Are You Delivering Cross-Channel Personalization? Learn What Under Armour and Saks Are Doing Right

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CustomerThink.com

There is a chasm between what customers are expecting in terms of personalization and what marketers are providing. According to findings from research conducted by TimeTrade; “93 percent of retail decision makers claim that personalization is a strategic focus but only 25 percent of shoppers say they receive a consistent, personal experience across channels.” According to TimeTrade CEO, Gary Ambrosino, “to remain successful … brands must … ensure that service is prompt, personalized and consistent across channels.”

Personalizing per your customer’s individual needs is a 360-degree pursuit. It doesn’t stop at the home page of your website or your consumer’s email inbox. Personalizing the entire brand experience with Human Data that addresses individual’s lifestyle and interests is critical for building long term relationships versus one-shot sales.

Per recent research conducted by our firm, marketers must make a profound shift from implicit data (information data mined or provided by customers for short-term interests or needs) to explicit self-profiled preference Human data (information provided by customers in the Preference Center of a site or through dialogue boxes). Findings from 2500+ hours of VoC research interviews for clients such as Gilt, MassMutual, IBM, HP and QVC, indicate that implicit data is simply not delivering on customer’s expectations of value. To drive high levels of relevance and personalization, Millennials in particular, are willing to provide deep explicit Human Data regarding their preferences.

Fitness company, Under Armour offers “UA Shop”, a lifestyle-based Custom Shopping App for their customer that provides a deeply personalized experience based on a shopper’s athlete inspiration, workout history, and previous purchase history. For example, depending on the type of activity logged into a connected fitness tracker and their geographical location, a shopper will be presented with specific product suggestions relevant to their situation.

Jason LaRose, Senior Vice President, Revenue, at Under Armour noted about the app, “This app was created to … complement our existing in-store experiences … We are now able to provide custom experiences across our various categories specific to our diverse customer base.”

High-end retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue have long offered in-store shopping services, but with today’s busy on-the-go consumer, that service needed to be upgraded and expanded to include a virtual component. Today, Saks lets its customers connect with Saks Associates 24/7 to create personally curated saks.com boutique pages, via a dedicated URL. Interaction also includes live chat, email or scheduled appointments. In addition, Saks Associates can showcase personalized “storefronts” to customers through email and social media or via a mobile app.

“This is a highly personalized online solution to selling …” commented Marc Metrick, President, Saks Fifth Avenue, “with access to Associates 24/7, personalized services and more, we finally have the ability to bring the high-touch Saks experience and store environment online.”

TakeAways

1. Your customer, BtoB or BtoC, is a human being, not a cohort or data segment. Personalizing their full brand experience across all channels and touchpoints lets them know that you are listening and customizing interactions/solutions per their individual needs.
2. Showing your shoppers how a product can solve a problem or enhance their lifestyle in a meaningful way lets them envision the brand as a true partner in their life. The brand becomes less about the sale of and more about a long-term ongoing solution.
3. Today personalization is about putting the consumer in the driver’s seat to determine how they want to engage, what they want to engage about, and when that engagement should take place. Brands need to become nimble in order to provide the types of personalized experiences their unique customers require.

Using Human Data for 360-degree personalization is about using consumer-supplied preference data to address lifestyle and interests, not to sell, but to build long-term relationships. Consumers now expect brands to know their needs and present them with highly personalized solutions and experiences.

Is Your Brand Committed To A Personalized Customer Experience? (Part 2)

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CMO.com

Recently I wrote about how to determine whether your company is truly committed to personalizing the customer experience (CX) and building loyalty. I presented the first half of eight questions to ask yourself; now I offer the rest.

My goal: to help you develop the strategies, action plans, and employee initiatives to satisfy unprecedented customer expectations for high-value engagement, personalization, and loyalty.

Question 5: Do you have in place the necessary CX/loyalty/CRM technology to connect with customers?
“Forward-looking organizations are making strides by focusing on three key ingredients: technology, data, and ownership," said Jefrey Gomez, managing director, Asia Pacific at Econsultancy, in this B&T article. Michael Kustreba, managing director of Epsilon, Asia Pacific, agreed: “The good news is that there are valuable insights from data, technology and proven methodologies that organizations can adopt to help them improve their customer experience delivery.”

Case in point: Online retailer Zappos has devised “Zappos Labs,” which focuses on solving consumers’ pain points and creating optimized customer experiences across all channels. The brand’s mobile app allows consumers to send Zappos employees a photograph of items seen on the street via text, email, or Instagram. A link is then sent back to the consumer to purchase it online.

Additionally, Zappos’ customer service agents are reminded of their CX commitment with a “Happiness Experience Form,” which reminds them to attempt at least two personal connections with consumers throughout interactions to address any needs and provide an ”overall wow experience.”

⇒ Action Items:

• Examine the technology your company has in place to see what measures can be put in place right now to boost CX, such as reminders to staff, per the Zappos example. Also, explore how you can expand the technical capabilities and possibilities at each touch point to deliver improved CX.
• Audit for the necessary level of collaboration of information sharing across the various departments and systems.

Question 6: Do you have a dedicated budget for new research to drive innovative CX/loyalty strategies?
Per research conducted by Epsilon, “Only 7% of companies have a single, dedicated budget for understanding the customer journey, and 27% have a dedicated budget split across different departments.”

Jonathan Serebrin, user experience researcher for The Home Depot, advises that companies include all teams in research results and learnings to make them part of the company culture. Make sure that all departments understand how customers feel about the brand and products, he said. Every step of the testing and development process needs to assure synchronization with customers.

While CMOs are now understanding that a dedicated CX budget is essential to transformation, in the “Spotlight On 2016 CX Helps And Hurts” study by Forrester, a notation was made regarding budgets: “CMOs won’t simply write blank checks. Instead they’ll require CX teams to prove that their projects improve key performance indicators that marketers care about, like customer acquisition and engagement.”

⇒ Action Items:

• Take a closer look at carving out a slice of digital, social, marketing, sales, and IT budgets for one combined CX budget. Rather than depleting one department’s funds, multiple stakeholder departments should contribute to the overall CX cause.
• Be sure you have in place a solid benchmark of customer value and how/when milestones can be measured so that budget investments can be justified or adjusted in the future.

Question 7: Do the highest levels of management in your company support CX programs and staff?
The “Shifting Sands Of Marketing: Gartner 2015-2016 CMO Spend Survey” reported, “Business leaders understand that consumer expectations for fast, informative, convenient, and personalized transactions will continue to grow and that staying ahead of the competition is paramount.”

And according to the Forrester/Heidrick & Struggles “2016 Evolved CMO report,” “Evolved CMOs will need to commit to understanding customers and to driving that philosophy throughout their organizations with a customer-obsessed mindset.”

⇒ Action Items:

• In order for CX to succeed in your company, it is essential that there is buy in and commitment from every involved department at all levels.
• CX innovation is a top-down change process.
• However, it is marketing’s responsibility to provide the vision and criteria for success.

Question 8: Does your company have a cross-functional and integrated culture?
The Deloitte “Global Human Capital Trends 2016” report stated that in today’s evolving marketplace, companies need to adopt a new organizational structure to be more of a “network of teams” with strong communication and rapid information flow cross functionally. Additional data points from the report include:

• 92% of companies said they believe redesigning the organization is very important. More than 80% of respondents reported that they are either currently restructuring their organizations or have recently completed the process.
• The growth of the Millennial demographic, the diversity of global teams, and the need to innovate and work more closely with customers are driving a new organizational flexibility.

⇒ Action Items:

• Understand what employees can bring to your CX efforts and place them in mission-focused teams by their contribution potential and experience.
• Empower teams to set their own goals and make their own decisions in order to achieve CX goals.
• Replace silos of information with information sharing cross functionally.

Is Your Brand Committed To A Personalized Customer Experience? (Part 1)

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CMO.com

Too many companies are still struggling to achieve deep and high-value relationships with customers. As a result, churn, attrition, and high opt-out rates continue to be significant problems. This is especially true among Millennial customers, who expect unprecedented levels of value and personalization from brands.

These findings are based on results from more than 160 VoC research studies our firm, ERDM, has conducted for brands such as Microsoft, HP, MassMutual, Gilt, and QVC.

In response to requests from CMOs, who are understandably frustrated and concerned by these persistent issues, we prepared eight questions to help determine whether your company is truly committed to personalizing the customer experience (CX) and building loyalty.

This article will be presented in two parts. Here are the first four questions, along with some possible answers and action items.

Question 1: What is your company’s true appetite for CX and loyalty transformation?
According to Mike Polner, director of product marketing for Five Stars, a mobile loyalty app provider: “The most successful businesses ensure their staff is engaged and understand the value of loyalty."

And according to Jeroen Hoencamp, CEO of Vodafone UK: “Transformation needs to take place both internally and externally. ... Listening to customers and understanding customer value from their perspective will allow customer-centric transformation to take place.”

⇒ Action Items:

• Your brand culture and senior management need to support CX and loyalty initiatives by creating a customer-focused culture, customer-focused metrics, CX-based compensation, integrated consumer communication across all touch points, and an adequate CX budget allocation.
• Keep the company engaged in the CX journey by establishing formal and regular means of providing the organization with progress report cards and performance against CX metrics.

Question 2: Do your fellow execs have a deep understanding of why you are focusing on CX and loyalty?
Brands that have successful consumer engagement strategies put consumer understanding at the top of their priority lists.

Bloomingdale chairman and CEO Tony Spring noted that consumer understanding is paramount in every aspect of the company’s marketing. Here are some key quotes:

• “This is the age of empowered consumers. We need to connect with customers on their terms.”
• “Consumers demand personalization and privacy. It’s a push-and-pull thing. We must instill trust as we build our relationship with our customers.”

Additionally, John Gerhardt, senior vice president, creative branding direction, at LVMH-owned DFS Group, noted: “Every person has a story to tell about where their loyalty lies, and we were thrilled to explore that concept ... to celebrate and thank our customers for the immense loyalty they show us. ... We wanted to celebrate the value of loyalty, which is at the core of all these experiences."

⇒ Action Items:

• A CX program without a clear-cut goal is a useless CX program. Know what you want to accomplish by engaging your customers, understand what engagement actually means to your customers, and understand what it will take to accomplish this goal.
• Define the criteria for evaluating the success of your CX and loyalty strategies. Set benchmarks and determine what factors and data will be monitored on a regular basis to determine progress, success, and improvements.

Question 3: Do you have the right data, metrics, and segments to measure CX impact and success?
In structuring its loyalty program, Safeway examined many data factors, some of which were surprising. Here is an important note from the agency that structured the program: “You will run the danger of cannibalizing your business by giving rewards to people who are going to shop with you anyway. ... It is better to target your programs mainly to those whose behavior you want to change.”

Prior to instituting the program, Safeway surveyed its customers and asked: How much do you spend on groceries every week, and where else do you shop? Answers were combined with the actual spending data to determine Safeway’s “share of wallet” and gain understanding of new opportunities that could be uncovered with a loyalty program.

⇒ Action Items:

• How are consumers interacting with your brand? Does your data provide that answer? If not, it’s time to rethink how you collect and interpret incoming information to be sure that the data you are collecting is useful and brings actual insights to drive marketing initiatives.
• Reinvent your data to put consumers into segments based on preferences, purchases, communication methods, inquiries/customer service issues, lapsed, new, loyal, etc. Then rethink communication and engagement strategies for each segment, not for customers in general.

Question 4: Does your staff have the right CX and loyalty skills, and do you have a customer advisory group?
Nick Mehta, CEO of marketing firm Gainsight, noted that having a dedicated customer success team, as well as a group of consumer advocates, is a necessity for building successful loyalty and CX. “The customer success team should be your eyes and ears. ... CS can tell you which users love using your service. ... Many times, users can offer informal advocacy and on-the-ground feedback that decision makers can’t. In addition, there are usually far more users than decision makers.”

⇒ Action Items:

• Who on your team could offer customer success insights? Take a look at your entire staff and handpick representatives who can report on real-life CX interactions, problems, and successes for key learnings that can prompt new actions.
• Arrange a consumer advocacy program with your most engaged customers to gain insights on how and why consumers are or aren’t motivated to engage with the brand.

Part 1 Takeaways
1. Active consumer listening with a goal of deep understanding is a key element of CX transformation because it lets brands look at touch points and interactions from a value-driven experience standpoint that cultivates ongoing loyalty, not just an end-point transaction goal.

2. Building CX means building trust. If consumers do not trust a brand or trust that the brand will deliver value or appreciation for their loyalty, the consumer will go elsewhere for a better experience.

3. Correct data interpretation is essential in developing CX innovation. True understanding of who and how consumers interact with the brand will shape every strategy, communication, and the CX program’s success.

4. Put together a customer success team with representatives from all aspects of CX and loyalty so that your company can continually have a 360-degree view of engagement wins and losses. Cultivate consumer advocacy so that you are regularly receiving input from those who interact with the brand most.