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With the expansion of AI, it's time to rethink how you market, sell, and support your customers. Insights and strategies this new guide can help your software or IT company drive growth through building meaningful customer connections at scale.

Inventory and Checklist

In order to win in the age of AI, meaningful customer connections are a must. But it’s hard to put your best foot forward if you’re not even sure how far you are on your journey. By completing this checklist, you can not only get a sense of where you currently stand in regards to customer connection, but also know the actionable steps you can take to improve.

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Introduction: The Customer Journey is Changing

We are in an immense period of change.


In 2022, HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan introduced the “Crisis of Disconnection” and pointed to the shifts in consumer behavior, data, and technology as the pain point causing the slowdown of growth that many companies are facing.

Where people spend their time, how people buy, and how people share information is all different. Plus, what consumer data companies have access to, the quality of data that’s available, and the ability that companies have to act on that data has all changed. Folks are no longer meeting customers where they are at or with the context they need. As a result, we see in the market that lead generation is slowing, sales response rates are declining, and retention rates are dipping.
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In fact, 93% of business leaders report less-than-ideal connection with their data, system, internal teams, and with their prospects and customers.

Simply put, the traditional strategies companies have used to connect with their customers aren’t working anymore and it’s causing businesses to scramble on their way to growth.

More recently, a new factor has been added to the customer connection equation. You’ve seen the news and felt the impact on your own business. With every passing moment, generative AI is dramatically changing the old customer journey in front of our eyes and influencing how companies connect with customers in the process.


Yamini also told us the solution: customer connection. When HubSpot talks about “customer connection”, we are referring to more than your existing paying customers. We use the term customer connection to refer to your entire market, inclusive of both prospective buyers and customers alike.

The world was already changing with the crisis of disconnection. And now, with the advent of AI, the world is changing even faster.


Think about how far the internet has come in a few decades. Each phase has opened up new possibilities and transformed the way we live and interact:

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With that change comes a wealth of exciting opportunities ahead.

This is the best time to be a go-to-market leader. Yes, change in the world can feel scary at first. But all that means is new ways of achieving meaningful customer connection are emerging, and you get to be on the front lines of thinking through and building those new strategies.


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With AI we’ll see more access to intelligence, which will democratize the ability to understand, reason, and drive action with impact.

Most companies will get the AI strategy wrong on their first try. They will start cranking out vast volumes of content rather than focusing on value and focusing only on efficiency and neglecting the opportunity of optimizing for effectiveness. In the end, they’ll make the crisis of disconnection worse.


But you’re not most companies.


You’re going to get it right.


At HubSpot, our goal has always been to help you grow better. Right now that means empowering you to understand the most effective way to connect with your customers at every stage of this new, AI-influenced customer journey. We at HubSpot are obsessed with helping you find ways to connect with your customers and giving you not only the software -- but the strategies and approach to do it.


We decided the best way to offer you advice would be for us to dig into our most treasured source of knowledge -- our own incredibly remarkable customers.


We spent this past year digging deep into what the top 20% of growing HubSpot customers are doing to not only create meaningful customer connections, but harness those connections to drive growth in their businesses.


We call this remarkable group of folks “connectors.”

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Chapter 1: How to Get AI Right

As we mentioned before, the advent of AI makes this an extremely exciting time to be in business for several reasons.

At a high level, AI will help level the playing field with features that give you incredibly powerful content creation tools. For example, HubSpot’s AI features Content Assistant and ChatSpot both leverage the same large language model that OpenAI’s AI chatbot, ChatGPT, uses -- but conveniently packaged directly within your HubSpot portal.


Your natural instinct might be to run a strategy focused on efficiency and volume. Why? Because that is what your mindset has been in the past, and that’s what software up until today has offered to you for opportunities.


It’s true, you’ll be able to produce more content. And, you’ll be able to gain efficiency. But that’s not the path to winning AI and driving more customer connection and growth, and it’s how everyone else is going to start. That strategy can be impactful to a point, but what you should really be focusing on is how AI is going to drive you towards a higher value of engagement, benefit your customers, and help them achieve more of what they want.


Ultimately, winning AI and driving more customer connection and growth is more about value than volume, and more about effectiveness than efficiency.

Value Over Volume 

If you go down the path of using AI to produce a massive amount of content without a thoughtful strategy behind it, customers will go from digitally fatigued to digitally fed up.

Decisions, one of HubSpot’s connectors, knows there’s a better way to find success with AI.

Effectiveness Over Efficiency

Once you’ve established your “value over volume” strategy, the next step is to leverage AI to get the most out of your resources.

It’s not about doing more with less, it’s about doing more with more. AI is an additional resource for your already talented team to use and make them even more effective in their sales, marketing, and services roles through optimization. In this sense, AI helps level the playing field for you and gives you the opportunity to compete and punch above your weight class.

As we mentioned before, the advent of AI makes this an extremely exciting time to be in business for several reasons.

At a high level, AI will help level the playing field with features that give you incredibly powerful content creation tools. For example, HubSpot’s AI features Content Assistant and ChatSpot both leverage the same large language model that OpenAI’s AI chatbot, ChatGPT, uses -- but conveniently packaged directly within your HubSpot portal.

Your natural instinct might be to run a strategy focused on efficiency and volume. Why? Because that is what your mindset has been in the past, and that’s what software up until today has offered to you for opportunities.


It’s true, you’ll be able to produce more content. And, you’ll be able to gain efficiency. But that’s not the path to winning AI and driving more customer connection and growth, and it’s how everyone else is going to start. That strategy can be impactful to a point, but what you should really be focusing on is how AI is going to drive you towards a higher value of engagement, benefit your customers, and help them achieve more of what they want.


Ultimately, winning AI and driving more customer connection and growth is more about value than volume, and more about effectiveness than efficiency.

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Once you’ve established your “value over volume” strategy, the next step is to leverage AI to get the most out of your resources.

It’s not about doing more with less, it’s about doing more with more. AI is an additional resource for your already talented team to use and make them even more effective in their sales, marketing, and services roles through optimization. In this sense, AI helps level the playing field for you and gives you the opportunity to compete and punch above your weight class.

As we mentioned before, the advent of AI makes this an extremely exciting time to be in business for several reasons.

At a high level, AI will help level the playing field with features that give you incredibly powerful content creation tools. For example, HubSpot’s AI features Content Assistant and ChatSpot both leverage the same large language model that OpenAI’s AI chatbot, ChatGPT, uses -- but conveniently packaged directly within your HubSpot portal.

Your natural instinct might be to run a strategy focused on efficiency and volume. Why? Because that is what your mindset has been in the past, and that’s what software up until today has offered to you for opportunities.

It’s true, you’ll be able to produce more content. And, you’ll be able to gain efficiency. But that’s not the path to winning AI and driving more customer connection and growth, and it’s how everyone else is going to start. That strategy can be impactful to a point, but what you should really be focusing on is how AI is going to drive you towards a higher value of engagement, benefit your customers, and help them achieve more of what they want.


Ultimately, winning AI and driving more customer connection and growth is more about value than volume, and more about effectiveness than efficiency.

 

According to Instagram, over 2 million businesses use their platform to connect with their audiences. While other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are great for sharing and promoting content, Instagram is a way to humanize your brand.

It's not too late to get your business set up with Instagram, but when you do, it's important to go about it in the right way. Initial steps like writing your bio, experimenting with the best times to post, and which hashtags to use are all important to a successful Instagram account. You will also need to consider what the goal of your business' Instagram account is and be willing to experiment with different features like Instagram Reels and Stories.