The brands striving to serve today's connected customer The brands striving to serve today's connected customer

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Source: Salesforce, 'Creating a Connected Customer Experience'

online

offline

Connected Customer

apps

text messages

telephone call centres

socialmedia

stores

Gill Green, Wessanen

“For smaller brands with lower marketing budgets [social media] connections enable us to talk with people who are real fans."

Number of mobile users by 2020 - 70% of the global population

5.5bn

72% of their devices and connections will be 'smart' – up from 36% in 2015

2018

2015

72%

36%

Martin Moll, former Nissan and Honda marketing director

“Is the customer really in the brand’s DNA or is it all about selling and everything else is secondary?”

read the salesforce report

The most successful brands in a future of increasing connectivity will be those that give people a reason to engage and make every channel work to improve the customer experience

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1 June 2018

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Striving to serve today’s connected customer

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Customer experience is improved by regular collaboration

Uniting staff Of course, it is not just a brand’s customers that are connected across so many channels. Employees are also seeing their roles change because of how they choose to connect with their own organisation. Members of staff will follow their own brands and colleagues on social media, for example, so the workforce needs to be united around shared systems, metrics and goals. In theory if people are happy and passionate about where they work and the products they sell, then the customers are more likely to be enthused too. An employee should be able to pick up a conversation with any customer and understand what has happened so far and what the next steps should be. Metrics such as staff turnover and net promoter scores can help to establish any link between employee and customer behaviour and commercial outcomes. Employees are certainly involved in the conversation at Transport for London (TfL). Earlier this year TfL’s marketing director Chris Macleod took on the newly created role of customer director. He says staff need as much information about journeys and disruption as the customers who sign up to its own travel apps and the apps developed by other companies that use its data. “We cannot have a situation where someone getting on a bus knows more than the member of staff serving them,” he says. “Employees need to feel empowered so they can answer questions about all the services we offer.” Macleod says workers across the different TfL functions must also be connected to ensure the customer experience remains good. “For example, there was a lot of forward planning between the marketing function and our engineers around the work being carried out on our network over Easter,” he says. “The engineering work has to be communicated to all parts of the business as well as to customers. We don’t want people using our Journey Planner app and being given information about a trip they cannot actually make on the day.” Macleod adds that the link between super-connectivity and customer experience must always work on a micro-level. “If the lifts are not working at a station today this might impact on a disabled customer so we must communicate this effectively at all levels.” TfL also acknowledges that it can cost considerable time and money to serve connected customers and, like many brands, it is investing in more self-serve technology such as chat bots. When we are connected to brands in so many ways we expect a seamless and smart experience and we become frustrated and more fickle when we don’t receive it.

“Organisations tend to excel at connected customer experiences when their leadership recognises it’s a key differentiator and business driver. That’s when you get a culture that’s all about the customer – where no matter whether you’re in marketing, operations or sales, there’s a common sense of what you’re trying to achieve,” according to Tim Wade, managing partner at consultancy Smith and Co, quoted in Salesforce’s report. One company using social media to create real conversations with connected customers is healthy foods business Wessanen. Its brands include Clipper Teas, Whole Earth and gluten-free cake range Mrs Crimble’s. Marketing director Gill Green says social media connectivity is a gift for a company like hers. “For smaller brands with lower marketing budgets these connections enable us to talk with people who are real fans of our brands and gather genuine and useful feedback,” she says. “People become actual brand ambassadors and share the images and photography we use in our marketing, and help us with product development.” She cites the example of how Clipper Teas responded when some customers highlighted their concerns that the ethical brand was using plastic in its tea bags. “Clipper is a pioneering brand and the only one to use unbleached bags, but there was genuine alarm among our customers that we were using plastic so we had to react quickly,” says Green. “Plastic is used as a heat seal, but we have recently carried out three trials of a tea bag using an alternative solution. We have told our tea supplier that our customers want this to be a priority area for us.” The company also used its connected customers on Facebook to gather feedback on the packaging for mocha choc macaroons, a new product in the Mrs Crimble’s range.

Moll urges brands to invest more time and money in defining and prioritising which channels and emerging platforms are specifically right and relevant for them and their customers. “CMOs can come under pressure from their agencies and within their own businesses to be involved in everything and invest in the latest new technology, but there can be a mismatch with the brand.” A company-wide approach Organisations need to go beyond being purely reactive and responding to customer complaints on Twitter or Facebook. They must become much more proactive and take on board customers’ views, opinions and ideas. In this hectic connected world there is also additional pressure on marketers to provide a consistent customer experience across different geographies and channels. Of course, if marketers are to win on such an emotional level they need to be clear themselves about what their brand stands for, why it exists, why people choose to connect with it and how it is different from its competitors. The anxiety can be eased if there is a company-wide approach to ensuring connected customers have a good brand experience and it is strategic rather than tactical. Every leader within the organisation must recognise that investing in this area can be an important and potentially lucrative business differentiator.

Martin Moll, the former European marketing director of Nissan and previously Honda, says many brands claim to be customer-centric but in reality they just have a strategy plan gathering dust. “A brand may talk about being strategic but continue to react in a very short-term way, which can be frustrating for marketers,” he says. “Is the customer really in the brand’s DNA or is it all about selling and everything else is secondary?” He adds that in this super-connected world brands are missing opportunities to have a true and regular dialogue with their customers. “Social media allows for this dialogue but many brands still treat it as a showcasing channel and just dictate what messages are conveyed, where and when. Where is the balance with what the customer wants and allowing positive feedback and idea-sharing?”

Marketers require a deep understanding of what is important to customers, what they value and care about and, crucially, why they bother to connect via specific channels at all. As Salesforce’s report ‘Creating a Connected Customer Experience’ points out using data from Cisco: “It’s predicted there will be 5.5 billion mobile users by 2020, representing 70% of the global population. What’s more, 72% of their devices and connections will be smart – up from 36% in 2015.” In this gruelling environment the brands that survive and prosper will be those that use this super-connectivity to have a two-way dialogue with their customers. Those that just broadcast brand and sales messages will fail miserably.

eing a marketer in 2018 can be exhausting. Customers are more connected to brands than ever before through social media, text messages, apps, email, telephone call centres and stores. They want their expectations not just met but exceeded.