THE HIGHLIGHTS
HOW CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DRIVES EMOTIONAL
ENGAGEMENT WITH BRANDS
SPONSORED BY SAP
Brands need to see customer experience as an emotional reason for them to engage, not just a rational one, using insights on individuals to inform human interactions.
Customer experience (CX) is firmly recognised as a key differentiator for brands today. But the increasing attention being paid to it means being customer-focused is becoming simply a prerequisite. To really stand out, brands now need to go a step further and use CX to engage emotionally with customers.
At McLaren Formula 1, group digital director Rob Bloom has spearheaded a fan-first agenda and helped the brand to build a loyal community of more than 10 million followers. At the Festival of Marketing, he shared with the audience his experience of the importance of emotional connection.
People are still our most valuable asset. Human interaction in sales is invaluable.”
“Marketing is not just a rational lever, it’s also an emotional lever,” explained Nicholas Cumins, general manager at SAP Marketing Cloud. “In the buying process, 95% of what’s happening is actually happening in the subconscious mind.”
Cumins and Bloom were speaking on a panel addressing the importance of understanding what drives customers - what Cumins termed “the why” behind buying decisions. In particular, they examined the need to humanise customer experience.
Margaret Wagner, executive vice-president and chief growth officer at Merkle, also emphasised the need to understand the type of experience that a customer wants or expects. “Is it about price? Is it about convenience or is it about exclusivity?” she asked. “The biggest mistake I see in CX is people pretending to have the types of relationships with consumers that consumers have absolutely no desire to have with them.”
What’s more, in today’s world where there is a plethora of technology available at our fingertips, there is no getting away from the importance for customers of having human contact, said the panel.
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Therese Pettersen, Elkjøp
“Chatbots are not good enough. People are still our most valuable asset. Human interaction in sales is invaluable,” warned Therese Pettersen, digital communications lead at Elkjøp, part of Dixons Carphone and the largest electronic retailer in the Nordic countries.
The panel also agreed that sharing information company-wide is critical, not only to give marketing a voice and to help raise its profile, but because increased transparency tends to lead to more opportunities through information-sharing too. “Sharing [information] is the key for marketing to continue being customer-centric,” claimed Pettersen.
McLaren's Rob Bloom on its brand personality
Elkjøp's Therese Pettersen on the importance of talking to customers
“We’ve gone from a cold, clinical brand in the eyes of fans to recognising that, in order to be relevant in a contemporary world, we had to warm up. We had to thaw our brand and be far more accessible than we’ve ever been before,” he said.
Bloom warned against thinking that every customer is the same, and assuming individuals share the same priorities. “Some are switched on by the Monaco lifestyle story, others are more interested in the tech story that is F1,” he pointed out.
When it comes to using data to understand customer intent, it was agreed that care needs to be taken not to be unethical and ‘creepy’.
Of course, technology can help marketers analyse customers’ motivations to better understand their decision-making. But marketers should also understand their own biases, so that these don’t affect the data they are gathering or the assumptions made from it, warned Charlotte Rogers, senior writer at Marketing Week.
Triangulating a number of data sets will give a broader picture. And SEO data, which shows what people are searching for, can be really helpful in understanding motivations, too, added Wagner.
Bloom stressed the importance of seeking qualitative feedback from customers. For instance, when launching the McLaren app recently, fans told his team that what they wanted most was increased access to the “historically closed” world of F1.
“We built an app that told stories that we never thought we’d be telling about McLaren. It’s really important you get the full picture. If you lean too much into one insight or one tech there’s a danger the ship starts sailing in the wrong direction,” he said.
“Technology is an enabler,” concluded Bloom. “We’ve gone from mass marketing at scale to mass marketing on a one-to-one basis at scale. The essence of what we’re trying to achieve hasn’t changed.” ■
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