Editorial
The Gist
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Global shifts matter. Executives want peer insight on trade changes and tariffs to better gauge risk and response.
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AI needs proof. Real-world examples of AI in action ease skepticism and spark smarter conversations.
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Data demands action. Leaders want help turning analytics into steps, not just more charts.
Having managed hundreds of customer advisory boards (CABs) over the last two decades, it’s always interesting to recognize the topics that are top-of-mind across industries in companies large and small around the world. Executives often deal with (or struggle with) similar challenges as their peers, and they‘re eager to learn how their colleagues overcome them. They can then share the best practices with their own management team and quickly put the most useful ones into action.
As marketers engage with their clients in 2025, it’s helpful to know the topics that keep coming up during our meetings, as well as interviews we conduct with companies throughout the nation.
Table of Contents
- Global Trade: Good CX Means Education
- Artificial Intelligence: Share Real Marketing Examples
- Office Policies: Keeping Employee Experience Top of Mind
- System Integration: Managing Customer Technology
- Proactive Data Analysis
- Focus Starts With Listening
Global Trade: Good CX Means Education
When a topic is constantly in the news, executives want to know how it affects their own company, how others are impacted and what their own position should be. That’s certainly true with tariffs right now. How might the cost of goods and materials impact production? And what are customer sentiments toward these developments?
Marketers don’t need to be experts on international trade. But they can bring customers together to share insights and learn how others are managing bottlenecks, so everyone is better equipped to handle similar challenges.
Related Article: Tariff Tsunami? Time to Rethink the Customer Journey
Artificial Intelligence: Share Real Marketing Examples
AI has also been a top concern of companies over the last couple years, especially as stories of its potential to replace jobs persist in the media and worry employees.
Instead of discussing theories and potential applications, the best approach for marketers is to find and share real examples. By analyzing how companies are using these new capabilities to improve operations and serve customers, they can offer insights that feel grounded and actionable.
Related Article: AI in Customer Experience Works Best With a Human Heart
Office Policies: Keeping Employee Experience Top of Mind
While we are past the Covid pandemic, the ripple effect of office shutdowns and employees working from home are still being felt by companies across the globe.
Here, too, company policies (i.e., mandating return to office or allowing more flexible work-from-home schedules) vary widely. Learning how others are keeping employees productive and happy can offer fresh ideas to those who may still be formulating corporate policies. These policies can play a big role in hiring, training, promoting and retaining employees (especially younger demographics), which is also a topic of top concern to the executives.
System Integration: Managing Customer Technology
Some companies focus so much on promoting their own solutions that they forget customers often use them alongside other systems as part of a larger solution.
Getting systems to “talk to each other” and share data is a topic that has been a challenge for technology users for decades. Marketers and executives should be well versed on what other technology systems their customers are using in order to uncover opportunities for partnerships, joint marketing and even potential acquisitions.
Proactive Data Analysis
Finally, companies often struggle with gaining meaning from the mountains of data their systems collect and provide, and they’re unsure how to take action on it.
While dashboards and push technologies are improving, many executives are now asking vendors to go a step further and tell them what actions to take based on the data. When vendors can be more proactive here, their tools become more valuable and trusted by customers.
Related Article: Customer Data Analytics and AI: The Smart Path
Focus Starts With Listening
While marketers focus on promoting their products and services, it should always be within the context of the environments and competing priorities of their own customers.
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