With the many technology tools available in the digital age, it would seem impossible to miss the mark on customer engagement. Social media platforms, data analytics, and sophisticated messaging all combine to deliver a powerful connection. How can a company blunder?

Tiffani Bova (pictured, right), global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce.com Inc., has written a new book, “Growth IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business,” which documents precisely how and why companies manage to fall short in customer engagement and what can be done to improve the connection. It’s a timely analysis because companies are missing the mark more frequently than ever, according to Bova.

“You’re seeing this disconnection where the brand thinks it’s great and the customer thinks it’s not that great,” Bova said. “The gap between those two things, even with the advancements in technology, is getting wider.”

Bova spoke with Peter Burris (@plburris), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California, to discuss ways to make customer engagement actionable, a trend toward connecting through socially conscious messaging, and the importance of sequence when building brand awareness.

Socially conscious Super Bowl ads

The Salesforce executive’s book focuses on how to make customer engagement actionable. An example of this can be found in the trend toward more socially conscious commercials during one of the biggest advertising events of the year — the Super Bowl.

In this year’s marquee football game, TV viewers saw ads that highlighted disaster relief efforts and commitments to bring clean drinking water to impoverished areas, alongside the usual pitches for tortilla chips and new cars.

“Socially conscious enterprise was not something we were talking about 10 years ago, but it’s being used as a growth path now,” Bova explained. “You’ll see brands actually making statements about how they do well for the environment, how they are giving back.”

Being attuned to sequence is also a key element, as exemplified by Netflix Inc. The video streaming company wisely chose to start its business in 1997 based on mail delivery of DVD movies rather than providing content over the internet.

“In the U.S. at least, not everybody had bandwidth,” Bova said. “They had to wait for the technology as well as the customer to catch up with what was possible.”

Watch the entire video interview with Bova below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations.

Photo: SiliconANGLE