In June, I had the pleasure of presenting at TechNOVA’s Connected Customer conference, held at the striking Crystal building near the Royal Docks of London.
Billed as a conference to explore ‘how technology impacts the ways customers interact with organisations’ and the so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the Connected Customer Conference was an insightful day, jam-packed with talks on everything from tackling climate change to personalising customer experiences.
There were a few common threads around personalisation and customer experience that kept coming up – here’s what you need to know from the discussions.
Customer experience is more important than ever
It might sound obvious to anyone in customer service, digital or marketing, but it bears repeating: customer experience is the single most important thing for a business to get right.
It’s no longer enough to have a good product – dozens of companies with great products spring up every day. It’s not even enough to have the best price. Today, what drives customer loyalty is customer experience.
In fact, 86% of customers are prepared to pay more for a better customer experience, while customers who have a positive customer experience are 2.7 times more likely to continue doing business with a brand and 3.6 times more likely to buy additional products or services from a brand.
It’s time to get personal
Most brands think they understand personalisation, when in actual fact all they do is use a customer’s first name in marketing and customer services comms.
But personalisation goes much deeper. When done well, it can have a dramatic impact on your customer experience. Indeed, 46% of customers have said they’d be more likely to respond to a promotional offer if it was tailored to their likes, communication preferences, and buying history.
The key to personalisation is connected data. Customers expect you to know everything about them, which means you need to connect up the data from disparate parts of your business to create a holistic picture of each individual customer. Then you can use it to tailor communications accordingly.
Of course, this is easier said than done. 32% of businesses admit to working in product silos. And many larger, more established companies struggle to join up data from multiple different legacy systems and databases.
Still, to keep your customers happy and give them the best (and therefore most profitable-to-you) customer experience possible, personalisation and connected data is key.
Mobile matters
We’re well and truly in the age of multi-channel marketing and communication. Customers expect brands to communicate with them via a range of channels, from live chat to email to social media to voice. And, more importantly, they expect brands to tailor each message to each platform, and use the channels that customers prefer.
But while every channel undoubtedly is unique, they all have one thing in common these days: they need to be tailored for the mobile experience.
How can Engage Hub help?
If the thought of connecting all your customer data, optimising every journey for mobile, and personalising all your communications overwhelms you, don’t worry. We’re here to help.
From uncovering hidden insights in your disparate data systems to automating your customer engagement– we can help you create, manage and maintain seamless customer journeys that deliver the best customer experience possible.
Want to know more? Drop me a message at sales.enquiries@theengagehub.com today.
