Welcome to Reality. Leave Your "AI Magic" at the Door.

The AI hype train is moving at terminal velocity, but the tracks are missing. We have vendors pitching artificial general intelligence that will solve world peace, and executives panicking because they think a conversational wrapper around a large language model is a strategy. In the latest episode of CRMKonvos, Ralf sat down with Dan Miller, formerly of Opus Research to discuss something that actually matters: infrastructure. Specifically, we are talking about vCons, or Virtual Conversations. It is an IETF standard that threatens to finally bring architectural integrity to the chaotic mess we currently call conversational AI.

TL;DR

If you want to watch the full CRMKonvo, please go ahead here (optimized for smartphones) or here (optimized for tablets/computers).

Else, be my guest and continue to read.

Or do both …

The "PDF Problem": Why Your Call Recordings Are Useless

For decades, the contact center has relied on the clunky mechanics of Automatic Call Distributors, green screen terminals, and audio recordings. As Dan rightly points out, a traditional call recording is essentially the conversational equivalent of a PDF. You get a static document or an audio file that you cannot easily manipulate, query, or extract meaningful context from. It captures one part of the conversation at a specific point in time, freezes it, and historically required overnight batch processing just to transcribe it for basic analytics.

These days, we have swarms of AI agents acting on our behalf, yet the enterprise plumbing remains grossly neglected. You are trying to deliver a data stream simultaneously with historical information about that stream to build a customer profile, but the underlying data format is a relic.

Enter the vCon: Plumbing Over Poetry

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is currently finalizing the vCon standard. While the W3C handles how things look on the web, the IETF handles the engineering guts that actually make communications possible. Think of a vCon as a standardized, portable container for a conversation, regardless of whether it happened via voice, text, messaging, or a mix of multiple media over time.

This container defines the content (the literal words spoken or written) and the metadata associated with it. It makes the conversation seamlessly available to CRM and other enterprise systems, CDPs, AI analytics engines, and CCaaS platforms. It is the foundation of the "conversational graph", a neural network-like web of nodes representing the people involved, their ideas, and the resources utilized. This is not sexy generative poetry; it is hardcore data plumbing.

And plumbing is what makes a house livable.

Flipping the Script: From B2C to C2B and the Consent Mandate

I have little interest in the standard B2C relationship where the business dictates the terms of engagement. Similar to MyTerms, the real power of the vCon lies in enabling a C2B (Customer-to-Business) model. The vCon container allows the customer to express preferences and attach explicit instructions regarding privacy and data usage.

Consider the right to be forgotten under the California Privacy Act or GDPR. If a customer wants their data scrubbed after a sensitive call with a pharmacy like Walgreens, the enterprise is obligated to comply. Traditional legacy systems cannot easily isolate what was said, identify the PII, and retroactively throw it out. A vCon makes it possible to pinpoint the exact container holding that interaction's content and instructions, providing an auditable trail for consent and compliance. As Dan noted, you can draw a hard line on what is permitted for AI training purposes based on the customer's explicitly captured preferences.

Revenue Acceleration: The Dealership Reality

Let us look at actual business cases instead of theory, or even science fiction. Dan highlights Strolid  and its spin-off Vconic, a company providing back-office support for automobile dealerships. By capturing conversations across a customer's entire lifecycle within vCons, a sales manager does not just see a phone number; they see a persistent, historical record.

When a customer calls, the system knows they previously inquired about an SUV, understands their past service issues, and detects if they are getting closer to a purchase decision. This leads directly to what Dan calls "revenue acceleration". It qualifies leads, moves deals forward, and stops the customer from feeling like an unknown entity every time they interact with your brand. If your system has had 500 phone calls with a customer and still does not know how they tick, your architecture has failed.

The Reality Check for Buyers: Three Mandates for Enterprise AI

If you are an enterprise buyer looking to invest in conversational AI for CX, stop looking at the shiny front-end and start inspecting the foundation. Here are your three mandates based on the vCon reality.

Fix Your Plumbing Before Buying More AI

Stop buying generative AI wrappers and start looking at your data infrastructure. You cannot train an intelligent system or a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) setup on dirty, siloed data. A standard like vCon provides the necessary container to make your conversational data portable, structured, and chronologically sound across all your systems. If your vendor's idea of data integration is dumping flat audio files into an AWS bucket, show them the door.

Consent is Not a Feature; It is a Baseline Requirement

With regulations like GDPR and the California Privacy Act, you must be able to audit, manage, and delete conversational data with surgical precision. Dan rightly identified "consent metadata" as the most critical non-optional field for enterprise CX. If your current vendor cannot pinpoint a specific multi-channel conversation and scrub the PII upon a customer's request, you are carrying massive, unnecessary compliance risk. Buy systems that respect the C2B dynamic.

Co-working is the Unavoidable Reality

We are not replacing human agents with autonomous swarms tomorrow, even though some are trying. The near future is about co-working. Agents and AI assistants must collaborate, and the AI needs accurate historical context to be useful. Do not fall victim to the "deer in the headlights" paralysis where you buy a disconnected AI tool just to appease the board. Define the playpen, establish the bumper cars, and ensure your human agents have standardized conversational memory (like vCons) to actually get the job done.

The 2026 EdelmanTrust Barometer is out. What do its results mean from a #CX angle?

Based on the trajectory from Innovation Anxiety (2024) to Grievance (2025) and finally Insularity (2026), we can see five critical impacts on Customer Experience (CX). The data suggests that CX strategies must pivot from purely functional service delivery to acting as engines of trust, fairness, and local connection, i.e., become more strategic (pun intended).

The Shift to "Polynational" CX: Localizing the Experience

The 2026 report identifies a sharp rise in "Geopolitical Insularity," where consumers (i.e., people) significantly distrust foreign companies compared to domestic ones.

Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, p6

• Impact: Global brands cannot rely on a one-size-fits-all customer journey anymore. They must adopt a "polynational" model where the brand feels deeply local.
• Actionable CX Strategy: To overcome the distrust of foreign entities, companies must demonstrate long-term commitment to local communities. This includes hiring customer support staff from the local community (38% say this earns trust) and investing in long-term local projects (27%) rather than just transactional interactions.

MyPoV: Zoho does something very right with its strategy of transnational localism. Many companies, including enterprise software vendors should have a hard look at this book.

AI Implementation Must Be "Vetted" and "Inclusive"

The reports reveal a deep divide in how customers perceive technology. In 2024, acceptance of innovation hinged on it being "vetted by scientists" and understood by the public. By 2026, a new fear emerged: 54% of low-income respondents believe they will be "left behind" by generative AI rather than realize its benefits.

Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, p12

• Impact: Implementing AI in customer service (e.g., chatbots, automated resolution) carries a high risk of alienating low-income and skeptical customers if not managed cautiously and with extreme transparency.
• Actionable CX Strategy: Prove safety and benefit. CX messaging must explicitly demonstrate how innovations lead to a better future for the customer, not just efficiency for the business. Apply a scientist-led communication. Because scientists remain among the most trusted figures (76% trust, p45) while CEOs and government leaders are less trusted, technical experts should explain product innovations and safety features to customers, rather than corporate executives. Financial and food/lifestyle influencers might be a good help in achieving this, too (see below).

MyPoV: This is highly depending on being trusted. Businesses must show their credibility by communicating values and demonstrating that they live them. That is a core source of trust. So, businesses must communicate the benefits for customers while actively showcase them.

The Definition of Value Has Shifted from "Affordability" to "Local Security"

The consumer view of "fair pricing" has evolved from a demand for economic justice to a protectionist value proposition. While 2025 marked a demand for lower prices to offset systemic inequality, 2026 reveals that over a third of consumers are now willing to pay higher prices if it guarantees the reduction of foreign influence and protects national autonomy. Value is no longer audited solely against inflation, but against the safety of local jobs and protection from external threats like AI and trade conflicts. But bear in mind that the sentiment of the system being rigged, which drove the 2025 view on pricing, remains the foundation of the 2026 mindset.

Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, p18

• Impact: Customers are at the moment applying a "Geopolitical Filter" to their experiences. They are auditing brands not just for price and convenience, but for their physical contribution to their local economic safety.
• Actionable CX Strategy: To overcome the barriers of insularity and the distrust of foreign entities, global brands must abandon "one-size-fits-all" efficiencies and adopt a "Trust Broker" CX strategy (see also next point). This approach focuses on proving local allegiance and facilitating connection rather than just delivering a product. with de-escalation techniques that validate the customer's economic reality.

MyPoV: This ties directly back into transnational localism. While being global matters (after all, customers continue to look at prices with a grievance lens), local commitments are important.

The Demand for "Trust Brokering" in Customer Relations

With 70% of the global population holding an "insular trust mindset" in 2026 (unwilling to trust those different from them), there is a breakdown in shared reality. However, customers are demanding that institutions bridge these divides.

Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, p28

• Impact: Brands are expected to be "Trust Brokers." The act of listening is no longer passive; it is a primary trust-building activity.
• Actionable CX Strategy: Listen! Across all three years, "hearing our concerns" and "letting us ask questions" consistently ranked as top requirements for building trust. Be a neutral ground. When responding to divisive social issues, 35% of consumers say a business earns trust by "encouraging people to cooperate on finding solutions without taking a side," which is more effective than supporting a specific position (28%), p26.

MyPoV: It is not only about listening and addressing the customers' concerns. It is also about having values and acting according to them. Some of the current skepticism toward tech companies comes from them being perceived as treating their values as somewhat arbitrary.

Leveraging "My Circle" for Validation

There is a massive decline in people seeking information from opposing viewpoints (-6 points globally in 2026). Trust has migrated to "someone like me," "my neighbors," and "my coworkers".

Source: Edelman Trust Barometer, p14

• Impact: Traditional top-down corporate messaging is losing efficacy. Customers trust peers and specific influencers over corporate spokespeople.
• Actionable CX Strategy: Influencer Partnerships. 57% of people say that if a trusted financial influencer endorsed a distrusted company, they would reconsider trusting that company. Even more would do so, if a trusted food and lifecycle influencer did so (p 34). CX strategies should integrate trusted niche experts to validate products. Employee Advocacy: Since "My Employer" is the most trusted institution (78% in 2026, p28), companies should empower their own employees to be brand ambassadors. Employees are seen as credible voices and can bridge the gap between the corporation and the customer.

MyPoV: "People like me" and "companies like me" are trusted for a long time. While "influencers" are often trusted by people, businesses need to make sure that they themselves team up with the right influencers, i.e., influencers that share beliefs that correlate to the business's values.

What do you think? How should businesses address these developments?

Fresh from the 2025 SugarCRM Analyst Summit, waiting for my plane home, it is time to sort my thoughts.

From Monday, 1/27 evening to Wednesday 1/29 in the morning we had some time jam packed with information and good conversations with SugarCRM execs, customers, and in between analysts. The main summit started with a bang, namely the announcement that industry icon Bob Stutz joins the SugarCRM board of directors, which is something that few of us, if any, had foreseen. This is exciting news.

With David Roberts, who succeeded Craig Charlton in September 2024, SugarCRM itself has a new CEO with a long time CRM pedigree.

As with every leadership change, this promises some change. Every new CEO evaluates what they see vs. where they want their company to go and then, together with the team, establishes and executes a plan to get there. Usually, this involves some change in the structure of the executive leadership team, too.

This is what happened and happens with SugarCRM. The company had and has a strong leadership team, with new faces like Paul Farrell (joined in March 2024), Jason Glass, and soon a new Chief Customer Officer – although with Christian Wettre or Chris Pennington some other strong players left for various reasons.

As I have written in the past, the company has a great yet varied history and, more importantly, potential due to great software. What SugarCRM to some extent is missing is a distinguishable identity. In a market that is as crowded as the CRM/CX market, differentiation is of crucial importance. As I have said and written before, SugarCRM’s messaging needs to change to avoid being perceived as a “me too” product.

Functionally, SugarCRM has a competitive sales solution, and fair marketing- and customer service solutions, plus a number of add-ons, some of them really interesting, e.g., sales-i, its intelligence add-on or Sugar Connect, which makes Sugar available outside the application frame. Whenever I conduct a software selection for clients of mine, I witness the strength of the Sugar Sell solution myself. It regularly makes it at least amongst the finalists and often gets selected by my clients. This is not only due to its capabilities but also thanks to strong performances and demos by the Sugar sales teams. And this is in spite of Sugar Sell resembling more of a toolbox than a preconfigured solution with built-in processes. Again, this is testament to the functional strength of Sugar Sell (although it has some deficiencies, too).

From a messaging point of view, really everyone (and their dog) talks about platform and being a CX player. SugarCRM needs to change away from these two points, as they also do not communicate much about outcomes, let alone value.

And Sugar will do this. More about this in a bit.

So far, Sugar’s value proposition revolves around the platform, automation, and discovering opportunities. Targeted personae include marketing, sales, and service leadership, although the winning chances in marketing and service against formidable opponents like HubSpot or Zendesk are slimmer than in the sales area – which does not mean that customers who chose Sugar Market or Sugar Serve are unhappy, on the contrary! Still, I regularly heard from Sugar executives that “we tend to win, when the customer need is sales, and not marketing driven.”

In addition, the messaging is a little about everything for everyone. It is not that Sugar doesn’t deliver but the value is not immediately clear. Add to that the fact that the flexibility offered by Sugar lets the fresh application appear a bit like a toolbox rather than a ready-to-use system.

To be fair, Sugar initiated a transition already more than a year ago, based upon the realization that the company is highly successful in the manufacturing, wholesale and distribution markets, in particular in the mid- and upper mid-market. This created an obvious focus area for the company. Yet, the message didn’t evolve enough to support this change.

After the analysis done by David Roberts and his management team, this is subject to change. One of the words we heard over and over during the analyst summit is “focus”, the other one is “aligned execution”. Both are terms that I strongly associate with Bob Stutz, so I see a formidable alliance of seasoned executives with similar values and passions joining forces now.

Which leads me to the strengthening of Sugar’s transition

David Robert’s vision for SugarCRM can be summarized with “boldly focus on our strengths while not forgetting about our customer base – and be clear about it”. The new Sugar strategy, including an upcoming more specific tag line revolves around it, from a product- and technology view, but encompassing GTM and partner strategy. Stay tuned, I cannot and will not take away the thunder. So, a drumroll here …

My point of view and analysis

The strategy is straightforward and consistent. As said, it builds upon earlier realizations and extends a change that is ongoing for more than a year now.

Its risk, apart from the human aspect (not everyone lets readily go of ingrained habits) lies in not to antagonize the existing customer base outside the sharpened ideal customer profile (ICP). This requires a balance that is hard to maintain. Yet, keeping churn numbers low via word and action is of crucial importance.  So, careful balancing and execution is key. I am quite sure that Bob Stutz can and will give great advice, as he has executed this kind of strategic shift multiple times.

One thing that is really refreshing and creating signal in the noise is the notable absence of “agentic AI”. Instead of focusing on buzzwords, SugarCRM looks at AI as a means to achieve business objectives. I regularly advise my clients that AI is a means, not an end. Communicating it as such is far more powerful than jumping on the buzzword train.

The executive team that we met on the analyst day seems fully on board, which is extremely important, as following through do mean some changes, not in the least some more process rigor and some preparational work, which is ongoing.

Given all this, I am excited about 2025 and 2026 and very interested in seeing how Sugar evolves. Repositioning will take a bit, but I see a sweet future for SugarCRM.

Sorry, I could not resist this one.

Cloud Wars’ Bob Evans recently did an excellent and very interesting interview with SAP CEO Christian Klein about SAP’s priorities, which include integrating generative AI with SAP Business AI “to address complex business challenges an drive holistic transformation by optimizing processes like quote to cash”.

Klein repeatedly referred to end-to-end (E2E) and SAP’s great library of E2E processes that gives the essence of or at least a standardized framework for the value streams within a business.

Not surprisingly, and correctly so, Klein also repeatedly emphasized the value of AI and, in particular, generative AI, to create customer value. This happens via Joule’s ability to orchestrate different agents across the value chain, i.e., different E2E processes. Joule is SAP’s Ai assistant. He also emphasized on the value of the suite and on the importance to “in the core business” not run with “agents of 100s of different tech companies”. This is where “the suite is winning”.

Evans writes that SAP had “significant growth in applications, outpacing competitors. Klein attributes this to SAP’s suite approach, which provides a comprehensive solution for core business processes. He talks about the importance of integration and extensibility, allowing customers to choose the best solutions for their needs.” This is technically a correct statement. I am fairly sure that SAP will report another outstanding year on January 28, 2025. In the first three quarters of FY 2024 SAP certainly outpaced the cloud business applications competition, including Salesforce.

However, there is a caveat to it. This growth is largely attributable to S/4HANA cloud.

Don’t get me wrong, doing this is no mean feat. SAP profitably grows while transforming from an on-premises vendor to a cloud and AI vendor of business applications. This is big as it essentially means that the company cannibalizes its own cash cow on the way.

Klein also positions SAP as an enabler of holistic business processes and an E2E solution provider. Again, this is correct. Heck, I have been inside SAP for more than a decade and am observing the company even longer since then. And for the record, I have nothing than admiration for this awesome company - well, apart from a bit of sadness perhaps.

Why sadness you ask?

MyPoV

SAP has the smarts and the muscle to pull off and execute on an enterprise applications strategy that Christian Klein describes it in the interview with Bob Evans. Even more so in what I would call the dawn of AI. SAP is actually one of the very few companies on this planet that has the ability to pull off a stunt like this, especially while also finalizing its own transformation to a cloud (and AI) vendor.

However, SAP suffers from a major blind spot and that is its less than credible effort on the demand side of the E2E processes. SAP says that the suite is winning because of the AI side, yet it belittles the CRM/CX part of this suite.

Cases in point: With hybris, SAP acquired in 2013 the then leading B2B and B2C ecommerce platform. At this time and for some more years, both the B2B- and the B2C variants marked the top right end of the corresponding Gartner Magic Quadrants. Now, they are barely within the leader quadrant. I will not discuss the value of these reports here. The other one is the biannual IDC report on CRM market share. In the summer 2024 report, SAP held the 5th spot. Now, I hear you saying fifth ain’t bad, and certainly it sounds good. Until you remember that they have been second and you look at the current third place: Adobe. Why is this staggering? Well, Adobe is great in marketing and and good at e-commerce. Now, one can dispute two things here: One can say that e-commerce is not part of CRM and the value of the report. Again, no point for discussion here. 

The Emarsys acquisition with the subsequent announcement of sunsetting the SAP Marketing Cloud directly after massive investments into making its Marketing Cloud B2B ready. Well, Emarsys, as the vast majority of other marketing solutions is a B2C solution, albeit a good one. However, there is no migration path, but a reimplementation. In addition, SAP’s core clientele is B2B. Or, how about Salescloud V2 without a migration path from v1? Again, I do not say that these decisions have been wrong, but they shine a light.

Some more personal examples: In 2017 and 2018 SAP had the good idea to hire some salespeople from Adobe, to push its marketing solution. One of them told me that he had a hard time getting to talk to his former client and prospect contacts “because SAP doesn’t have a marketing solution”. Well, it had … To close off with this topic, around 10 years ago, SAP managed to oust itself out of the CRM market in Australia and New Zealand. Why? Strategy: SAP CRM was unsellable at that time. The cloud products weren’t quite ready by then. When they were ready, salespeople weren’t quite incentivized for selling them. The result, when this was finally corrected? See above. 

Why do I bring all this up?

A solid strategy in the CRM and CX markets looks different. And with that, there is a gap in the E2E story that Klein tells. A big one. And this gap extends into the strategy.

Why? Glad you asked. Let me explain.

The brief version is that it needs a lot of demand side aka CRM/CX data to train and then inform the AI. It is good to have an abstraction layer on top of other vendor’s data structures but that’s not enough as it complicates the software stack, which makes it more expensive, which reduces its value. SAP has all it needs and just needs to take more advantage of it.

Again, I hear the resounding ‘Why? SAP has a very strong position in the very attractive ERP market, which it needs to defend and extend’. This is true, while arguable the CRM and CX market meanwhile is bigger and faster growing than the ERP market.

However, if I compare ERP with the castle that SAP defends, its defensive system has a couple of holes while this castle is under ‘attack’ from different angles.

The simple truth is that SAP needs a strong and credible customer facing systems strategy and systems to stay credible and successful in the enterprise software market. Or else, there is the risk of becoming a niche vendor. Yes, you heard it right, I just called the ERP market a niche of the enterprise software market.

Now, what are these angles that I talked about?

• There are tier 1 vendors that offer a similarly broad and wide functionality while having more credibility in the CRM and CX market. These vendors are Oracle, and to a lesser extent, Microsoft.
• There are tier 1 vendors that, on top of delivering credible enterprise software, also have a strong infrastructure play. These are Oracle and Microsoft.
• There are tier 1 vendors that come from SAP’s open CRM and CX flank and offer a land-and-expand strategy via their AI. These are Salesforce, and to a lesser extent, Adobe.
• There are tier 2 vendors that offer a similar functional breadth - not necessarily depth. Some of these are NetSuite, ServiceNow or Zoho.

All of the above mentioned vendors, and some more that I did not mention here, have strong platforms, ecosystems, and LC/NC capabilities. More importantly, they offer quite strong AI capabilities. 

And AI platforms are the next battleground in this iteration of the Clash of the Titans. That’s why belittling CRM and CX software is a problem. Today, more than ever, enterprise software has become a platform game. And SAP is inviting strong and aggressive competitors in its house, its customer base, by leaving this corner open. From then on platform ownership at the customers means a fight for the data, i.e., an AI competition. It is not likely that customers want to run multiple different AI platforms, especially if they are integral parts of the business functionality - or worse, the business functionality is made integral to the AI platform, which is similar to what Satya Nadella suggested by reducing ERP to a CRUD layer on the database.

In this situation, the decision to harmonize on one of the available platforms lies only one little step away. After all, the introduction of AI is all about efficiency at this time. Why pay twice for very similar capabilities while using only one?

And it is unlikely that all these decisions are in favor of SAP.

The good news is that this challenge can be addressed quite easily by SAP.

Stop belittling your own CRM and CX chops

Again, SAPs E2E and AI stories are generally strong! Still, they can be made more credible and convincing.

I suggest three fairly simple actions that can be initiated by SAP to strengthen the own position

• The C-suite needs to talk more about CRM and CX to create a signal. Quote to Cash is great. Everyone believes that SAP’s ERP solutions can do this well. How about using more examples from Market to Order? It is not enough when the head of the CX division rings the CX bell. This is just noise.
• Work more and more consistently with the analyst and influencer community. This process, admittedly, seems to have started. Still, the perception of SAP amongst this community is between not good and abysmal. Turning this community helps turning market perception. 
• Evaluate and then offer more CRM core functionality as integral parts of S/4HANA. The more relevant CRM is in S/4HANA, the less need there is for SAP customers to shop elsewhere. The difficulty lies in finding the right mix to not cannibalize the CX division.

There we are. I said it. Am I wrong? Happy to discuss! Tell me what you think!

It is hard to believe but another year just flew by. It was a year that was defined by considerable hope and hype about generative technologies. It also means that another year lies ahead of us, a year that may or may not bring change.

It also means that I get asked again for my outlook for CRM, CX and AI, and what are relevant industry trends to observe. As said, last year everything revolved around generative AI and I consequently looked at what’s going to happen on the front of CX and generative AI. Let’s look at how good my glass ball did work before looking at 2025.

In summary, I postulated that there will be

• More success stories (partly right)
• more sophisticated use cases (partly right, although I didn’t really look at agentic AI)
• a flurry of more specialized models (yep)
• more companies starting to look at the ROI of implementations (partly right again, as there is still a lot of experimentation going on)
• a strong platform play going on (spot on, but this, frankly, wasn’t too hard to postulate)

But what will come in 2025?

What do some of the big dogs say about gen AI?

As a little side note to the adoption and ROI topics, there are two interesting studies, one from the Wharton School and the Forrester Research predictions. The Wharton study basically indicates that 2024 has been a year of experimentation while 2025 will more be a year of adoption and deployment, with rather slowing growth of investment. The study authors suspect that this is a sign that companies are still looking for the ROI of their investment and on continuing with the right ones. Forrester Research, in several of their predictions for 2025 cautions that companies with a fixation “on AI ROI will scale back” investments prematurely. Similarly to what Wharton School suspects, Forrester recommends to “pick differentiating use cases leveraging company-specific data and expertise, and create a roadmap that balances short-term and longer-term business ROI”.

Not wanting to brag, but this is what I already wrote in my CustomerThink column in March, 2023. It’s always good to get some confirmation ;)

“Formulate KPIs that you want to improve and build a case around them. One of the KPIs needs to be the accuracy of the responses given by the system. There is no point in causing rework.

After this, identify the most pressing scenarios and build a prototype. Measure the outcome and take it from there, one step after the other.

A bit more enterprising? Try personalized marketing messages that are created by generative AI, in combination with generated content like easier blogs and product descriptions. Again, do this in a controlled environment, defining and measuring KPIs that you want to improve.

The technology emerged and will be there to stay. Use it with a think big — act small mindset and regularly re-prioritize.”

So, what’s really up for CRM and CX in 2025?

So, here comes. Agentic AI will become a major force especially in service scenarios in nearly no time. Vendors will continue their story line of human augmented by AI but especially call center operators that are under constant price pressure will opt for a strong automation. In doing so, we will see a number of high-profile setbacks, but eventually, the implementations will work out for them and for their customers (which is not the end customer). Vendors willing to go for outcome-based pricing like Zendesk, Salesforce’s Agentforce ROI calculator, and a 2024 commissioned Forrester study on The Total Economic Impact™ of Salesforce Service Cloud strongly, as well as other case studies, hint into this direction.

In summary, we will see more service automation – not only on the customer side, but also towards employees.

In general, (generative) AI beyond the fairly simple use cases that we see so far will be more and more ingrained into CRM and CX solutions also to reduce the time to value and increase the ROI of advanced capabilities but also to reduce the total cost of ownership. This does require two things, namely a strong data foundation for the whole enterprise and secondly, a consistent software infrastructure.

Given this, scale and platform will become even more a topic, or else it will be increasingly hard to deliver value.

Talking about ROI and time to value, one also needs to talk industry solutions. We see industry solutions (or industry clouds) for quite a while now. This trend will increase, also in combination with preconfigured systems that require less time and investment for getting them up and running. Implementation timelines and cost for system integrators are more and more challenged in times of time to value.

In combination with this, there will be more of what I would call blurring of the lines between front- and back office. Whether this blurring eventually leads to a vanishing of this largely artificial concept remains to be seen – although I doubt it as it can be and is used as a positioning statement. Still, vendors will focus more on the corporate value chain, as standalone CRM implementations are largely a thing of the past in established businesses. This is also evidenced by the increased deployment of “corporate data platforms”, be they called data cloud or datasphere or ODI or something entirely different.

Last, but not least, one of my favorites: The conversation will become the new UI. We increasingly see the need to support more and more channels, including messengers and collaboration tools like MS Teams, or Slack, or Zoho Cliq. We also for quite some time see the demand for the CRM being where the user is, literally as well as digitally. The former is catered for by mobile apps, the latter by an increasing ability to interact with the system via querying it in human language via collaboration tools or messengers. This is powered by the capabilities of language models and a very important advancement.

So, these are my predictions. What are yours? Let me know.

Whether you do or don’t, have a peaceful season, get some rest and let’s continue to improve the world of CRM and CX next year.  

The news

On Monday, July 22, 2024, SAP presented its numbers for Q2 and H1, 2024.

The highlights include:

• Cloud backlog up by 28% (27% in Q1)
• Total revenue up 10% (8% in Q1)
• Cloud and software revenue up 10% (9% in Q1)
• Cloud revenue up 25% (24% in Q1)
• Cloud ERP suite revenue up 33% (31% in Q1)

This in combination with an increasing margin. The total revenue growth and high profitability needs to be seen in the context of the company's still ongoing cloud transformation, with continuously decreasing software license and support revenues.

Obviously, the financial community liked these numbers, as can be seen by the jump of SAP’s share price by more than 5 per cent from about $200 to $212 after releasing the earnings numbers.

According to CEO Christian Klein, a lot of this success can be attributed to SAP’s AI strategy. Klein stated that almost a fifth of all closed deals included premium AI use cases.

A grain of salt in the soup is the employee engagement index that is part of the non-financial outlook. SAP reduced the 2024 target from 76 – 80 per cent in Q1 to 70 – 74 per cent.

The bigger picture

To put this in perspective with cloud juggernaut Salesforce, the total revenue growth is comparable with the Salesforce Q1, 2025 statement. Salesforce’s revenue grew by 11 per cent and the current performance obligation by 10 per cent. Also, in contrast to Salesforce, SAP reiterated and strengthened its outlook instead of painting a more muted picture.

The main competition in the next months and years will happen in the area of AI infused services. There is an increasing skepticism of the cost-value equation offered by generative AI. There is also an increasing awareness of a continuing need for specialized models. In fact, there is a report commissioned by vultr that shows that advanced businesses run on average 175 models and do not rely on a one model fits all strategy. At the same time, investment bank Goldman Sachs asks whether generative AI delivers enough return for its cost.

Consequently, there need to be – and will be – serious efforts in showcasing the value that is offered by AI instead of continuing to build on the continuation of the current generative AI hype. Vendors will increasingly look at delivering high value use cases that actually solve business challenges beyond making this or that more efficient (often on cost of the employee) and/or close capability gaps.

My analysis and point of view

SAP’s revenue numbers basically tell that the company increasingly and profitably transforms itself into a cloud company with a focus on cloud ERP. The cloud ERP revenue growth continues to outpace the overall cloud revenue growth. In fact, cloud ERP makes up 82.2 per cent of the cloud revenue in Q2, 2024, up from 80.6 per cent in Q1. Depending on how the exact – and undisclosed – revenue distribution and allocation is, this means that SAP’s CX business is not big and not a focus. This is something that the SAP CX line of business shares with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Still, albeit on a lower base, it’s growth should outpace Salesforce’s growth, which is mostly driven by integration and analytics services, plus Slack.

The continuous strength of SAP’s cloud ERP growth is also a sign that the two-pronged strategy of favoring cloud delivery when it comes to innovation and SAP RISE seems to work out.

That customers are willing to buy the company’s “premium AI services” shows that SAP is able to convince its customers that these services offer appropriate value. Apparently, SAP is communicating that it is addressing the right problems. However, not all of these AI solutions will be underpinned by sufficient data that is available to customers to prove this proposition, yet. So, it will remain crucial for SAP to deliver the hard data that shows it. Yes, this challenge is mitigated by SAP’s approach of looking at telemetry data to identify usage patterns and therefore use cases to address. This is one of the core values of SAP’s AI hub. Still, it will remain important to maintain the right balance between services that are part of the core subscription and those ones that warrant an additional fee. Not every customer will appreciate or understand a vendor’s desire to charge a premium for functionality that gets increasingly commoditized. After all, the subscription fee for a solution does also cover its ongoing development and not only the fixing of defects. And these days, many features that make a vendor’s solution attractive, are at least AI infused. Also, many of these features did exist before the current hype, just that they were implemented differently – with differently not necessarily meaning in an inferior way.

The other part that I miss is a stronger emphasis on the support of customer facing processes. SAP has competitive sales and service solutions, with Emarsys, it has a very interesting marketing solution, commerce is on the verge of recovering. Even, probably especially following a strategy that combines industry and customer facing processes, it is time to increase the visible profile of SAP’s CX solution set. After all, to quote Milton Friedman the business of SAP’s customers is business. And to make business, it needs customers. These are engaged using a CX solution set.

Which should make CX quite an important line of business for SAP.

Having said all this, yes, it appears that SAP is indeed on a steamroll and the company is not unlikely to become the biggest business software vendor worldwide once more – major acquisitions of Salesforce pending.

The news

On May 29, 2024, Salesforce reported its results for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2025. Highlights are

• a total quarterly revenue of $9.133bn US, resembling a year-over-year growth of 11 percent
• a current remaining performance obligation of $26.4bn US
• a remaining performance obligation of $53.9B US
• an operating margin of 18.7 percent.
• Diluted earnings per share of $1.56

The company reported a revenue guidance of $9.2bn - $9.25bn US for the next quarter and a full year guidance of $37.7bn - $38.0bn US, resembling growth rates of 7 – 8 percent and 8 – 9 percent, respectively.

With these numbers, Salesforce ended up at the lower end of last quarter’s guidance on the revenue growth side while exceeding the earnings per share projection and slightly lowered the guidance for the fiscal year 2025.

The result: The company’s share price dropped from $272 to bottom out at $212.

The bigger picture

Salesforce is the big gorilla in the CRM and CX industry. The company has surpassed SAP as the biggest business software vendor in the last 18 months. This is largely thanks to the extraordinary growth that Salesforce showed in the past years and secondly because of SAP’s still ongoing transition from an on-premises vendor to become a cloud vendor.

All three, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP report a higher cloud application growth.

But then, the big games in town are generative AI and infrastructure. All of these companies, including Salesforce, are investing heavily in their own artificial intelligence capabilities in a race to provide superior business applications. Plus, several other ones, including Google and, specialist vendors. Google also eyes Hubspot, which could bring the company a foot in the business applications market, too. Oracle has a great game going on with its AI database.

Re IaaS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle have an edge, even SAP has more of an infrastructure play than Salesforce.

And then, the titans Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP are continuously fighting their way downmarket while defending their enterprise market positions. There are many smaller vendors that attack these four titans from below. These smaller vendors often have a pricing structure that is more conducive to smaller businesses and are not so much perceived as a threat just because of the mere size difference.

My point of view and analysis

Let’s start with the obvious. While Salesforce’s Q1/2025 numbers aren’t stellar, a valuation drop of twenty(!) percent following these numbers is just ridiculous. It basically shows that either the valuation (AI) models of finance investors are overvaluing Salesforce by far, there is too much automation in their buying/selling processes – or they smoke funny stuff. After all, finance investors have forced Salesforce to abandon its 25-year strategy of buying growth, on cost of margin. Now there is margin and slower growth, as the investors wanted it to have.

Surely, Salesforce reduced its guidance and, for the first time in a long time, looks at single digit growth. Again, this doesn’t warrant this steep drop. See above.

From a solution point of view, Salesforce is positioned quite well in the CX market. The company has established itself as the undisputed market leader, especially for bigger companies. With Salesforce Starter and Pro, it has further established a credible motion into the small business market – although I am still in doubt about perceptions. Many smaller or mid-sized companies that I work with or speak to have concerns about the difference in sizes. They do not want to be mere numbers and fear that they are not treated eye-to-eye. Whether this fear is justified or not, it is real.

Salesforce successfully positioned itself as a platform vendor, which is quite remarkable, considering where the company started. It is working on being regarded as a data and AI player.

There are some more challenges. The first and most top-of-mind challenge these days, is AI, or rather data. That Salesforce sees this challenge, too, is shown by the recent attempt at acquiring Informatica. The challenge is not necessarily about cleanliness of data, but about its availability. And, in contrast to SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, its access to business relevant data is quite limited. This basically limits the power of own models and hence, of the overall Einstein architecture. Unless Salesforce or Salesforce customers purchase the access to this data or provide a stable connection to other business systems – which still limits the amount of data available. As a reference, SAP claims that eighty (80!) percent of all business transactions at one point or another run through an SAP system and that more than 26,000 customers have already consented to their data being used to train SAP’s AIs. Microsoft has software covering much of the corporate value chain, OpenAI and significant business transaction data, too. Oracle’s business applications cover the business value chain, it has its cloud database engine and with that serious access to data of different kinds as well. These are serious advantages.

The other advantage they have, is IaaS. Salesforce is not an IaaS player. While the company operates own data centers, it heavily relies on AWS as its infrastructure provider. This not only limits its ability to get to additional data via workloads but creates a strategic dependency. As long as AWS does not significantly enter the business applications market, this is not a major issue.

All in all, Salesforce seems to be in big company growth territory. The company has some challenges to address, it is by no means invincible. Still, it is doing the right thing, mostly.

Well done, Salesforce!

It is this time of the year. Everybody (and their dog), has some predictions for 2024. As you can guess, reading this, I am participating in this game.

Last year, I published three humble wishes to better the industry – and I am sad to say, that my three wishes stay wishes also in 2024. I’d say that this is partly because 2023 became the year of generative AI. We all know why.

Pretty much every vendor got caught flat-footed by the meteoric rise of OpenAI.

Correspondingly, in the course of 2023, we have seen a huge number of pre-announcements of one generative AI scenario or another being integrated into their software and then offered by enterprise software vendors.

Mostly, these announcements were about low-hanging fruit. Which does not mean that they are useless or not valuable, quite on the contrary. Solutions, once they are available, have the potential to increase employee productivity and the customer experience.

But, they are announcements or early adoptions.

So, based on this, what will we see in 2024? And let’s limit ourselves to the realms of CRM, CX and customer engagement.

Success stories

The more announcements of something being available soon turn into actual usage, we will be able to see actual success stories. Customers will more and more move from trial mode to actually addressing business challenges and measure the degree of success of an implementation by the change of KPIs that can be attributed to this implementation. In some instances, we can see this already starting. Diginomica’s Jon Reed recently interviewed a representative of Loop insurance who gave some highly interesting insight into Loop’s implementation of a Large Language Model based chatbot for customer service. With the competition getting fiercer on all levels (vendors as well as their buyers), we will see this a lot more.

More sophisticated use cases

For all that it’s worth, and naturally, vendors started with the implementation of fairly simple use cases like the summarization of a text/conversation, writing an email, providing answers to questions etc. Even writing code. In 2024, we will see the adoption of more sophisticated use cases, e.g., the improvement and creation of customer service documents based on service interactions, or the more rigorous pre-testing of campaigns using (generated) personas, we can even think of the creation of whole ABM campaigns – and why not thinking of truly individualized content based on individual’s interactions with one or more companies?

The emergence of specific foundation models

This one is related to the rise of more sophisticated use cases. One of the fundamental flaws of LLMs is that they do not know anything about the industry my company is active in, me as a company, or my customers. General LLMs are also not likely to learn this, as the necessary data is highly proprietary. Not many vendors have access to the necessary data – and the capability to build business foundation models. Still, to increase the accuracy of models it is extremely important to have and to be able to apply this knowledge. Vendors with access to this data will soon publish industry and business specific models that will help improve generation of the right content and to facilitate data driven decision making. Keep an eye out for vendors like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and Zoho.

On top of this, my bias is your truth and my ethics are different from yours. Groups of people with different cultural backgrounds do have different value- and belief systems. These require different sets of guardrails that govern different views on what is toxic or acceptable and what not. This means that there cannot be a one foundation model fits it all approach. Instead, we will see the emergence of models with regionally different guard rails although this can be partly covered by fine-tuning existing models.

Return on investment

The training and running of large models is expensive – incredibly expensive. They use a lot of compute power and therefore require power hungry chips – lots of them – and the corresponding cooling. Creating yet another generation of more performing chips helps only that far, especially since the possible savings that these more efficient chips promise are likely to be morphed into higher profits for the chip manufacturers. Remember, there isn’t that much of competition in this area. This will at least for some time break the trend of ever-growing models. We will see some smaller ones, specialized ones, that can be run more efficiently while not significantly losing accuracy.

Platform play

AI, generative AI is a platform play. Platform plays favor the bigger players. The current 800-pound gorilla is OpenAI. According to CB Insights OpenAI has an estimated revenue of more than 6 times of the closest competitor – Anthropic. This, btw, is probably the one and only reason why OpenAI might not end up as a Microsoft subsidiary. As a consequence, we will see a lot more specialization of LLM vendors and likely some tuck-in acquisitions by enterprise vendors in (perceived) need of an own technology.

Exciting times ahead.

What do you think?

Zoho is well known as a vendor for business applications geared towards SMBs. As many other companies do, Zoho wants to support the upper mid-market and enterprises, too. After all, successful SMBs may grow into become enterprises and that might attract other enterprises. So, there are a good number of good reasons to also support upper mid-market and large businesses. The company has actually followed this path for about five years and has set up an enterprise business solutions team to deliver solutions for enterprises.

Still, it is a better kept secret that Zoho already has considerable momentum in the upper mid-market and enterprise segments. Zoho achieved a 65 percent year-over-year growth. The enterprise segment now represents about one third of the business. 

During its signature event Zoholics in Austin, the company on May 4, 2023, changed this and revealed its enterprise strategy. This strategy ultimately rotates around four pillars: Go-to-market, platform, new applications and enhancements, plus security and privacy.

Zoho also backed up its continuing success story by inviting some customers to present their journey with Zoho as a panel and talking individually to analysts and media. 

Marshall Lager and I had the opportunity to speak with Zoho’s head of CX marketing strategy, Prashanth V K. We had a lot of questions and opened up with a barrage about what the customer profile for the Zoho enterprise business is. The interview can be watched here.

Starting with the definition of mid-market: Zoho defines mid-market companies as companies ranging from one hundred to one thousand employees; and Zoho has considerable momentum in this range of companies. In conclusion, enterprises are above this threshold. The second consideration is complexity, which tends to increase with size. Revenue is no consideration, as this is too volatile across regions and industries.

Add growth into the equation and Zoho naturally expands into the enterprise sector. With its platform, Zoho facilitates business growth, and grow Zoho’s customers did, as they could concentrate more on their business, as opposed to their business systems. As Prashanth maintains, “It was a natural logical extension” for Zoho. For some years now, Zoho addresses the enterprise market more strategically, by building internal capabilities like account management, customer success, onboarding, implementation capabilities, etc., that are bundled in an Enterprise Business Solutions unit. To increase its reach and implementation abilities, Zoho also established and continues to establish partnerships with SIs around the world, enabling them to sell the simplicity of the platform and therefore drive value for their customers, including a focus on industries, while Zoho focuses on the horizontal platform “to make it efficient for partners to build the vertical solutions”. These partners are also increasingly brought in to deals. This is crucial to increase trust in the SI ecosystem. Joining forces like this also helps making a successful bid as this demonstrates product-, industry- and delivery experience in a cooperative setting. It shows one face to the customer. 

The starting focus was on global SIs. As Prashanth notes, Zoho wants to regionalize the go-to-market approach and “to eventually establish regionally relevant partnerships”. This allows Zoho to deliver more and better industry solutions, as regional implementation partners not only have deep regional but also deep industry experience.

The third factor taken into account is product maturity. Here, the CX line of solutions is certainly leading. Additionally, Zoho being Zoho, it is also about where customers see value. “We're also seeing, based on the region, a certain amount of larger enterprise traction for various products. Some prefer our finance products some our employee experience products. In some cases, our workplace productivity and collaboration platforms as well” says Prashanth, continuing, “There's a whole ton of no code and local extensibility that we already offer as well. So, we are able to punch way above the weight of an individual product. If you take an individual product to put it under a microscope, you may find that it may fall short in some cases in terms of Enterprise. But because of this vast layer of extensibility, we're able to jump in and cover those.”

Lastly, by continuously analyzing use cases across industries for commonalities, Zoho can bring back commonalities into its horizontal platform, making them available to all customers. The result is that customers need to maintain less and less custom code, as more and more of these use cases are already covered in the horizontal platform without harassing partnerships. This, again, increases the value of the deployment.

All this boils down to the platform. It provides the simplicity that enables businesses to move fast while not depending on the IT department. That way, business decisions can be taken faster, changes can be implemented faster and important personnel can be assigned to do more beneficial and less onerous work to enable the business to enter new avenues of growth. In some instances, where Zoho replaced another software, the customer was able to “maintain the Zoho deployment, with, as many as 10x fewer people, something like that up to 10x fewer people”, which is an extraordinary display of value. 

In summary, Zoho has and continues to evolve around two main axes, technology and target customers. From a technology point of view, there is a move from single applications to solutions and platform, while the addressable market grew from small businesses to now also include enterprises. This evolution revolves around value for customers, driven by a good customer experience.Or in Prashanth’s words: “the thing with Zoho is that we've spent over 20 years, building out this vast mountain of capabilities. I may say that we've also successfully transitioned from a product mindset to a platform mindset, six or seven years ago. And from there, we've transitioned from a small business mindset, largely to an all-business mindset where we do have to approach each segment with the customer experience requirements that it deserves. And the one thing that remains constant across all of these, is the Simplicity that we bring to the market, to the customer to the customer experience to all of this, right? That Simplicity is that is the core tenet, which we want to be identified and we want to be the vendor who simplifies the CX stack or the EX stack, or the workplace stack when large organizations move from their incumbent vendor to us.”

The following article is an excerpt of a White Paper by Customerization’s Kira Tchernikovsky. Kira is the co-founder and CMO of this Canadian consulting company that focuses on helping SMBs stand out through superior business automation.

You can download the full white paper here.

Customer experience (CX) is how a customer feels about a company over time. Creating great CX is about positive emotions, building trust, and leaving a lasting impression with customers.

Orchestrating excellent customer experience is essential for building brand loyalty and increasing customer retention. It's also becoming increasingly important as more and more clients. B2C and B2B, choose to do business with companies who personalize interactions and prioritize customer satisfaction.

While larger businesses have the resources to invest in Customer Experience (CX), small businesses (and by small we mean <200 employees) face unique challenges in providing an outstanding CX.  

Here are a few common challenges for small businesses:

• Limited resources: Small businesses have limited financial resources and less employees to dedicate to a comprehensive customer experience solution. This makes it difficult to compete with larger businesses that have more resources to invest in customer experience initiatives.
• Lack of expertise: Small businesses may not have in-house expertise in areas such as customer experience design, research, and analytics. Therefore, it is not easy for SMEs to develop and implement an effective customer experience strategy.
• Limited data and insights: Small businesses may have limited access to customer data and insights, which in its turn, prevents them from objectively understanding customer needs, preferences, and pain points. How can they then build effective customer interactions and experiences?
• Limited technology resources: Small businesses often do not have the budget to invest in the latest technology solutions, such as personalized messaging or mobile apps, to enhance CX.

Nevertheless, when small businesses use technology and effective guidance for their customer experience initiative, they can overcome these challenges and turn them into advantages that help them grow their business.  

The importance of CX

Customer experience (CX) refers to customers' overall perception of a business based on their interactions with the company. CX has become increasingly important in recent years as customers expect more personalized and seamless experiences. In fact, 88% say experience matters as much as products, according to Salesforce's State of the Connected Customer report.

A study by Forrester Research found that companies that prioritize customer experience see a 5.1x revenue growth compared to those that don't. While the exact ROI will depend on the specifics of each business, research has shown that companies that prioritize customer experience tend to outperform their competitors in terms of revenue growth and customer retention.

So, where is this revenue growth coming from? A good customer experience leads to your customers spending more. In fact, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.

The global customer experience management market was valued at USD 10.65 billion in 2022 and is expected to expand at a significant compound annual growth rate CAGR of 15.4% from 2023 to 2030. This market growth can be attributed to the mounting importance of understanding customer behavior and their preferences, which drives various brands and organizations to implement customer experience strategies, such as regularly communicating and engaging with customers, developing a long-term program, and utilizing automation, to provide the best service performance to customers in real-time. 

The Challenges of Providing a Great Customer Experience for Small Businesses

While large businesses are investing significantly in customer experience because they have the resources (both financial and personnel), small businesses do face challenges in providing a Customer Experience at the same level. Let’s describe the key challenges:

• The first challenge is limited resources. Despite their size, small businesses need to invest in technology and personnel to provide a great CX. They also have limited data on their customers which makes personalization difficult.

• The second challenge is time. Small business owners often have to juggle multiple responsibilities, so they may need more time to focus on CX. Without time to prioritize CX, there can be a lack of consistency across the CX, negatively impacting the customer's perception of the business.

• Finally, small businesses often need more expertise in CX. They may need help knowing where to start or what strategies to use to improve their CX. Not knowing what to do next may cause a lack of confidence in implementing CX initiatives. This lack of confidence or direction often leads to analysis/paralysis or even head-in-the-sand behavior where companies pretend the opportunity cost isn’t hurting the business.

On the bright side, corporate environments may have more bureaucracy and layers of decision-making, which can slow down the implementation of CX initiatives. In contrast, SMEs may have more flexibility and agility to implement changes quickly but may lack the scale and resources of a larger company.

What Are The Key Components Of Customer Experience (CX)? 

Customer experience (CX) is built of several key building blocks that are relevant for any company, independent of size, industry, or geography. These building blocks are:

Customer journey mapping: CX begins with understanding the customer's journey from the first touchpoint to the last. Mapping out this journey helps to identify the specific steps the customer takes, any pain points they experience, and record opportunities for improvement. The company needs to get the understanding of what the journeys are in order to be able to improve the layout and connectivity of the touch points.

Customer feedback: Gathering feedback from customers is essential for understanding their needs and preferences, and for identifying areas where the company can improve. 

This can be done through surveys, customer support processes, social media, or other feedback channels.  

The ‘loop’ refers to the circular process of gathering feedback, acting upon what you’ve learned, and then asking for feedback again. 

Because this journey is circular, it describes an ongoing process that never really ends, but that should result in continuous improvement.

Personalization: Customers expect a personalized experience that is tailored to their specific needs and preferences. This requires companies to collect and analyze customer data, and to use that data to provide customized recommendations, offers, and interactions.

Omnichannel presence: Customers expect to be able to interact with companies through a variety of channels, including email, phone, chat, social media, and in-person. It's important for companies to provide a seamless experience across all these channels so that customers feel like they are dealing with one cohesive entity.

Research out of Adobe found companies that have the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies see 10% growth year-over-year. Plus, they increase order value by another 10% and improve close rates by 25%.

Employee engagement: Employees play a critical role in delivering a great customer experience. They need to be engaged, motivated, and well-trained in order to provide the level of service that customers expect. Employees also need the right tools at their disposal, and most importantly, to be empowered to act for the customer.

Continuous improvement: CX is not a one-time project, but an ongoing effort to improve the customer experience over time. This requires companies to collect and analyze data on an ongoing basis, and to use that data to make iterative improvements to their operations.

Overall, the key building blocks of CX are customer journey mapping, customer feedback, personalization, omnichannel presence, employee engagement, and continuous improvement. By focusing on these building blocks, companies can create a customer-centric culture that prioritizes the needs and preferences of their customers at every touchpoint.

The Future of Customer Experience for Small Businesses

The future of CX for small businesses will likely involve using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and conversational AI, as well as business processes that support customer interactions to drive revenue. 

These technologies help small businesses provide a more personalized and immersive CX. In reality, most small businesses will also need a guide and implementation experts to help them over the finish line.  

From understanding the current state of CX in the business to documenting goals, expert assistance around the business processes that need to change is a must-have. In addition, guidance on the best technology for a small business can be a game-changing experience.  

A guide is the secret sauce to making a great customer experience. It is not a one-time accidental piece of happiness but a well-thought-out strategy for maximizing revenue and increasing customer success. Small businesses should continue to focus on providing a seamless and consistent CX across all channels.

Recommendations for Small Business Owners

Small business owners can improve their Customer Experience by:

• Linking CX to business outcomes: Small businesses should tie the customer experience they want to create to the goals they have for their business.

• Investing in CX: Small businesses should prioritize CX and allocate resources accordingly.

• Collecting customer data: Small businesses should collect and analyze customer data to personalize the CX.

• Using automation: Small businesses should use automation to streamline the CX and free up time for other tasks.

• Focusing on consistency: Small businesses should focus on providing a consistent CX across all channels.

From the pre-internet dawn of segment-of-one marketing to the customer journey of the digital era, personalized customer experiences have unequivocally become the basis for competitive advantage. 

Interested in more? Download the white paper!