In this episode of TheCustomer News, Rafer and guests cover the headlines affecting the customer engagement spaces and follow-up with Part Two of a robust roundtable discussion on Re-aligning Retail Loyalty with:
- Lauren Pearson, Sr. Manager, CRM & Loyalty at rue21
- Amy Barnett, Sr. Director – CRM, Loyalty, & Insights at Famous Footwear
Headlines: 
More Martech, More Problems
A recent survey shows despite investing in Martech, marketers aren’t often equipped to build a CX at scale. On average marketing leaders lose 30 to nearly 40% of their time on manual work to make their stacks work. So Mike, what’s the solution.
First, the cloud solutions were going to be the universal marketing panacea but those promises have largely fallen short. Then the adjacent technologies and bespoke tech ecosystems were going to lead us all into the promised land. But it turns out, all that tech requires an incredible amount of managing and reconciling. The point is, unless your data can be assimilated across your ENTIRE marketing stack, you’re going to be investing in man-hours – potentiall lots of them – to make things work. Data governance, data portability and cross-function data syncing are key.
AI Doing More Harm Than Good?
ONLY HALF OF COMPANIES WITH MATURE AI CHECK THE FAIRNESS, BIAS, AND ETHICS OF THEIR PLATFORMS. AND THE RISKS OF UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES OR PREDICTIONS IS A WHOPPING 71%. BUT DESPITE THE POTENTIAL TO DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD THE FORMER ISN’T CONSIDERED A PRIORITY FOR MOST EXECUTIVES. MIKE, WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THIS?
I think this is a function of the maturity of AI being deployed so quickly and so broadly. Plus the idea that AI could produce biased or unethical results is a fairly new one. I think we’ll see this number go up over time as AI technologies become more ubiquitous and as companies become more aware of the potential drawbacks.
ACLU Taking Liberties with Your Data??
AN ARTICLE IN FORBES SAYS THE A-C-L-U, WHICH HAS RAILED AGAINST FACEBOOK FOR ITS DATA GATHERING STRATEGIES IS ACTUALLY GIVING FACEBOOK NAMES, EMAIL ADDRESSES AND PH0NE NUMBERS. MIKE, DOES THIS CONTRADICT THEIR POSITIONS AGAINST THE SOCIAL MEDIA GIANT?
I had to read that headline twice and then I had to do some further digging. The article called the ACLU a “frequent thorn in the side” of Facebook. I would call that a kind description. But if its true that the ACLU is calling out Facebook for its privacy practices from one side of its mouth and then passing user information to them out of the other side of its mouth, that amounts to brand treason. Certainly it’s the most egregious example of corporate inauthenticity that I’m aware of.
You can find past episodes of TheCustomer News here.
