Customer Engagement Lessons from Innovative Brands from Across APAC

Over the last 18 months, as brands have had to accelerate their digital strategies like never before, savvy organizations have gained an advantage by bringing together multidisciplinary teams across marketing, data science, engineering, and more along with the latest customer engagement technologies to deepen relationships in authentic, human ways.

For insights on what these latest customer engagement best practices look like in this new normal, Forbes Asia and Braze invited top marketers and executives from across Southeast Asia and held a virtual Marketing Executives roundtable discussion, co-hosted by Rich Karlgaard, Editor-at-large and Futurist at Forbes Media, and Sara Spivey, Chief Marketing Officer, Braze, covering the timely theme, "Connecting the Dots."

Marketing leaders from Axiata Group Berhad, DBS Bank, Globe Telecom, Inc., Major Cineplex Group, Sayurbox, Sunway Group, Thai Airways, VNTrip.com, Zilingo, Kumu, and BookDoc shared the customer engagement lessons they've learned over the past 18 months, the investments they've made in people and platforms, and how they're setting priorities for their teams and customer engagement efforts moving forward.

Even before COVID-19 put the brakes on the global economy in early 2020, digital acceleration was arguably one of the biggest business challenges in the world. Then came the pandemic, and companies quickly figured out that it was essential to get smarter, quicker, and more agile—as fast as they possibly could—or risk rapidly losing ground.

As social distancing guidelines and restrictions were rolled out and consumer behavior began to shift, customers began exploring new shopping experiences and reevaluating their brand loyalties, with one uniform result: Customers were now demanding superior experiences during every step of the shopping, buying, and owning journey.

That meant that using technology to cut operating costs and do things faster wouldn't be enough. Brands had to step up their customer experience to stand out and stay competitive during the pandemic.

For lessons learned on how to do just that, check out the recording of this can't-miss Forbes Asia and Braze virtual roundtable discussion, now available to watch on demand, as leaders from across the region dive into:

• How they plan to invest in customer engagement technologies and teams in 2021: Almost two-thirds of 1,400 global executives are upping their investment in customer engagement technologies and teams and, at the same time, three-quarters worry that demonstrating the ROI of these investments will be challenging. Plus, gain insights on how to show results of your own investments.
• What they're doing to recruit, retain and retrain team members to foster customer engagement: What innovative companies have realized they need to do is invest not only in the right tools, but they also need to eliminate silos by bringing together the right individuals from across disciplines like marketing, engineering, and data science, and ensure they're aligned to common objectives. Beyond that, they're increasingly recognizing that engaging customers requires being there for employees, and keeping them engaged.
• What they see as their biggest opportunities when it comes to enhancing customer engagement, including adopting a culture of letting go fast, iterating and adapting, celebrating experimentation, and giving everyone permission to learn and grow.
• Key customer engagement priorities for 2021 and beyond, including orchestrating messaging across channels, getting personalization right, integrating marketing with technology, using data to understand customer pain points, and strengthening team engagement to drive customer outcomes.

Interested in learning more? See for yourself by watching this Forbes Asia and Braze virtual roundtable discussion.