Customer-Centricity Is Mandatory for 2015

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on customerthink.com

For 2015 putting your customer at the center of every strategy and business process will be essential for acquisition, retention and competitive differentiation. No more just talking about it. This coming year, it has to happen.

Here are three tips with examples of companies that are getting it right when it comes to excellence in customer-centricity.

You Want Fans, Not Just Customers
TGI Fridays, recently earned a top spot in the Dunnhumby Customer Centricity Index which noted that when it comes to restaurants, “experience matters as much as the food.” TGI Fridays was recognized for its major differentiator, loyalty. TGI Fridays was also honored in the Loyalty360 Awards.

According to Michelle Malish, Senior Director, Customer Relationship Marketing & Loyalty:

“Fridays is intently focused on ... meeting the needs and desires of our most loyal fans. [We use] member data and insights to enable relevant, multichannel communications that build and sustain engaged relationships, support brand activations, drive incremental traffic, and create brand advocacy… We develop, test, analyze and launch new program benefits and concepts that meet our guests’ needs… Depending upon the marketing program, we may use behavioral and personal profile data to tailor messaging content, copy tone, offer strategy, channel, and contact frequency. Our goal is to deliver memorable guest dining experiences, reward members for their loyalty, inspire social sharing, and create brand fans.”

The company’s Give Me More Stripes loyalty program not only offers rewards but also has a social component that states, “In here there’s plenty to talk about,” and gives fans a platform to share their experiences.

Create an Emotional Attachment to Your Brand
When customers feel a part of the brand they will develop an attachment to the experiences associated with it, and want more. According to a Gallup poll:

“[Consumers are] more inclined to spend with businesses they feel good about… consumers will give more money to the businesses they feel emotionally connected to...the vast majority of customer buying decisions are influenced by emotional factors.”

Noting an emotional connection to their web experience, Norwegian Cruise Lines was recognized by Key Lime Interactive’s Comprehensive User Experience Report for their “Consistently positive emotional experiences … the site significantly outperformed its competitors’ in terms of time spent on the site [which] increased the brand’s perception as ‘entertaining’, ‘appealing’, ‘fun’, and ‘family-oriented’.”

Use Customer Feedback To Make Improvements
ANZ Bank, a top-four international financial services firm, was the recipient of the International Customer Experience Award for “[showing that] service, satisfaction and ROI can improve by listening to customers.”

According to Mark Hand, ANZ Managing Director Retail Distribution:

“Our real-time customer feedback tool… allows us to track the [customer] journey, and then make improvements to our customer experience programs. By collecting insights and feedback at key steps, we’ve improved our conversion rates, responsiveness and communication processes in every way.”

By using real time feedback to improve the customer experience ANZ achieved these results:

• 15 percent increas e in customer experience scores

• Up to 48 percent survey response rates – more than 10 times the industry standard.

Five Takeaways:

1. When you create compelling and competitively differentiating customer value, retention will increase dramatically.

2. Use customer behavioral data and voice of customer insights to drive development of new engagement programs.

3. Use multiple channels and multiple ways of gathering customer insights. Then, tailor messaging around the customer’s journey at every stage.

4. Cultivate fans that want to have a relationship with your brand.

5. Understand the emotional reasons that customers will identify with your products, services and overall brand.

Being customer-centric in your marketing means that you recognize your customers as more than a transaction. You take the time to get to know why they choose your company and then put in place strategies to nurture trust and deliver meaningful brand experiences designed to engage and retain.

3 Tips for Involving Customers With Your Brand

The Challenge: Companies need to involve customers with their brand by providing emotional connections that drive engagement and purchases.

Here are 3 tips to help you achieve greater brand engagement.

Tip #1: Customers project how they see themselves in your brand attributes.

In an, E-Score study on the Rankings of America’s Top Brands, it was noted that, “a… brand’s attributes and personality can be an extension of how the consumer wants to represent [themselves] and connects to what they expect to achieve from a product or service.”

Tip #2: A purchase is a viewed as a form of self-expression by consumers.

In a study from University of Geneva on Brand Value and the Respective Role of Brand Sensitivity, Situational Involvement and Enduring Involvement it concluded that there is a predominant role in how a customer views their self-expression as it relates to a brand purchase;

• Interaction is a predictor of purchase intent.

• Customers’ situational involvement (linked with anticipated usage) may have a higher impact on the brand purchase intention than the actual perceived value of the product.

Tip #3: There has to be an emotional component to engagement in order for involvement to take place.

It was noted in the International Review of Management and Business Research study, “Investigating the Role of Brand in Forming the Consumer Involvement” that in order to understand consumers’ behavior, knowing the structure of consumer involvement is highly important

• Brand reputation, loyalty, awareness popularity, and perceived quality all have a significant correlation with consumer involvement.

Online retailer, ModCloth has put these key facts into action by developing a customer base that is highly engaged and involved. They have come up with unique strategies for turning customer insights into innovative website features and relevant content;

• CEO Eric Kroger had this to say regarding customer involvement, “Our vision and where we believe the industry is heading is retailers who align behind distinct communities of customers, and those retailers understand those customers better than any other retailer.”

• From the moment that a customer arrives on the site they are invited to become a part of the ModCloth Community.

• ModCloth’s “selfie” gallery on their App (featuring shoppers wearing the company’s clothes) has increased in terms of involvement by 60 percent since it was launched.

• The company announced that it has surpassed  $100 million in annual revenue last year—well over 40% growth year over year—and it largely attributes this success to a focus on the customer and its fostering of a highly involved customer community.

3 Key Takeaways from the strategies ModCloth uses to involve customers:

• Individualized product recommendations based on actual visits and viewed items.

• To strengthen the connections, when shoppers arrive on site from social networks, the retailer displays the product or promotion that prompted the click, while also introducing these visitors to its overall brand. 

• The company makes sure it presents customers with personalized, yet fresh, relevant products and shopping features on every visit to give them a reason to keep coming back.

4 Tips That Transform Holiday Shoppers Into Loyal Customers

Challenge: Tis the season for customers to think “sale.” However, while customers are concentrating on transactions, companies need to think beyond the holidays. We hope the following 4 tips will help you move beyond “quickie transactions” for the 2013 holiday season to creating relationships for 2014 and beyond.

1. Understand the journey customers take with your company, from prospect to loyal customer. Know what each customer segment requires and deliver on your brand promise at every stage of their customer journey. See our previous article DM News Spotlight Article, The Sales Funnel is Dead.

2. Be a Holiday Shopping Resource.
Consumers will be receiving hundreds, if not thousands, of sales offers. By asking them to tell you about their needs and then helping with personalized solutions, you will cut through the clutter and create a competitively differentiating shopping experience.

3. Be Multi Channel.

Showrooming is not a threat, it is a reality. Showrooming occurs when shoppers are at a retail location and use their mobile devices to research prices or terms at competitive online merchants. More than three quarters of shoppers have examined merchandise in a brick-and-mortar store and ultimately purchased that merchandise at a lower price, online, according to new data from CFI Group’s Holiday Retail Spending Survey. 

Additionally, a recent survey conducted by Deloitte found that two-thirds of smartphone owners planned to use their phones during holiday shopping, to find store locations, compare prices and look for product information.

Therefore, make it easy for customers to interact with your company effortlessly, via the media of their choice.

4. Be consistent across channels.
During holiday shopping season customers and prospects are doing a lot of research. Make sure you are providing a consistent multichannel experience, not multichannel frustration. A frictionless experience is key for customers who will give up on your company when information is different across media, or difficult to find;

» Walmart is partnering with online resources such as Google to enable shoppers to not only search for a product, but also find out if it is available in their local store. Stephen F. Quinn, chief marketing officer at Walmart explained, “Google will tell you if your local Walmart has Weber grills in stock, and it will tell you that store’s location.” Walmart started experimenting with this process earlier this year and has increased its efforts for the holidays.

» And, most retailers are taking to Facebook for ads and Pinterest to setup online showrooms. Target and many other retailers, are using Pinterest, which Casey Carl, president of multichannel at Target says they are using for holiday-party-planning boards for their Red Card holders. Pinterest itself is starting a new “Holiday Gift” category that will not only offer shoppers gift ideas but will give retailers another display window for their items.

4 Tips for Earning Consumer Preference Data

The Challenge: Marketers everywhere are fighting an uphill battle: trying to deliver more personalized communications but lacking the accurate data to do so. Without that information marketers are still stuck sending ‘Spray and Pray’ blasts of email.

According to Toronto-based anti-spam filtering and web security services provider, Perimetic, “roughly 130 billion spam emails are sent, worldwide, per day, accounting for roughly 70% of global emailing activity.”

The goal of consumer-provided preference data is to deliver personally relevant offers, communications, and experiences. However instead of making consumers comfortable with sharing personal information, the ‘Spray and Pray’ practices of marketers have caused consumers not to trust them. This certainly applies to providing them with personal information.

Based on Voice of Customer research conducted by our firm, we have learned that there are 4 ways that brands can earn consumer preference data. These findings were consistent across B2B and B2C research.

4 Key Takeaways for Marketers:

1. Demonstrate to Consumers That You’ll Safeguard Their Information and Use it in a Responsible Way.
Successfully doing so requires that you follow two important steps:

•  One, promise consumers that you’ll safeguard their personal preferences by assuring them at each stage of the sign-up process and in all subsequent messages.

•  Two, follow through on that promise.

Violating these steps can do serious harm to brands. Conversely, demonstrating that you’re trustworthy will only help to strengthen the consumer-brand relationship.

2. Assure Consumers That “Responsible” Means That You’ll Never Rent or Sell Their Information to Third Parties.
This assurance cannot be subtle: it must be undeniable.

Email Marketing Services Provider, MailChimp, offers a great example of this. The message on their website support page is plain and unmistakable: “MailChimp does not provide, sell, share, or rent lists. Ever.”

It’s that kind of conciseness that puts consumers’ minds at ease. Do it.

3. Honor Consumer Expectations That Preference Data Will Be Used to Drive Increasingly Targeted Offers.
Aligning your brand with this expectation requires that you demonstrate your commitment to honor expectations from the outset of a relationship.

Boston Store’s Fashion and Sales News email sign-up form requests customers to provide the store with 10 essential preference criteria, thereby assuring customers that they’ll only receive relevant offers.

We applaud Boston Store for using detailed preference criteria to deliver a more personal experience.

4. Clearly Demonstrate to the Consumer That You’re Working to Provide an Improved Experience With Their Preference Information.
If value is not obvious, consumers will assume that you’ve betrayed their trust.

This expectation of relevance applies to both online and offline experiences and communications. Be sure that you’re demonstrating the value to the consumer consistently and over time. There’s a lot of bad history you need to overcome.

We urge you to test these 4 Tips. Per the experience of our clients, your customers will reward you with increased loyalty and sales.