANCE AND DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR MY TEAM.

I’D WISH FOR ... A BETTER EXPERIENCE FOR OUR CUSTOMERS.

“More time.”Linda Haury, VP, CMOOZ

“To inspire, teach and make [them] better in the context of the job.”Rick Ayala, VP, MarketingADP

“Drive value for our customers — make their lives easier, simpler.”Vasu Jakkal, CMOFireEye

B2B International, a gyro company, surveyed more than 300 marketers in Europe and North America.

said delivering excellent customer experience was their number one challenge.1

What if there were a way to actually create better customer and employee experiences, even with limited time ...

54%

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65% to 85%B2C companies typically score

B2B companies average less than 50%

15%

THE GOOD NEWS: Solutions are readily available that can enable CMOs and their teams to deliver better experiences for customers while saving time and improving employee satisfaction. gyro’s previous research into inspiring emotion may help guide our CMOs on the right path.

Solution #1: Explore automated solutions, like the use of artificial intelligence (AI), to improve customer experience and free up resources.

Solution #2: Inspire the right emotions at the right moments to strengthen client relationships.

SOLUTION #1: EXPLORE AUTOMATED SOLUTIONS, LIKE THE USE OF AI, TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND FREE UP RESOURCES.

Using automation and AI decreases the need for manual processes, freeing up resources for other more important tasks, including performance and development opportunities. For example, Thunder, a creative ad technology company, has developed a creative optimization platform that changes programmatic ads on the fly to make sure the ad experience is relevant in real time. Target individuals in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time and serve up contextually relevant, hyper-personalized experiences.

Marketers said results from robotic process automation (RPA) initiatives included improvements in these areas:3

EFFICIENCY

95% agreed RPA increased efficiency <5%-25%+

EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION

93% agreed RPA increased employee satisfaction <5%-25%+

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

93% agreed RPA increased customer satisfaction <5%-25%+

THE BAD NEWS: B2B CUSTOMER-EXPERIENCE INDEX RATINGS TRAIL BEHIND B2C2

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“Automation is giving people back about 85 percent of their time, so they can focus on what humans do best: collective social intelligence, like creativity, innovation and storytelling. We’re automating data transformation, transactional decisions, status updates, QA — all manual, repetitive and routine types of tasks.”

Max Cheprasov, Chief Automation OfficerDentsu Aegis Network

of best-performing companies are using artificial intelligence to enhance customer experiences.4

91%

WISHING BIG IN B2B

of a customer’s experience is driven by how they feel.5 50%

More than

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SOLUTION #2: INSPIRE THE RIGHT EMOTIONS AT THE RIGHT MOMENTS TO STRENGTHEN CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS.

gyro asked hundreds of Financial Times readers — international executives with business decision-making responsibilities — to tell us specifically which feelings, at which moments, are most important for influencing business decisions. Here’s what they said.

OF DECISION-MAKERS SAID:Company culture is among the most important attributes when they are researching a company.

OF DECISION-MAKERS SAID:Face-to-face meetings are the most effective behavior for maintaining a strong relationship.

83%

4 FEELINGS THAT FUEL BUSINESS DECISIONS6

STAGE 1: PRE-CONTACT/RESEARCH Desired feeling: Confident optimism

Roadblock: Uncertainty about core competencies, skills and attributes

STAGE 2: INITIAL CONVERSATIONS Desired feeling: Being understood

Roadblocks: Poor communication Lack of transparency

73%

8

OF DECISION-MAKERS SAID: Recommendations are among the most important drivers during the research phase. Will the work you just finished earn your next recommendation?

86%

STAGE 3: WORKING TOGETHER Desired feeling: Assurance

Roadblocks: Dishonesty

Decrease in communication Inflexibility

Honesty Responsiveness

Not structuring the end of a relationship

Not giving a sense of closure

STAGE 4: FINISHING THE WORK Desired feeling: Accomplishment

Roadblocks: Running out of gas Losing attention to detail

CRISISOF DECISION-MAKERS SAID:The first moment of friction is where you really find out about your partner or vendor.

Crucial responses: Transparency

88%

WISHING BIG IN B2B

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COMBINE AUTOMATION WITH THE RIGHT EMOTION TO DELIVER EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.

You can wish upon a shooting star on your birthday at 11:11 with a four-leaf clover in your hand, and you still won’t get more hours in your day — but you can use the ones you have wisely.

B2B professionals should seek solutions to save time and enhance offerings. Investments in the area of automation enable you to nurture relationships with your team and your customers. When combined with insights on how to inspire the right emotions throughout the customer journey, you can be one step closer to delivering impactful experiences.

It is also possible for automation to create efficiencies in labor-intensive processes with AI, so you and your team can focus on innovation and creativity, as well as foster development opportunities that position everyone for growth. Such achievements internally can make for a more satisfying work environment, which can translate to even better work and happier clients.

To learn more about inspiring the right emotion to fuel better customer experiences, read “The Business Feeling Index: The Feelings That Move Business Forward,” at businessfeelingindex.com.

Get other reports and ground-breaking thought leadership pieces at gyro.com/thinking.

“True customer experience is achieved by marrying the operational data of a company with the experiential data from its customers, employees and partners. Combining these data sources allows brands and organizations to provide highly integrated, end-to-end customer experience.”

Dave J. HutchisonSenior Vice President, Global Business Development & Ecosystems SAP

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SOURCES

WISHING FOR MORE?STAY TUNED FOR OUR NEXT CMO 100, WHEN WE EXPLORE CREATIVITY.

1 B2B International, a gyro company, “B2B Marketing & Insights Survey 2019 Findings,” April 2019.

2Nicolas Maechler, Sanjeev Sahni and Martine van Oostrum, “Improving the business-to-business customer experience,” McKinsey, March 2016, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/improving-the-business-to-business-customer-experience (accessed April 10, 2019).

3 Forbes Insights, “Accelerating Business Value with Intelligent Automation: The 2019 Kofax Intelligent Automation Benchmark Study,” 2019, https://www.kofax.com/Learn/Reports/rp_forbes-insights-accelerate-business-value-with-intelligent-automation_en (accessed April 16, 2019).

4Alison DeNisco Rayome, “91% of top companies use AI to boost customer service, improve branding,” Tech Republic, October 11, 2017, https://www.techrepublic.com/article/91-of-top-companies-use-ai-to-boost-customer-service-improve-branding/ (accessed April 10, 2019).

5Colin Shaw and Ryan Hamilton, The Intuitive Customer: 7 Imperatives for Moving Your Customer Experience to the Next Level, Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London, 2016.

6 Financial Times/gyro/Russell Research, Q1 2018.