Customer privacy is a term that we are all too familiar with, as regulations such as the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have come into effect to protect customer data. However, checking boxes to ensure that you are meeting the requirements of these acts is not going to win over your customers or help you to establish connections. It could also negatively affect the customer experience and damage trust.

While customers seek tailored and personalised experiences that delight, often these experiences feel generic and do not deliver the desired response from customers. This is partly because companies have got stuck in the data, using information such as birthdays to remind customers that we know you and we are thinking about you, but instead, this reminds them that you are watching them.

As customers continue to use online platforms for searching for information, shopping, engaging friends, and family on social channels, and connecting to the brands they love, companies are inundated with an abundance of data on purchase history, search history, engagement history and more.

This information may be useful to determine what your customers like and possibly gives you enough information to provide targeted deals and information about the product ranges they have browsed online. But this does not delight your customer and it may even have the adverse effect and lead to negative responses. While some theories state that customers may respond differently depending on where they are in the customer journey, many customers believe that just because you have their information, it does not give you the right to use it.

Rather than adding to the customer experience, many of the interactions from companies remind customers that they are being watched and while they may have provided you with their details as a trade-off for something that they wanted from you, they do not necessarily want to be bombarded with information or spammed with offers.

According to new research, how companies use customer data is becoming more important to the customer experience. However, many companies are using a mix of customer data that has been collected either via on your own platforms known as first-party data, second-party data whereby companies use other company’s first-party data, and third-party data, which may have been purchased from another source unrelated to the company.

While collecting data from cookies or observing purchasing habits has been a quick and easy way for companies to collect customer data over the past few years, this company-centric approach has a rebound effect on the customer relationship and delivers a lower return on investment.

Based on this, companies need to find new ways to gather customer data that are privacy-friendly and gathered first-hand. This move, from tracking customer behaviour to engaging customers, also allows for companies to establish deeper relationships with their customers and build trust.

After years of tracking customer behaviour, it could be a daunting process for companies to discover new ways to gather customer data but according to Forrester there is a way to gather data straight from the customer. This approach, which they have coined Zero-Party Data, entails asking customers directly about their context or needs.

Based on this approach, customers intentionally and proactively share data with a brand, helping companies to gain insight into customer’s preferences, purchasing intentions, personal context and how they want brands to engage with them.

This aligns with Justice Theory which adopts three pillars. First, customers will give data to companies based on what they will get for the data and if they foresee a fair outcome, this is known as Distributive Justice. Next, is Procedural Justice, customers are concerned about how the process of data is handled and how well they were treated post-purchase. Finally, Interactional Justice is about the elements of the interaction from the tone of voice and use of language.

By gaining valuable insight and data about customers, companies can engage customers more meaningfully, improve customer expectations and build trust throughout the buyer’s journey. Zero-party data can also be used to tailor personalised experiences, creating experiences of one that are authentic and delight customers.

For companies wanting to embrace the customer-centric approach to gathering quality data without infringing on customer privacy, the zero-party data strategy enables companies to gain the information they want in a manner customers are willing to provide to improve customer experiences.

There are several mechanisms available to do this, though companies should not bombard customers with requests for information or overwhelm them with questions. Rather, gathering customer data should be a seamless part of engaging customers and gathering the information that you need to improve the customer experience.

To gather this data, companies would benefit from using tools that are easily available to each employee and gain feedback as part of the customer engagement. For example, incorporating email surveys into customer’s correspondence can help to gather valuable insight into what the customer’s expectations are of the brand and how they want brands to interact with them.

Email surveys can be done quickly and easily using a solution like BrandQuantum’s email offering, BrandMail, which allows companies to incorporate email surveys as part of the email signature. These surveys are built and hosted within the BrandQuantum platform to allow for complete data integrity and security.

Although many companies are waiting for a magic bullet solution to customer experiences, when it comes down to experiences, it is about really listening to your customer and allowing them to tell you what they want.

Marketing technology (martech) is growing in popularity, and there is no shortage of statistics to support the benefits that technology can bring to the marketing arena. However, while many software offerings and tools tout to help marketing teams achieve their goals and objectives, they can also add to the complexity of the day-to-day.

To start, there are more than 8 000 martech offerings available on offer for marketers to choose from. All of this choice can be a daunting and even complex task. Particularly as there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Each offering provides a solution to meet a specific need and not knowing what you need can cost money without the benefits. This is further challenged by the need to implement solutions that will meet customer’s changing needs and expectations.

It is for this reason that marketers are looking to add more tools to the martech stack as they try to keep up with the changing martech landscape. This is supported by the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) and BDO research which found that 76% of marketers want to add more tools to their marketing stack. However, before marketers add more tools to their stack, they need to reassess their needs and then implement a solution that will help them achieve their objectives. However, before marketers add more tools to their stack, they need to reassess their needs and then implement a solution that will help them achieve their objectives.

Before selecting a martech solution, marketers need to understand what the upskilling requirements will be to be able to use the solution. While automation, for example, is believed to free up employee time so that they can focus on pressing matters and strategies, many solutions can add to the complexity of the task, particularly if it requires time to learn how to use the solution, understand the data and keep the technology up to date.

For technology to be effective and make a difference, it needs to be easy to use and seamlessly integrate into the solutions users are accustomed to using daily. Many technologies require an upfront time investment in learning how to use the solution and to train other staff on how to use the solution. This can add extra pressure on teams as they focus time and energy on learning how to use the technology and keeping up to date on new updates and changes to the technology which can detracts from workloads.

Automation can help to minimise time spent on repetitive tasks, engage customers via bots, keep customers updated on news and product offerings via email campaigns and more. It is for this reason that 63% of marketers plan to increase their marketing automation budget in the next year. However, as consumer behaviour and sentiment can change, messaging must be authentic and relevant, and marketers cannot rely solely on automation to get it right. However, as consumer behaviour and sentiment can change, messaging must be authentic and relevant, and marketers cannot rely solely on automation to get it right.

Marketing is about providing great value at every customer touchpoint and email campaigns and customer engagement needs to manage the process, it cannot be outsourced to an automation solution to understand your customer’s needs. Marketers need to manage the process of personalised engagement to ensure that customers are not being inundated with irrelevant messaging and campaigns but rather, are receiving the right message at the right time. This process requires human intervention, creativity, and technology to work together to create the right results.

As the marketing landscape changes and new technologies are introduced to meet changing customer’s needs, marketers must remember the core of marketing which is about building relationships with the audience. This must be the key factor driving technology purchasing decisions as marketers seek to free up time to pay attention to building relationships with customers.

Building relationships with customers continues to be about focusing on the human touch and emotional connection rather than the products or solutions your company sells. Technology cannot create these connections with your customers, but it can empower companies to make their customers feel special by freeing up staff to provide the human touch by engaging with customers and using data wisely to inform them of relevant offers that they would be interested in. When looking at martech it is important to look at it from a human context to determine if it will add value to your customer experience.

While there are a lot of innovative technology solutions available to marketers today, before feeling pressured into using solutions for the sake of using them, marketers need to go back to their roots. They need to have a great strategy, know their customers and understand how to establish emotional connections with their customers. Once they have this in place, the technologies implemented should help them to achieve this by freeing up time to enhance customer interactions and focusing on the marketing strategy.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world and consumer needs have evolved accordingly. Consumers are more discerning now than they were a year ago and what they wanted from brands before may no longer matter to them today. This is supported by McKinsey which found that 40% of consumers switched brands or retailers during the past year as customer concerns shifted to safety and hygiene and their expectations of brands changed. As customers are revaluating their expectations, companies need to adapt to stay relevant.

As a starting point, companies need to assess their brand health and determine if they are still relevant in the market today. To achieve this, they need to understand what is important to their customers today and evaluate if their brand purpose and brand promise are still relevant for today’s discerning consumers.

Companies have spent a lot of time and money building their brands over the years. However, over the past year brand expectations have changed and consumers now expect more of the brands they support. They are looking for brands to live their values and demonstrate a greater commitment to their employees and the communities they operate in. They are looking for brands to be purpose-driven and accountable, taking action to help people in this unprecedented time.

This is supported by Brand Finance which states that brand expectations have changed, and they are now expected to provide collaboration, protection, and security. This means that companies need to shift their focus from brand campaigns and consider how their brand actions can improve the lives of their customer and prioritise employee safety if they are to build their brand reputation.

The Checkers Sixty60 app is a great example of how a company adapted its business model to meet its customer’s needs. The pandemic led to a radical shift in online shopping and the app provided a seamless experience at a time when people didn’t feel safe leaving their homes, demonstrating the company’s commitment to customer wellbeing and customer experience.

Many companies have changed how they work, putting employee safety at the fore and enabling them to work from home during the pandemic. While this was necessary and important, it has impacted customer experiences. With employees fragmented and working from disparate environments, the quality of experiences is likely to be inconsistent.

To help employees provide the best customer experience, they need access to the right information at the right time. Systems need to be put in place to empower employees to provide quality support to customers wherever they may be working from. This is supported by SmarterCX which states that service teams should be empowered to work from home with the right tools and knowledge base to assist customers with consistent information.

With people spending time in isolation, the human experience is more important than ever. Brands enable customers to connect with humans, get assistance, receive emotional support, and solve a problem. This human touch is critical to customer experience and to building trust. According to McKinsey, a primary barometer of customer experience will be how businesses deliver experiences and services to meet customer needs with empathy, care, and concern.

As the pandemic has created great uncertainty for many people around the world, customers want consistency from the brands that they support as they seek stability and reassurance at this time. As such customer expectations verse the experience, they receive is critical at this time and is a key measure for brand health. According to PwC, consistency is more essential in 2021 than ever as customers expect seamless experiences and this, in turn, builds trust, loyalty, and customer retention.

According to Deloitte, brand health is a measure of how well a company or brand delivers on certain attributes of a product or service that it promises its customers, especially how those attributes are perceived by customers in terms of quality and delight. Given that customer expectations of brands have changed over the past year, companies need to assess their brand promise and customer expectations to determine if they can align.

Forrester suggests that brand experiences and customer experiences be tightly interwoven by implementing four key components. First, companies should evaluate the brand strategy, second, they need to ensure it flows through to the customer experience. Third, they need to enable the brand promise to become a reality and then implement structures to ensure the delivery of the customer experience. Finally, companies need to measure the brand experience against the customer experience.

As customer needs change, brands need to adapt to remain healthy and competitive. This means understanding what customers want, engaging employees, and implementing technologies to help empower employees to deliver consistent brand experiences and delight customers regardless of where they are working from.

To maintain brand health companies need to continually track and measure their brand and customer engagement as follows:

It is important to measure brand health regularly and adapt the brand strategy to meet customer’s evolving needs. These should be tracked using a brand measurement tool such as BrandQuantum’s BrandAnalytics tool which provides analytics based on branded content and emails vs brand engagement and customer reactions, while BrandMail and BrandOffice ensure that all branded collateral and email correspondence are always on-brand.

Customer experience is a growing priority for organisations, as it should be as it is becoming the most critical factor for customers selecting your brand over another. As such companies need to implement measures to meet customer expectations and deliver consistent customer experiences at every customer touchpoint. However, this can seem like a monumental task, particularly for organisations that work as silos, assigning specific responsibilities to specific departments. In today’s environment where the customer is king and should be central to every business decision, customer experience can no longer lie on the shoulders of a single department. It needs to be the top strategic measurement for the entire organisation.

To be successful today, companies need to develop a customer centric strategy that is built from the customer’s perspective and designed to meet their specific needs. With tech savvy customers companies are adopting technology solutions that aim to delight their customers and enhance customer experiences. According to the 2019 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report from Dimension Data[1], “CX is recognised as the number one driver of digital transformation.”

While companies may be keen to adopt technology solutions, often knowing which solutions to select can be a challenge on its own. In addition, legacy systems can also hamper companies from implementing technologies that could potentially be key in improving customer experiences. However, companies should start by putting the I before the A. This means implementing information automation which utilises intelligent automation and only once this is in place, implement AI.

Some technologies can sound like the silver bullet your organisation needs to improve customer experiences and drive company success, but companies should not adopt technology for the sake of technology. Rather solutions should be used to enhance the customer experience and assist employees to meet customer needs. Even though customers are tech savvy and accustomed to using technology solutions to meet their specific needs, technology cannot replace the human touch.

Automation can enhance customer experiences by improving self-help functions that require limited involvement from employees. At the same time by automating tasks that take time and resources but add little value to the client, employees are freed up and empowered to focus on high-quality, lasting customer engagements that delight the customer.

For example, if a customer is looking for a statement, rather than placing the customer in a queue to speak to an employee, the customer is able to help themselves to access the information they need. However, if the customer has a query on the statement, it would be more appropriate to have an employee handle the sensitive issue and spend more time meeting the customer’s needs and making a difference where it matters the most.

Automating repetitive tasks can have a significant impact on improving customer experiences by removing repetitive tasks and empowering employees to give customers the personal touch they seek in specific instances. In addition it can reduce costs and help drive sales and growth.  

These benefits alone present a good case for companies to adopt automation technology, but they would stand to benefit significantly more by using data to firstly determine which tasks should be automated and then understand how customer data can be used to enhance experiences even further.

At the crux automating repetitive tasks has a significant impact on driving employee satisfaction which directly impacts on customer engagements. However, when companies put the I (information) before the A (automation) and strategically and intelligently drive automation, this is just the cusp of how the marriage of data and automation impact the customer experience.

Customer data should be used to add personalisation into your customer engagements. By understanding your customer behaviour, you are able to target them with offers and deals that are specific to their previous behaviour. You are able to engage them when it matters most and enhance the customer experience beyond the standardised content companies have traditionally relied on to reach out to their customers.

This is supported by the Dimension Data 2019 Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report which states that “by transforming big data into customer and market intelligence, they’ll be able to align their analytics strategy with their business strategy and design personalised experiences that proactively address customers’ needs – using self-service and automation at the right time in the customer journey.”

Although technology brings great promise to companies and is able to increase productivity and drive cost saving, customer experience is about more than the technologies that companies implement. Customer experience is about creating a customer centric business where the customer is at the centre of everything the business does.

So while there is benefit in giving customers the tools they need to access self-help services at their convenience, employees need to be given the tools that empower them to deliver high-touch customer experiences at critical times. To ignite customer experiences, the customer needs to be at the top of the agenda in all boardroom discussions and solutions need to be developed and tailored with the customer in mind. 

Only when the customer is central to the business strategy and employees across the organisation are equipped with the right tools to meet customer expectations across the entire customer journey, will the company be able to create meaningful customer interactions and enhance the customer experience that drive business success.

[1]https://www.dimensiondata.com/en/insights/-/media/dd/insights/cxbr/executive-guide-cxbr-2019.pdf