The needs of our interconnected world look a little different each year. As you set fresh business goals, it’s a good time to revisit your strategies to meet your customers where they are.
To connect with your audience in 2024, you’ll need to do more to market and deliver a great product or service. Now more than ever, your customers care about the quality of their experiences and where their money is going.
People are increasingly aware of the impact their financial decisions make, and are more likely to choose companies that align with their values. This is especially true of Millennial and Gen Z consumers. Putting your core values front and center will help your ideal customers find you.
Communicating your values shouldn’t begin and end with a blurb in your mission statement, though. According to Raconteur, demonstrating your environmental, social, and governance (ESG) credentials is becoming an important piece of any corporate marketing strategy.
Your company’s core values should be specific enough that you can clearly pinpoint how you apply them. Core values guide who you partner with and the kinds of everyday decisions you make — both internally and externally.
It’s not enough to pick a snappy phrase or popular cause to support. Your values should resonate with your team and lead to concrete, meaningful action.
Get clear on how your organization lives its values. Do these values inform your hiring practices or customer interactions? Does your organization donate time or money to specific causes? How do you apply a commitment to sustainability, human rights, or equity and inclusion?
It’s a good idea to proactively revisit your core values from time to time with a fresh perspective. Do these values still ring true? Is there something missing that belongs on your list of core values? Are there new opportunities to put them into action?
Creating a positive experience for your customers starts with your website and includes keeping your processes simple behind the scenes. Automating repetitive tasks is a great way to free up your staff for critical thinking, in-depth analysis, and sensitive customer interactions.
There are still limits to AI’s capabilities, but having an AI chatbot field FAQs interactively is one way to give customers more ease and control. Just make sure complex issues can be quickly redirected to a responsive human. This alone can do wonders for your customer experience and the mental health of your support staff.
Having an automated system that triggers actions between the various apps you depend on is a huge time-saver. With tools like Zapier, you can streamline tedious processes in your sales pipeline, manage and schedule content, and process data more quickly and securely. You’ll spend some time upfront making sure everything is set up efficiently, but workflow management tools are worth it.
Automating your security checks and server updates is a great way to safeguard your vital data, especially if you don’t have an IT or server management team on staff. If you need to deploy new software features quickly, working with a DevOps team can make life easier. With DevOps, you get secure, automated deployment processes along with professional IT support.