Muck Rack is a cloud-based Public Relations (PR) software system. They help you find relevant journalists or media outlets that might be interested in your company. They just published some research that I think should be essential reading for anyone involved in B2B customer experience services – software, BPO, or advisory.
All these CX companies are B2B specialists who want to get noticed by managers in other companies – because they need to buy the services of a specialist. Think of the retail executive who buys customer service processes from a BPO or a BPO buying in some specialist software. How do these companies get noticed?
It used to be that PR was one of the most important routes to visibility. You had to get your business noticed by The Financial Times or The New York Times. If they wrote about your services then managers everywhere would know about your business and they would immediately trust that you are credible.
Now the initial stage in this process is being handled by AI. The retail executive who needs to improve his or her customer service is asking ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for initial advice on suitable companies to build a shortlist of potential suppliers. Forrester Research estimates that 9 out of 10 B2B buyers now start out on their buying journey by asking an AI tool for recommendations.
The question now is how do you get the AI services to know that your company exists, know what you do, and know your views on the industry you are focused on? All this information is essential training for the AI because a potential client is going to be asking ‘…is company X a suitable partner for my business – what is their focus?’
The Muck Rack research has some good suggestions on how to get the AI to notice you:
- You need to publish content. You have to demonstrate your expertise and ideas by publishing it. Your B2B business will be invisible without content.
- Not all content is the same. Journalism and corporate blogs are the best places to publish. The research breaks down the different types of content that Gen AI tools cite, but these two categories account for around three-quarters of all citations. This means that publishing your ideas and vision (not sales pitch) right here on CustomerThink is a great idea!
- Publish fairly frequently. AI will usually only ever cite content published inside the past year. So keep repeating your core message.
- Niche content is OK. Your vision for the future of AI in CX might not be published by Reuters, but so long as it is published somewhere and someone is asking AI about that subject then you are likely to be cited.
- Industries differ. In some industries academic and research content is seen as highly valuable (travel/airlines) and in others it is almost ignored because journalism is more important (tech). Be aware of this citation bias for your industry.
This research is useful because it illustrates what Forrester Research has been saying since last year. B2B buyers are using AI to recommend potential suppliers, but they are also using these AI recommendations to support their own decision-making – “…if ChatGPT says this company has great ideas then it must be true!”
With this in mind, if you are involved in supplying CX services then you need to think carefully about how to get noticed by the various AI systems. These tips are helpful and indicate that the CX companies that succeed in future will be those who are full of ideas and a vision for the future of the industry. And they are actually publishing these ideas!
CC Photo by Eric Krull