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We talk today with Dee Anna McPherson, the CMO at Invoca, an AI call tracking and conversational analytics vendor. That is a mouthful and one of the things she is doing is trying to define and own a new product category. That could be a daunting prospect, except she has done this before when she worked at Yammer (before they were engulfed by Microsoft) and then at Hootsuite. When Yammer began, no one had heard about microblogging, as it was called then. McPherson managed to define “enterprise social networking” as Yammer’s category and the company was off to the races from there. With working from home now the norm, that kind of technology has become the de factor standard for communications among remote team members. 

Paul wrote about Invoca last year for Silicon Angle on how they use machine learning to transcribe and classify calls.

McPherson tell us about the importance of customer communication in building strong customer advocacy programs. You need to figure out a way to tell their stories without using the words “customer case study” or “reference account.” Customers really do want to help as long as they aren’t seen as shilling, she believe.  This is a topic we’ve touched on before, such as FIR B2B #118’s discussion about how customers should be your best advocates as well as our written work on social media marketing. We close out the podcast talking about how things have changed for marketers in the pandemic, how customer supply chains are evolving and how marketers can benefit from this transition.

About David Strom

David Strom is a former editor-in-chief of Network Computing and Tom's Hardware who has written two computer networking books and thousands of articles about B2B IT.

About Paul Gillin

Paul Gillin, host of FIR B2B, is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. Full bio