Category: Uncategorised

Udesh Jadnanansing (pictured) continues his examination of the customer experience online.

Depending on the goals a customer has from using your digital channels, they may choose different paths to reach them. Equally, one customer may use a different path from another to reach the desired goal. Therefore, to facilitate the holy grail of the digital customer experience, you need a lot more than just some general online feedback or survey tools. What you need is a customer experience strategy with a focus on the customer journey, for proper segmentation and ultimately relevant feedback. When this is in place correctly, it is the first step to turning insights into action.

There are four phases that companies go through in order to reach a mature stage of digital customer experience management. In phase 1 the focus is primarily on web statistics and numbers, phase 2 has a focus on periodic quantitative and qualitative research and phase 3 is the point that continuous feedback is collected real-time via onsite feedback forms. Phase 4 is all about turning insight into action to reach a mature stage of digital customer experience management.

Capturing customer feedback can be done through periodic questionnaires, as happens in phase two of this model, or as in phase 3, continuously through a ‘one size fits all’ feedback form on the website. In the latter case, there is usable feedback within, but that is not always related to what the visitor is doing at that time. Why ask what a visitor is doing on your website when you can see it happening? A professional approach means looking at the goals of the customer, user or visitor, depending on the online journey being made and then asking the right questions when it is relevant for a visitor to give feedback. For example, when you detect a visitor has a problem with ordering the product. Just like in real life, customers do not want store personnel bothering them with questions about customer service or registration when they haven’t even bought the product yet!

When feedback is too general it is hard to define what drives a customer. Taking action is possible, but it is not as refined as it could be. The questions to be asked in order to capture relevant feedback should therefore be linked to the goal that a customer or visitor has set themselves within your digital channel. Does the customer want to order a product, adjust his account, solve a problem or maybe get something done with a self-service tool? People use your website or mobile app to get a certain job done. With a generic feedback form or website evaluation survey, people can leave an open comment like a suggestion and that can be valuable information. But when relevant questions are asked at the right time, not only are the visitors more willing to provide feedback, but the feedback is also much more relevant. The more the questions are tailored to the various points in the customer journey and what someone is trying to achieve in a digital channel, the more relevant the findings are. This allows an organisation to optimize the processes and remove bottle necks within the journey. This way, organisations are continuously working on improving the digital channels and thus the overall customer experience.

Close control

Capturing feedback continuously that is focused on what the client is doing at that time, means having closer control. If someone is stuck within an online ordering process you must be able to identify the problem directly and immediately and ask the customer what goes wrong. And that mechanism should be in place on all digital processes in such a way that a company is able to collect useful information to optimise the digital experience continuously.

Ultimately, a better customer experience is good for customers and therefore also for companies – in both the short term and long term. The easier an online shopper can achieve his goal, the sooner something is ordered in the shop and how often they repeat their business. A better customer experience can lead to more sales in the short term. Thanks to customer feedback the bottlenecks within the digital customer journey can be removed and customers reach the end of the journey more often. Make sure that the huge budgets that are spent on shiny advertising campaigns are not useless because customers switch to your competitors faster than you can say ‘feedback’, when the product is easier to order elsewhere!

Excelling for professionals 

In this digital age, churn is an increasing problem for large corporations. In the long-term, customer loyalty is already vital will become more and more important. Customers expect the same experience online as offline. This means a customer experience that matches the brand values of the organisation that they have chosen for. If your product appears to evoke low involvement from your business (such as an insurance product for example), offering better service than your competitor is something to excel at! Depending on those brand values a company chooses points within the customer journey to differentiate. This also goes for customer journeys within digital channels. But there must be understanding in how you are scoring on these parts. How do visitors experience the self-service tools on the website? The better the customers’ journeys are connected to the brand values, the better the customer experience and the more loyalty and in the end a healthy and profitable organisation.

 Udesh Jadnanansing is managing partner at Mopinion.

Philip Rooke (pictured) has advice on, and personal experience of, expanding internationally.

As the CEO of an e-commerce merchandising platform, I am tasked with scaling-up our company globally. We are already active in 19 countries, 12 languages, and our customers can pay in 11 currencies. This year, we are in the full roll-out phase of our marketing, sales and operations strategy outside Europe and the USA. And we now deliver to approximately 200 countries from Brazil to Singapore.

With the world of retail, technology and delivery to global consumers moving so fast, online retailers need more than just inspiring customer experiences, great sales figures and a savvy marketing plan. All the successes generated by launching in new countries can be rapidly jeopardised with a poor delivery and supply chain. Without establishing a solid plan and network you might as well have thrown away the money spent on expanding.

So how does an online retailer in rapid global scale-up mode embrace these business realities? My top three areas of focus are:

1. Get your product to the consumer

Shipping is a vital component in the supply chain and it must be fast, reliable and priced right. This year we added delivery to more than150 new countries. Within weeks, we had to delist 10 countries due to fraud and delivery problems. However, there were some nice surprises within the mix. Some countries even with small populations, such as Bermuda, Guadeloupe and French Polynesia, are doing very well. Other countries had good sales, but have had to be paused until delivery issues are sorted out. Spend time getting this right.

2. Check on the local tax and business rules

This is where partnering can sometimes be a better bet than organic growth; you take on a business which already has all the right permits and understands how to do business in the region. For example, in the USA there are tax variations between the States, which need to be taken into account, along with the tax issues surrounding cross-border sales. If a customised T-shirt is sold by a YouTuber in New York and shipped to Brazil, but the transaction happens in Berlin, where is the tax paid? These are issues an international e-commerce company must be on top of. Spreadshirt is not only an online retailer, but we also provide a platform for other e-sellers, so this is especially key for us; it’s our job to make this a smooth and efficient process. No-one wants to get bogged down in tax issues when they’re creating and selling their ideas. Customers receiving an extra bill will hate you!

3. Plan to get on the ground

Many of our key sellers build a fan base on global social platforms such as YouTube and Facebook – making demand for their products truly international. We see huge traffic coming from countries like India and Brazil, meaning that eventually shipping will not be enough to satisfy consumer expectations. We’ve therefore just acquired a partner in Brazil and are looking at India, Turkey and other countries, to reduce the shipping time. A demand driven approach from traffic or shipped orders always governs our next steps.

Whether a customer is from one of your core regions or from a new market, you have to manage their delivery expectations and value. We intentionally locate production facilities in strategic locations to keep customers satisfied and meet their expectations and demands. For example, in the USA, our Las Vegas facility reduces a day in delivery time to the west coast compared to shipping from our east coast site. It is also ideally located for rapid and cost-effective distribution to Asia and Australia. Orders get to customers in Australia only two days after California for only $1 or $2 more.

The world is a great place to do business and in our experience more valuable orders were gained than lost due to problems. Glitches can be easily sorted out by switching off certain payment types, changing a shipping provider or turning off a whole country.

This approach is working so far: the addition of 150 new shipping countries puts us on par with retailers such as H&M and Zara and far ahead of most other custom apparel and accessory retailers. The process of going truly global has been a positive move and the outlook for the rest of the year is extremely optimistic. Each week, several hundreds of additional orders are coming from our newly listed shipping countries.

For Spreadshirt, the goal is to continue global expansion via acquisition, access, and strong international partnerships with an eye towards local production hubs. We go global while being local. Unlike traditional retailers, we are not restricted by supply chains and stock holding so I envisage an online retail future where everyone wherever they are in the world can create, buy and sell ideas on merchandising, in the language and currency of their choice and never be more than a few days away from receiving it.

Philip Rooke is CEO of Spreadshirt. 

The battle for market share in retail is not necessarily a numbers game anymore, it’s a value strategy. Retailers performing best in their sector today have one thing in common: they know how to nurture long-term customer relationships, as Tim Koshinsky (pictured) explains.

 

Fostering consumer loyalty can be a tricky art to get right, as there are a huge number of factors and touch points that can influence sentiment towards a brand. And in the current, competitive retail environment, making one wrong move can result in a customer defecting to a competitor.

Creating an effective loyalty solution is a unique process to each business, but there are a number of fundamental elements that lie at the heart of all successful strategies. For retailers struggling to increase their customer retention rates, here are a few key areas to focus on as a starting point:

Get the basics right – in all channels

‘Trust is built with consistency’ said the Governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee. The context for this quote might be politics but it certainly rings true within retail, especially when it comes to brand perception.

Analyst McKinsey and Company hit the nail on the head in a recent report, in which they said “it may not seem sexy, but consistency is the secret ingredient to making customers happy”. And while most retailers have achieved this in their brand appearance, the same level of accomplishment does not always exist in their product availability and fulfilment capabilities.

In the omnichannel era, customers expect convenient service however they choose to shop. This means delivering what they want, when they want it and however they want it delivered. In order to achieve this, retailers must ensure their operational systems are fully integrated and offer complete data visibility. Outstanding customer experiences stem from seamless back-end user experiences.

Create a trusting relationship

Most companies can deliver once, but how many can keep coming up with the goods time and time again? Once the basic offering is nailed, retailers should focus on refining that service to create great interactions during every consumer encounter. Customer service is incredibly undervalued by many retailers and therefore presents a real opportunity to edge ahead of the competition.

Exceed their expectations (consistently)

Some retailers make the mistake of chasing new business, meanwhile leaving existing customers – their biggest brand advocates – at the bottom of the pile. Turn that perception on its head and work hard to exceed the high standards that loyal customers have come to expect. This could mean creating a marketing campaign to reward repeat purchases. Alternatively, it could involve using data from integrated operational systems to see where even quicker more streamlined service can be delivered.

Integrated operations, inventory visibility throughout the enterprise, demand forecasting and replenishment planning are the raw ingredients in building this effective loyalty strategy. They are the tools which ensure, when the moment arrives, that consumers are able to buy the goods they want in a convenient manner – time and time again.

Promote your expertise

The retailers that stand out from the crowd are the ones who are passionate and knowledgeable about what they do. Customers want to know they’re buying from the best, so use all the tools available to create content which proves this. A well-written website, strategic social media output and strong marketing content is essential armour to ward off rivals. And don’t forget to address long-term customers with your messaging, as well as newer ones.

Listen to feedback

The art of listening is undervalued among many retail organisations. While it is important to think creatively and innovate, using genuine feedback is an important way of improving day-to-day customer experiences. In addition to surveying shoppers, it is also useful to carry out internal audits; this may unveil operational problems that are negatively impacting service capabilities.

Retailers who don’t listen to feedback may find themselves unable to deliver on customer expectations consistently, which makes it difficult to build trusting relationships. And in today’s fiercely competitive retail environment, consumers are likely to look elsewhere for an alternative retailer they can trust to deliver at every touch point.

Tim Koshinsky is VP Solutions at OLR Retail.

 

 

Janani Dumbleton (pictured) discusses the importance of data quality.

More and more organisations are starting to understand how critical quality data is in achieving their strategic objectives, not to mention ensuring customer satisfaction. Accurate, complete data that is consistent with legal requirements and business rules can have a profound impact on a business’ long-term success.

However, while there is a growing consensus about the importance of quality data, the understanding of how to achieve it still lags behind – with organisations often focusing on short term fixes or projects to bring their data ‘up to scratch’, but then failing to follow this up with appropriate governance to maintain that new found quality. This makes it only a matter of time before another data quality drive is needed.

Data governance, the process of planning, monitoring and enforcing the management of data assets, is a key component of long-term data quality. It ensures that data is captured accurately and that this accuracy is maintained, no matter how long it is stored for, to avoid the expense of repeated data quality initiatives.

So why are so many organisations still shying away from a proper data governance structure when it makes such obvious business sense?

It all comes down to responsibility – without a single responsible person (or department) driving for a proper governance programme, it will invariably flounder. While some organisations are starting to create Data Quality roles and departments, there are few with a similar set up for Data Governance, and without this structure to report and feed back into, those responsible for data quality will frequently be cast in the role of fire fighter.

What is a data governance framework?

While there is no one size fits all approach, there are certain elements of a data governance framework that can be applied across the board.

1) A robust policy stating that your company requires proper data governance is integral in achieving the wider support needed for any initiative on a long-term basis.

2) Just as with any successful data quality programme, it is essential to have clearly defined and documented processes in place – setting out how things such as data quality reporting and data quality issue management should be handled.

3) As mentioned earlier, responsibility is key. Defining who is responsible for data (governance and quality) is at the corner stone of any data improvement.

How do you implement a successful data governance programme?

1) Analyse. This means:

• Data profiling: This process of gathering and examining information about existing data is often viewed as a pure data quality activity, when shared with those responsible for the data this can give advanced business expertise and insight to the results – bringing wider benefits to the organisation as a whole.
• Reviewing and approving data definitions: To truly understand and manage your data it must be defined (for example, in a data dictionary or glossary, and then held where it is readily accessible by the users.

2) Improve. This means:

• Collaborating: A lack of collaboration between IT and the wider organisation will prevent you from getting off the starting blocks all together. Take time to ensure you all understand the objectives, are in agreement as to how to achieve them, and, crucially – who is responsible for what.
• Reviewing and approving business rules for data cleansing: After undertaking your analysis you will need to garner input from your stakeholders to agree the rules by which the data will be cleansed. It’s also useful to include these data cleansing rules in your data glossary for ease of future reference.
• Master Data Management: Making sure that you are highly focused on how your Master Data Management is deployed is essential. That means make sure the processes, governance, policies, standards used are well defined and communicated.

3) Take control. This means:

• Defining data quality rules: This pro-active process will enable you to report on the status of your data quality at any point in time – not only serving as a monitoring system, but also providing an early warning of any potential issues (before they get too big – and expensive!)
• Data quality reporting: Only after data quality rules are defined will you be able to instigate a process for reporting on how the data measures up against those rules.
• Monitoring and acting on data quality reports: Here is where the chain comes back full circle to the initial establishment of a policy on data governance. With this, and the associated processes, in place you can take steps to ensure that those that need to take the necessary action, do so.

Taking these steps, and embedding them within your organisation will help to ensure that data quality and governance become entwined in a symbiotic relationship. This will help to deliver long-term benefits for the organisation as a whole, and help you to capitalise on the benefits that data quality can bring in a sustainable manner.

Janani Dumbleton is principal consultant, Data Quality Propositions, Thought Leadership at Experian Data Quality UK.

Don’t just talk about it, learn how to benefit from it, says Colleen Horan (pictured).

Here’s the thing about social ROI: many marketers talk about it, but not so many know how to measure it or speak to its benefits. Social media is a powerhouse tool and, while its practitioners believe in its impact, many outside of the industry fail to see its importance.

How do marketers prove its an essential component of reaching audiences and increasing brand value? They have to deliver campaigns and metrics that demonstrate just that! Below are three ways social media marketers can prove that the investment in social media yields big benefits for brands.

1: Web Traffic

Social media interactions between brands and consumers have potential to impact the amount of web traffic, a key metric for e-commerce brands in particular, but valuable to any.

Social media marketers linking back to a website or website blog in posts, pins, Tweets, etc, can measure the impact of their efforts using Google Analytics and its features such as UTM parameters to track sales conversions by channel, post type, or creative. In addition, social media marketers can directly track revenue as well by pulling data from their CRM.

The path between social content and a brand website must be easy for consumers to travel, allowing them to get where they need via the content they enjoy the most. Designing this path requires an array of quality content, regular engagement, a stream of fresh incentives to click over, and tools like triggered responses to claim contest entries.

2: Purchase Influence

In early 2014, Invesp reported (based on compiled research) that 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. What brands post has a major influence on purchase decisions by online shoppers.

Whether its due to direct brand-to-consumer social media interactions or a result of friends sharing effective content to their networks on behalf of brands, the proof is there that social media impacts shopping decisions. However, measuring it requires quality analytics and tracking tools.

Creative digital marketers don’t just rely on brand-side posts to influence purchase decisions. They’ve gone as far as to integrate real-life, user-generated content into websites and social sites to help consumers purchase the products that they want because their friends, peers, and social network wants (and has) them.

Demonstrated here, Hudson’s Bay aggregates user Instagram content to a gallery on their website allowing consumers to purchase items from a realistic, social setting. In a day and age when consumers are admiring Instagram photos above stock images, this kind of social media tie-in can make a hard-hitting impact on brands bottom lines.

3: Multi-Channel Marketing

The impact of social media can spread to multiple marketing channels, cover a lot of ground, and once again drive purchase and conversion metrics.

Take, for instance, the US-based hockey team St Louis Blues. They used social media to incentivise fans to share email addresses and refer their friends to share email addresses, too. By offering fans a chance to win prizes such as season tickets, they were able to collect 17,000 opted-in email addresses. They turned around and used those to send targeted email blasts, campaigns that drove increased ticket sales resulting in a whopping 235% ROI.

Social media campaigns can be integrated or the centrepiece of TV commercials, YouTube videos, ad collateral and more. Hashtags, UGC, and incentive programs are just a few examples of how social and traditional advertising and marketing can cross paths and deliver value as cohesive efforts.

Colleen Horan is senior director of global marketing, Offerpop.

Quantum physics tells us that we are simply huge clouds of atoms that interact with each other on a physical and personal level. Kieran Hearty (pictured) , author of ‘How to Eat the Elephant in the Room’ calls this ‘quarkiness’. And he believes that by understanding ‘quarkiness’ we can ensure we have a motivated team.

Quarks are incredibly small sub-subatomic particles; quarkiness concerns small, usually unintentional, sub-subconscious behaviours, mostly negative, which cumulatively have a corrosive effect on employee engagement and results.

In quantum physics, quarks are so tiny that they are almost impossible to see. In a team meeting, clouds of silent, covert messages are almost imperceptibly exchanged. This is ‘quarky behaviour’.

Those small, negative message clouds (strange quarks) have an adverse impact on the recipients, whereas the significantly less frequent positive messages that we send out (charms) have a hugely positive impact on the recipients.

In other words, we get a better return from the same amount of energy by being positive.

Strange quarks can be an eye roll, facial tic or a frown, an intake of breath, or a certain tone of voice; that feeling of being burdened with someone’s disapproval without knowing what happened to make you feel bad.

Have you recently experienced a situation where a small act of disrespect affected you for the rest of the day? I remember delivering an important presentation in which my performance was badly affected because of the way the CEO, sitting in the front row, was looking at me! How on earth do you explain such a thing?

A single quarky act of disrespect is hardly felt, but cumulatively, because of the sheer volume of quarky behavior that we engage in, it can have the corrosive and damaging effect of a sandstorm upon the motivation and performance of teams.

Think about this; if quarky behaviour is driven by our reaction to people that are only slightly different to us (resulting in semi-subconscious emissions of disapproval) what does this mean when the person is of a different colour, gender, religion or sexual preference? Quarkiness therefore has huge implications for the big workplace issues such as diversity and inclusion.

How do we make ‘quarkiness’ work for us rather than against us? Try this:

1. Get the ‘language’ of quarkiness onto the corporate table. It then becomes significantly easier to confront it when it happens.
2. Appreciate the value of our roles as observer of quarky behaviour. It is a lot easier and less uncomfortable to bring this stuff to people’s attention from a third-party perspective.
3. Spread the word. Create discussion groups to share colleague understanding and experiences of quarky behaviour. Be prepared to deal with some strong feelings.
4. Gain commitment from team members to focus on reducing the level of strange quarks that they transmit to each other.   
5. Focus on a positive shift to charms. By looking at quarky behaviour – even on the tiniest of levels – we can help improve team motivation and performance by feeding them positive, not negative, energy.
6. Consider and agree the value of small nods of approval, appreciative smiles, congratulatory high-fives and other affirmations. They cost (almost) nothing, require minimal energy, yet have such a positive and energising impact on others.

The language of ‘quarkiness’ is universal. It transcends gender, race, language and culture. Who would have thought that quantum physics could provide us with the answers we need?

Kieran Hearty is an author, executive coach, consultant and leadership speaker with more than 30 years’ experience across international technology and financial services companies. View the website.

Richard Edwards (pictured) highlights the one essential ingredient that most business marketing/advertising communications lack – experience – and explains why businesses can harness experience as a marketing tool, no matter what they sell.
 
Businesses spend a lot on marketing and advertising. Advertising spend in the UK hit a new high of almost £14bn in 2013 and is set to increase to £14.8bn this year.

Therefore it would seem fair to ask whether businesses are getting their money’s worth. I doubt it is always delivering the best return on investment (ROI) possible. And the reason is, regardless of what method of communication businesses choose, most will miss out on an essential ingredient: experience.

Experiential marketing is important because it helps consumers contextualise the narrative behind your product and service.

Experiences offer sensory, emotional, cognitive, behavioural and relational values rather than functional ones. Incorporating these into your value proposition is likely to persuade a lot more people of the value of your brand than a purely rational approach.

What does an holistic experience look like?

Let’s take perfume as an example. Perfumes are, functionally speaking, a mix of ingredients that produce a pleasant smell to be sprayed in liquid form onto the skin.

But people don’t wear perfume for the constituent parts; they buy it for the experience, they buy it in the hopes that they will feel attractive and desirable and they buy it to give them a sense of confidence.

So how is this experience achieved? By creating an holistic experience of the product.

It starts with the advertising. Perfume ads always feature a model sauntering around looking sexy; there is usually a husky voice saying abstract words like ‘adored’ or ‘eternal’; and there is either a lot of colour, for fun and adventurous brands (think Joop!), or black and white, for brands that focus on being sexy and powerful (e.g CK).

Next comes the in-store experience. The bright lights of each perfume shelf, the imagery displayed around the perfumes – all are meticulously planned to continue the experience.

The bottle is a key part of the experience, from store to home. Some are rough and jagged, others are sleek and curved.

And every time the customer uses the product, they live that vision. Whether or not the perfume can do any of these things. They are not just opening a bottle of chemicals, they are unleashing the hypnotic power of scent from something resembling a mystical carafe!

Applications in other areas of marketing

“But my business is in accounting software, not sexy perfume. Surely we can’t apply the same method?”

Yes, you can. To help break it down, experiential marketing relies on bringing together five distinct dimensions into one holistic experience:

• Feeling – What will it feel like to use your product or service?
• Sensing – How do customers physically sense your product?
• Thinking – The experience still needs to take into account the rational, logic value of your product or service, and also needs to appeal to the customer’s sense of curiosity and intrigue. How obvious can you make the benefits of your product through demonstration? Can you hint at an untapped ocean of potential behind the short demo?
• Acting – What behaviours will your product help to facilitate? Changes in behaviour can be highly motivational and empowering. Think of Nike’s classic Just do it tagline.
• Relating – How does your product or service link the customer to others, to things or even to a projection of their future self?

Social media is an excellent tool for relating, as everyone in their friend group can see, feel and understand how the customer acts differently using your product – bringing the various dimensions together.

The best way of putting the experience together is face-to-face. For example, in the UK, the experience centre for BT Health at their Adastral Park facility shows off a new range of healthcare technology; Quatreus created a situational experience with everything from treatment rooms to the back of an ambulance immersing visitors in the real life environment, allowing them to engage practically with the technology and to experience the benefits for themselves.

As the old Chinese proverb goes: “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”

Richard Edwards is director, Quatreus – specialising in improving communications for internal and external audiences. 

 

 

Udesh Jadnanansing (pictured) explores the phases a business goes through to optimise its digital customer experience.

A customer experience strategy that is securely deployed on digital customer experience goes beyond installing a simple feedback tool on your website. It is not just about collecting feedback, but also about focusing on customer insight and follow-up action. Different organisations use customer feedback in different ways, such as data collection or turning insights into action. However, there are a number of clear phases that a business goes through to optimise its digital customer experience and its worth identifying and understanding these fully to ensure you get the result you need.

The customer experience is a hot topic, with a lot of time and energy invested in analysing it and ways to improve it. However, often, the customer experience is confused with user experience. It’s important to realise that these are two different things. Broadly speaking, user experience focuses on ease of use – for example, apps, websites and other digital channels. Customer experience is about the multichannel customer experience as part of the overall business strategy. It is based on the brand values of a company and ensures that all interaction points (touch points) are aligned to connect the ‘journeys’ that a customer goes through in order to reach a goal as well as possible.

With this in mind you should also look at digital channels. For example, within a website, a customer goes through several steps to achieve a goal. As an organisation you want this to go as smoothly as possible, and you want to excel on the points that are most important. If you have the digital customer experience approached from a user experience thought you will definitely miss a number of important issues.

Not just a ‘project’ 

It is important to remember that organising the digital experience is not just a side project – it needs to be part of the overall customer experience strategy. This means that the focus on the customer is not a ‘project’ for a single department, it is part of the overall business strategy and needs to follow the brand values throughout the organisation.

Customers are closer to your business than ever before, with a myriad of multichannel touch points, even traditionally offline outlets are embracing more and more online activities and increasingly digitized processes – just think of all self-service and online sales. Equally, when clients go through these processes but then have issues they will often go somewhere else. It is essential, especially in this digital age, to develop a loyal customer base, because customers can switch very easily. To secure loyal customers you must also align the customer experience in the digital channels as well as your stores and call centre. The interaction moments that customers have with companies form the full experience and customer feedback is the key metric to achieve a customer experience that goes beyond your channels.

Can you hear the voice of the customer? 

To develop a digital customer experience strategy it is useful to have insight into the phases a company goes through. Here are the typical phases:

Phase 1 – The Early Stage 

Initially many companies look at their website statistics. There are tools in place to see where the visitor enters and exits, which pages are doing well and which pages are not. There will probably be some A / B testing in place and they are mainly looking at click behaviour and quantitative research. In this phase, the organisation has not yet conducted qualitative research because the current understanding is enough, according to the controller, or perhaps because there is no time at that stage. For example, an organisation knows where a visitor leaves the site, but not why and the focus is on numbers alone.

Phase 2 – The Traditional Route 

At this point, companies look beyond pure numbers and statistics. Here companies use one-time or periodical website questionnaires, for example as part of their customer satisfaction programme. We all know the long pop-up questionnaires with 20+ questions about ‘what is your age?’ and ‘why are you here?’ and ‘how would you rate these aspects of our website?’. Qualitative feedback and open comments are used, but not yet ‘in the moment’ as the customer is going through the process. Customer feedback is mainly used for general web-evaluation purposes, which has its uses but the end is not yet in sight.

Phase 3 – The Experimental Venture 

By this phase the link with real time feedback is in place. If, as in phase 2, a periodic examination is done (semi-annually or quarterly), the research results are too late. When a customer is unhappy, you are unable to restore the relationship immediately. And so there are now tools used such as a feedback forms on every page of the website, where customers can specify where they get stuck and are encountering problems. The company focuses on direct feedback from the customer, but the focus is still mainly on collecting feedback. This phase is not the final destination but it has the advantage that the costs involved to achieve results do not have to be very high. There are several ‘plug-and-play’ tools available to install a feedback form on the entire website.

Phase 4 – The strategic approach 

When companies have mastered the digital customer experience, they arrived in the fourth phase. The company monitors all major online customer journeys and captures useful feedback on a structural and real-time base. Based on the collected quantitative and qualitative data, action is taken. Internally action is taken to participate in the continuous optimisation of digital channels and internal processes. Also the feedback loop is closed in a way that customers are engaged and they see something is happening with their feedback (ie. when an issue with the website or app has been resolved), this is conveyed back to the customer as closed loop feedback. The focus in this phase is turning insight into action.

A good analogy is to think of a traditional offline store. When people visit a grocery store and leave their shopping basket loaded with products standing near the freezer area and walk out, you can assume the store owner wants to know why. Is it the type of product? Is it too expensive? The owner does not wait six months before a survey is distributed and results are analysed. Instead, he continuously monitors where things go wrong (or very well) and he takes action. When you connect this concept to the current stage many organisations are in concerning their digital channels, there is an increasing distance between the customer and the company. It all may seem less personal. The bakery on the corner usually knows what customers think of his bread. But when thousands of customers are ordering products online on a daily base, then it’s a different story.

The tricky part of stage four of the maturity model is that this takes effort and commitment from within the organisation. The challenge of working with customer feedback is that it transcends the online marketing department. Customer feedback also plays a role in the sales department, customer service, the website management team and so on. Implementing a feedback form on your website is easy to do, but to work as customer centric organisation the voice of the customer should be heard in the entire organisation. To accomplish that there is a need for cultural change.

Udesh Jadnanansing is managing partner at Customer Experience Management software specialist Mopinion.  

There is an illustration to demonstrate the phases mentioned above – download it here.

 

 

Shweta Jhajharia (pictured) explains how every business can create an unlimited marketing budget for their product or service.

Is your mind-set holding back your marketing? Many business owners have three flawed beliefs that keep them from successful marketing:

1. Marketing is a big cost.
2. We should market to as many people as we possibly can.
3. We should ‘get our name out there’.

However, these beliefs are false and prevent businesses from effectively marketing their business.

Instead, every business owner should follow these seven steps and they’ll find themselves churning out marketing that brings in quality leads and – importantly – recovers its own costs.

Step 1: Define measurable marketing objectives (MMOs)

Put a number to it. Get as specific as you can about the who, where, what and how.

How do you determine that number? Start by aligning it with your Measurable Business Objectives (MBOs) – which should also be specific. These have to align, otherwise what is the point in your marketing?

Step 2: Tightly define your ‘Who’

You don’t need to figure out your target market but rather your target person. That is; who is the ideal person for you to sell your product to? What does this person like? What are the common problems this person faces? How does this person communicate?

Step 3: Define how you’ll communicate with them

You need to step inside your ideal target person’s shoes and figure out what their problem is.

An easy way to map this out is to use a graph that goes from imagined to immediate on one axis and towards and away on the other axis.

You then have four quadrants where you can fill in problems associated with this person. You should have roughly three in each quadrant.

1. Immediate Away – These are the ‘Frustrations’
2. Immediate Towards – These are the ‘Wants’
3. Imagined Away – These are the ‘Fears’
4. Imagined Towards – These are the ‘Aspirations’

When you map it out this way, you can then consider the different issues in each quadrant and how to approach them.

Step 4: Work out the acquisition costs

When you are creating a marketing budget, you must first think about the allowable budget to acquire a client.

You do this by figuring out the gross profit of your products. That is, taking the price that you’re selling your product for and taking away the variable costs involved in producing it.

That gross profit then becomes the absolute maximum that you have to spend in acquiring your customer.

Step 5: Choose your channel, offer and cost

If you aren’t a corporate yet, then your primary focus needs to be on brand activation, rather than awareness, i.e every piece of marketing you do should have a clear call to action (CTA) with a strong reason.

An example can be something as simple as: “Get a £200 voucher towards your next order when you call us at XXX.”

You then need to decide how much you’re spending and what channel you’re using. Use your allowable acquisition costs and compare it to the actual acquisition costs (the conversion rate of that channel).

From this, you can figure out which channel makes the most sense and which ones need improving.

Step 6: Measure the return on your marketing investment

Once you’ve chosen your channel and run a campaign, you then need to measure the actual return from your marketing investment.

You’d use the same calculations as you used to determine which channel was better, but with the actual numbers that have come from your campaign.
Importantly, find out what the final net position is. Is it positive? If so – then do it again and again and again. You have just created an unlimited marketing budget.

Step 7: Automate your unlimited budget spend

Now that you have found a strategy that works and continue over and over, it’s time to systemise it.

Explore automation tools and train your team so they can maintain the process with minimal input from you.

Once that’s sorted out you can then leave that to operate by itself, while you spend your time seeking out further sources of unlimited marketing budget.

 

Shweta Jhajharia is principal coach and founder of The London Coaching Group.