And here’s one more puzzle: a majority of consumers in this Mitel survey reported that customer experience has actually improved during the pandemic. The figure was 60% globally and 71% in the U.S. Don’t tell the folks at Snap that chatbots and virtual agents are consumers’ least favorite support channels.
Open source integration toolkit Rudderstack calls itself a Customer Data Platform, but they don’t meet the fundamental requirement of maintaining a persistent data store. What they do offer are tools for developers to move data between systems. If you’re looking for that, you can now try a free SaaS implementation for up to 500,000 events per month on Rudderstack servers.
Of course, when it comes to misalignment, nothing beats the marketing-IT relationship. This Infosys study finds that marketers see the biggest collaboration challenges as improving customer experience and agility while IT managers focus more on skills, company culture, and budgets. There’s a lot more here but the bottom line is companies with better collaboration get better results.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.