Kelly Nickerson | April
18, 2019
Personalizing
communications and speaking to customers in a 1:You manner is something marketers strive to achieve.
1:You is a holistic
customer experience strategy that focuses on personalizing communications with
the best choice for individuals across all touchpoints or
interactions. Whether you’re just beginning to harness the power of customer
information for cross-organizational insight, or you’re deep in the throes of
syncing golden customer data records in real-time across all customer
touchpoints, there are five design considerations that can help propel you towards
informed decisioning and greater customer personalization at a faster rate.
1.
Recognize there are many legs of the customer journey you don’t see
Retailers today must sell
across multiple channels — online, offline, and anywhere in between — to
effectively compete in today’s buy anywhere, fulfill everywhere world.
In-store shopping
generally means a sales associate is there to assist customers, though Big Box
shopping trips still tend to feature more of a self-directed DIY adventure.
Regardless, customers are pulling out their phones to compare features, check
nearby store inventory and retrieve discount coupons no matter the retail
format.
As the number of channels
available for customers to interact with your brand grows, so do the number of
touchpoints at which an informed customer dialog – based on an accurate 360
view – can splinter. And the more non-digital, non-conversion oriented an
interaction is, the less insight can be gleaned about the specific shopping
mission or purchase intent.
For example, a
bride-to-be may have several pre-purchase appointments to browse, size rings or
apply for financing, none of which informs the parallel-universe digital
journey a retailer is diligently measuring to better tailor her experience.
Retailers are now able to recognize in-store behavior (like that of the
bride-to-be) by matching offline behavioral data to make the experience more
relevant as she accesses the website’s ring-builder feature with complementary
product and digital video impressions served.
2.
Strike a balance between physical, digital and human experience
Sales associates
increasingly leverage mobile digital commerce technologies in-store to help
them get closer to the customer. Specialty clienteling solutions such as Mad
Mobile and Salesfloor incorporate customer preferences, purchase history and
wish lists that empower staff to tailor recommendations based on known tastes
and predicted interests.
When a desired product
isn’t available in-location, it’s becoming easier to quickly fulfill via
alternate inventory. For example, Coach applies their in-store customer service
policy to save the sale and retain the customer via easy, human-assisted,
online order fulfillment. A colleague of mine went to Coach in search of
leather gloves for a last minute holiday gift but didn’t find her desired style
in stock; an associate picked up on her frustration and immediately took out
her tablet and cued up a basket with the right color and size – and free
overnight shipping – in seconds.
The only thing my
colleague needed to do was enter her credit card, and off she went. You can
read more about navigating the human-digital sales divide in our new
e-book, The human experience: Optimizing the human channel in the customer
journey.
3.
Connect and feed your customer data supply chain
Whether human-assisted or
self-directed, a unified customer journey has to be informed by a robust record
of customer interactions. At the call center, interactions are tracked with a
digital trail of complaints placed, order assistance provided, personalized
offers issued and specific products available in stock at nearby stores.
But when the customer
heads to their local mall, insight to that history is generally unavailable to
inform the subsequent human-assisted interaction. The data supply chain breaks;
the result is a disconnected experience and a potentially disappointed
customer.
At Epsilon, we make
developing a strong data supply chain a core component of a customer insights
program. Tracking where and when information is acquired, how, with what
permission level, summarized to a useful human consumption level – to cross
silos and connect efficiently – is the goal. This helps to synthesize and makes
the insights output more actionable, and provides original sourcing for later
identity resolution refinement.
4. The
reciprocity rule
Modern enterprise
customer insights programs are designed around more agile and automated data
gathering methods than ever before. Explicit ‘share-and-get’ agreements between
customers and brands offer personalization and preferred treatment in return
for opt-in, customer preference updates and survey responses.
Brands are meant to deliver
something back in return for a customer’s valuable opinion and intent feedback.
I see brands most often fall down when it’s time to action on the insights.
Something as a simple as the occasional “We listened and we’re making a change”
email highlighting the product enhancement your developing based on findings
from the enterprise customer insights program can move the needle on customer
satisfaction. It further reinforces corporate transparency which is so
important to developing customer trust and ultimately success.
5.
Transform customer visits into conversations
From applying in-store
customer messaging and survey polling solutions that’s integrated into a
retailer’s shopping app, it helps them transform customer visits into a
conversation. After creating a digital ‘hologram’ of the physical store
perimeter, it’s possible to identify opt-in app users in-store to measure how
long they stay, if they make a purchase, and more.
This creates a robust
online-offline view into appointments, consultation trips and store browse
visits that can be aligned to already captured digital activity and
impressions. Understanding these additional insights helps to better
personalize the customer experience yielding 1:You communications.
By designing your
customer insights program with a mix of both research and communications
combined, retailers can engage customers in a valuable dialog. Customers
benefit from a personalized journey while helping the brand ‘see the invisible’
to assist them even better in the future; truly a win-win.
For more information on
how to create a personalized journey for your customers, download our e-book.
*This post first appeared
on Loyalty360.
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