Consumer Behavior
Improving consumer relationships in a virtual world
John Nash, chief marketing and strategy officer at Redpoint, explains why retails must strive to provide customers with a relevant, personalized experience.
July 19, 2021 by John Nash — Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Redpoint Global
The end of the handshake as the primary social greeting is the most visible example of how human interactions have become limited. In the consumer world, those limitations are manifested by social distancing protocols, in-store capacity limits and contactless and cashless engagements, to name a few. And that's for the consumers who choose to engage in person. A recent McKinsey survey on the flight to digital commerce showed expected increases of up to 50% for online purchases of household items, apparel and food/grocery — a sign that online, digital-first experiences are likely here to stay.
A transition to digital-first experiences, however, must be done in a way that enhances the brand promise rather than letting the promise erode as contact points change. Even for mostly digital customer journeys, consumers still want to feel a connection with a brand. Below, I offer three tips for brands to replicate a "human feeling" of being understood and valued — even when the personalized customer experience is delivered in our predominately virtual world.
Drive intelligent customer interactions with data-driven insights
A transition to online-first interactions does not give brands the liberty to treat every customer the same, a surefire way to dehumanize the engagement. Customers, online or in-store, still expect a personalized experience. In a recent Dynata survey, 73% of consumers said that they will shop only with brands that personally understand them.
Replicating the personal understanding of a knowledgeable, in-store associate during an online-first customer journey relies on data. More specifically, it relies on using customer data from all sources and all types — structured, unstructured, semi-structured and from known and unknown customer records — to create a single customer view. A single customer view bolstered by advanced identity resolution capabilities provides brands and marketers with a customer identity graph that encapsulates a persistently updated view of a unique customer's behaviors, preferences, transactions, devices and IDs.
A single customer view that is updated in real time and combined with real-time decisioning empowers brands to deliver a hyper-relevant, personalized experience that is always in cadence with the customer journey.
It is increasingly difficult for brands to deliver sustained relevance in an omnichannel customer journey — but it is now possible via an advanced real-time single customer view. Interacting with a relevant, personalized experience demonstrates the personal understanding that customers expect.
Right channel, right time, all the time
The ability to deliver a personalized CX on the right channel at the right time is indispensable for approximating a human-centric engagement; relevance is "virtually" impossible without it. Customers now engage with brands through a variety of digital channels at any time. A static email offer generated from a set point in time and conditioned on a customer's online session may lose relevance the instant it is sent; a customer may have initiated a new session, browsed a new page, liked a different item, clicked a new ad, and so on. Today's always-on, connected customers are less willing to tolerate fragmented experiences that fail to recognize them as unique. An email offer for a product they're no longer interested in — or have already bought on a different channel – demonstrate to a customer that a brand is either uninterested or incapable of developing the personal understanding the customer knows is possible.
Shaping a dynamic, real-time response on any channel that is always in the cadence of the customer's journey at the precise moment of engagement requires us to overcome siloes of data, people or processes. A single customer view derives its power, in part, from being accessible by any customer-facing function. Precise relevance requires that a call center, for example, will have the same updated single customer view as an email marketing team, or the team responsible for a website recommendation engine. And emails are personalized when the customer opens them, not when they are sent.
Genuine privacy protection
The demand from customers for a personalized CX and for brands to demonstrate a personal understanding does not give brands carte blanche to abuse the trust they've earned. While customers will share data in exchange for a personalized experience, the expectation is that the brands they trust will use that data within the bounds of the relationship. In a Harris Poll commissioned by Redpoint, consumers ranked privacy as the most important dimension of CX.
More than two-thirds of consumers polled said that it was at least "very important" that a brand share what information is being collected, how it is being used, allow the customer to give explicit authorization over how it will be used, and allow for very specific authorizations. Further, 88% said it would likely be a deal-breaker were a company to sell customer data to other companies for marketing/advertising purposes without explicit authorization.
As far as the customer is concerned, trust is an essential component of the human-centric experience replicated for an online environment. Regulations including GDPR and CCPA provide brands with even more incentive to get data privacy right, with heavy fines and/or loss of brand reputation potential repercussions in addition to fleeing customers. In addition to transparency and the safeguarding of data, brands must be sensitive to personalization boundaries. A customer who provides data in exchange for a personalized CX may cringe at receiving a half dozen or more emails each week, or for a brand to acknowledge that it knows about an upcoming vacation or a new job. Familiarity is not a license to intrude. Just as good fences make great neighbors, a strong relationship depends on respecting mutually understood boundaries.
For many brands, a seemingly permanent transition to online-first engagements is reason for worry; the in-store promotions and friendly associates are tried and true methods for establishing a human connection. But with a single customer view and real-time decisioning, brands can deliver a better personalized experience on whatever channel a customer chooses to engage. Precise relevance — even without the benefit of a traditional face-to-face encounter — demonstrates a degree of personal understanding that customers reward with loyalty.
John Nash is chief marketing and strategy officer at Redpoint
About John Nash
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