Understanding your customer, addressing their wants and needs and creating an emotional bond with them is vital to any business; people buy people and consumers choose brands they feel an affinity towards. So, how do brands make this happen?
Or, better yet, how do we make this happen for brands when the customer service landscape is ever changing?
Branding and advertising agencies have historically enjoyed much success as the go-to people for designing customer experiences: they connected the brand and the customer.
But now we ask ourselves is targeting today’s consumer the same as it was in the 1950s, 1960s or even the 1990s? Do these legacy agencies still have what it takes, have they adapted to meet today’s consumer needs? Is targeting today’s consumers really even that different? Are they smarter, more demanding, or less trusting?
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I believe the answer to all of these questions is yes. The way to communicate with them is different, as they are digitally fluent and they embrace a multitude of communication channels. The shift to social media that started more than 10 years ago has been incredible, for those that know how to benefit. There is an emerging need for brands to listen, as social media amplifies the voices, behaviour and decision-making of existing customers.
Focus on channels that your target audience already uses. By listening, you can find out where customers felt value was, or was not, provided. But remember, this is only useful information if your campaign managers know how to interpret the data collected. You need to understand the touchpoint sensitivity that converts potential customers to paying customers. To secure brand loyalty it pays to be relevant from the customer perspective.
Technology is great for helping you to make smarter and quicker decisions. It also allows for experimenting and testing ideas, crowdsourcing opinions as well as reviews and feedback from an almost unlimited audience.
Never underestimate the power of your mobile site; studies show 80% of today’s consumers use mobile to go online. So the efficiency of your mobile site could be the difference between you winning a customer and them going to
your competitor.
It’s easy to see there’s value in technology, but we shouldn’t forget the value of the face-to-face meeting. People buy people, and without a human element customers will struggle to connect emotionally with your brand.
Technology empowers businesses, plays a supporting role, and assists learning — but it is only effective if you first have a complete understanding of what you want to achieve. Technology doesn’t offer the ‘why’; it only informs of the ‘whats’ and can tell you the ‘hows’ of brand and customer engagement.
Businesses have always spent significant money on customer acquisition. Through the smart use of technology, paired with individuals that can interpret and act upon the data collected, you can not only acquire customers but also retain them. Speaking to customers at their level, using the channels that they’re already on and by adopting a cloud-based system, you can easily adapt to meet their needs as the customer behaviour evolves.
Sanjay Murthy is the managing director of Figjam, the Dubai-based food & beverage agency. Visit www.figjamco.com for more information.
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