#28: in the week of love, there's new (business) partnerships!??

Happy?Friday?and welcome! We're bringing you our roundup of industry news summarised in an exclusive LinkedIn newsletter. For more detail on any news featured here, check out 'This week in CX' on the?Customer Experience Magazine (CXM)?website .

In the news this week we're seeing a lot of new partnerships and collaborations - quite fitting given that Valentine's Day was only 3 days ago. This especially is the case when it comes to retail, following on from exciting brand new research.

parcelLab are assisting New Look with their post purchase experiences

??? The partnership will enable New Look to provide proactive messaging and personalised communications from purchase to delivery, and beyond.??

New Look’s decision to invest further in?the post-purchase experience?is part of a wider drive to continue leading in customer centric fashion. With the support of parcelLab , New Look will be enhancing the relationship with each individual customer by providing greater transparency and more personalised communications.

Leveraging parcelLab’s technology,?New Look will be able to undertake direct communications with customers, including important information updates on the status of their orders.?It will also enable the fashion brand to make personalised and relevant recommendations to shoppers on additional items they may be interested in based on previous purchase behaviour, supporting the brand’s growth aspirations.

boohoo are improving their delivery accuracy with the help of what3words

??? In the UK, deliveries can be challenging. Addresses aren’t always accurate, street names are often duplicated, postcodes cover broad areas, and specific building entrances can be hard to find. what3words is perfectly positioned to solve these problems. It has divided the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and given each square a unique combination of three words: a what3words address. For example, Queen Victoria’s Statue in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens can be found at liver.fled.comb.

The integration of what3words into Boohoo Group PLC 's services will enable slick and efficient deliveries for customers across their portfolio of brands. The feature has been launched on boohoo , boohooMAN.com , Nasty Gal , Dorothy Perkins , Misspap , and plenty more checkout pages.

Inaccurate and inconsistent street addresses can cause headaches for e-commerce businesses across the globe. Examples of how the what3words can help include locations such as houses in rural areas which can be hard to find, and delivery entrances to large apartment blocks and estates are not always clear.

The news follows what3words’ announcement of its latest partnership with DHL eCommerce UK . Both announcements demonstrate how what3words is revolutionising deliveries in the logistics and retail industries, and becoming a part of the solution to poor addressing in the UK.

Customer Engagement Platform?SALESmanago?has launched?CUPID Score

?? CUPID Score helps marketers to understand how effective their company is in building bonds with customers across five key areas:?Convenience,?Understanding,?Personalisation,?Intimacy and?Data. Marketers can?take the assessment for free?and receive a bronze, silver or gold CUPID Score certification based on their results.

SALESmanago ’s recent survey of 250 eCommerce marketers across Europe identified the need for better industry measurement. The survey found that almost a third (30%) would like to have a process to measure customer success metrics against industry benchmarks, and 28% believe having a certification or rating for customer engagement efforts would benefit their business. CUPID Score will help identify the successes and failures and provide further recommendations on how to improve customer intimacy.?

• Following a survey of 1,000 UK-based marketers, Impression has created a?report?delving into the thoughts and plans of marketing departments this year. 77% of professionals whose marketing budgets are expected to increase say their firm will also be looking to expand their internal marketing team in the next 12 months. Marketing professionals say 2023 will not be without its hurdles, however. Out of the 1,000 respondents, the majority cite the rising cost of living as the biggest business challenge. It’s followed by increased operational costs, supply chain and stock issues, and recruitment.?
• CloudShare , the product experience company, has published its?2023 State of Virtual Sales and Training Experiences?report. The big takeaway is that interest in virtual sales and training among B2B software vendors is growing rapidly. The ROI, enabled by modern tech and techniques has become more apparent. The use of tools that enabled B2B software vendors to engage customers online increased dramatically over the past few years. Despite the return of face-to-face meetings, that trend has continued. According to CloudShare’s 2023 report, vendors that used modern technologies increased participation, completion and engagement in virtual sales and training.?
• By 2026, Gartner predicts customer service functions that implement the “connected rep” will improve contact centre efficiency by 30%.?The connected rep is a strategy that enables customer service reps (CSRs) to perform high-quality assisted service at scale.
• Content Guru have?announced the global availability of enhanced conversational AI features within its?storm Machine Agent intelligent automation suite.?storm?platform users will benefit from enhanced control and detailed end-to-end reporting of the conversational AI capabilities within their services.

We have CXM-exclusive commentary on the future of ChatGPT for customer experience, from Alfred Kahn , CEO of OvationCXM:

Better communication technology will make AI customer interactions shorter, but more meaningful. [This will be] with increased contextual power for real-time support.?It’s a must-have in customer experience, but its future will depend on its integrations that surpass its current use.

Weaving ChatGPT into both external and internal-facing processes will inevitably streamline and enhance all levels of digital services.?As companies progress through this new and innovative learning period, we will begin seeing an expansion of its capacity. [We will also see] an all-important testing of the technology’s guardrails.”

CXM articles of the week

Are you caught up on the top articles we published this week? Give them a read if not!

Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. To find out the new coverages in full and more, remember to?check?this week's post . Check back?next Friday?for the latest updates of the week!