Preparing for the new customer!

Today we are living in the world of engagement. CMOs need to throw away their MBA text books and concepts and adopt new marketing techniques to suit the “new age customer”. The other up CMOs sleeve is – they required to establish a brand that’s resilient to the changing times and create customer experience that gets better with every interaction in today’s digital economy.

This new customer has greater expectations, requires higher control and engages more actively with brands. These customers have new social channels to express their opinions and can easily do so through their smart phones. Peer, review/validation and communication is high on the agenda and they expect more ways to communicate and shop anytime, anywhere.

So what does this mean to the marketing mix? Over 60% of the marketing spend is going to be spent on the non-traditional digital content like social networks, blogs, mobile, etc. This signals the demise of the traditional CMO. What this means, it requires CMOs to educate themselves on the latest emerging tools and techniques of measuring the customer’s voice, satisfaction and also to understand in detail the disruptive influence of online platforms and channels on a customer’s purchase behaviour. That is by no means the be-all and end-all of the CMO’s role. This requires a radical shift in mindset. The CMO’s responsibility is to initiate and implement that change.

With this rise in customer-centric organizations, CMO and their teams are now the key enabler for organizations to work cohesively and to have an accurate read of customer behaviour. Customer support becomes an integral element in customer engagement and creating great customer satisfaction.

So successful enterprises who have crossed this chasm and become truly customer-oriented, have aligned customer experience and support to the CMOs. These are organizations of the future catering to the new age of the customer.

Customer Experience: The Science of the Art

Many centuries ago in Southern India, a classical art form was taking root that would be characterized by its dramatic makeup, vibrant costume and extremely mathematical percussion beat and tempo. That art form as we know it now is called Kathakali. What could this art form possibly have to do with modern day customer experience one may ask?

At the very base level customer experience is all about cultural alignment – Am I living the ethos that is relevant to my customer? Am I being able to communicate and connect to my customer at the deepest level? Am I able to leave an indelible mark on someone who I may have never met?

Customer experiences is no longer a long sequence of consistent interactions but is changing to instant gratification around how his /her last experience was. Ted Rubin makes a very interesting hypothesis around “Return on Relationships” in his latest book which is also testimony to how great brands are truly built with great relationships as its core mission. However marketers must realize that to manage experiences effectively and enhance the relationship quotient with every interaction calls for changes to be made to address silo driven cultures across R&D, Logistics, Supply Chain, Sales & Retail functions etc.

Improving and revamping customer experience can’t be accomplished through a one-off effort. Like marketing, effective customer experience strategies evolve constantly. So the management process needs steady and ongoing re-assessment and refinement to deliver against changing expectations and technological advancements.

One of the key drivers for these evolving expectations is digital. It not only creates new channels and touch points, it also helps us manage the customer experience better. Embrace digital tools to work across internal silos to manage key performance indicators, and use dashboards to quickly uncover and address shortcomings that need attention along the customer journey.

A shared vision of what your business or brand should stand for can guarantee a consistent experience.

Creating a culture of experience innovation should be priority. I can think of many organizations who have truly changed the way they respond to customers and do so continuously – Cisco, Walmart, Unilever, and they continue to do so by anticipating experiences, creating the right channels of communication and consistently communicating the right message. You could almost call it an artistic science.

The artiste also changes according the vibes from the audience, constantly looks for messages from the audience to fine tune the performance, experiments with pieces to gauge audience reaction and use the reactions to perfect the art better. Customer Experience in the corporate world is pretty much the same thing. The science of technology and data come together with the art of the personality, attitude and professionalism of the person delivering the customer experience.

While science is all about tools, processes, policies, data etc. Art is humane and touches the heart.

It is the coming together of the two forms that completes the experience. After all every experience is personal. It is the experience that sustains long after to create the experience brandization. Something which I should like to talk about next time.

Building successful brands through ‘Customer-centricity’

Probably the most talked about topic in the world of business today is ‘Customer-centricity’. While many organizations build their vision and mission statements around this subject, it’s more often merely lip-service, not to sound cynical. So, what is ‘Customer-centricity’ or what does it mean for brands to be ‘Customer-centric’?

The fundamentals of marketing was always built around the idea of providing a product or a service that fulfilled the needs of a customer. Today, most companies, be it a brick and mortar business or an online commerce portal is in a hurry to acquire customers. Growing a customer base through loyalty programs and points has become the order of the day. With the belief that these are the triggers that create stickiness. But do these mechanisms really work?

Let’s play out a real life scenario. You walk into a multi-brand electronic store to buy a microwave, of a specific brand or model, and it’s not available. The spirited salesperson instead shows you a range of other brands and models that they have in stock without even wanting to know why you wanted to purchase that specific brand or model in the first place. You thank him and excuse yourself to leave. Meanwhile he pulls out a form and suggests you join the loyalty program for a host of benefits including a lucky draw. Interesting, isn’t it? Sell everything else besides what the customer wants!! Can this be categorized as a ‘Customer-centric’ response?

Well here are a few positive actions that can be put to use and be seen as a customer friendly brand.

Understanding the needs of your customer – Organizations and brands need to painstakingly understand the needs of the customer. In this case, the salesperson could have spent some time to know what the customer was looking for.

Creating and offering the best solution – Going the extra mile to offer the best or optimal solution to the needs of your customer will go a long way in creating a positive impression of your brand. Remember, customers will always remember you for both the right and wrong reasons. Always better if it is for the right one.

Honoring your commitments – Going back to the scenario in the multi-brand outlet, if the salesperson had offered to help you by sourcing the same product and delivering it in a few days, you probably would have taken up on that offer. And signed up for the loyalty program. It is always reassuring to work with a brand that is willing to serve and honor their commitments.

Building relationships with your customers – By getting to know your customers better, there are plenty of opportunities to do more business with them. When brands are seen as trusted partners, customers are likely to stay with them for long.

It’s all about giving the customer what he wants and not what you want to sell. Until and unless businesses and brands are driven by these fundamentals, their survival will continue to hinge on these two words.

Long live ‘Customer-centricity’!!

How technology powers brand equity…

Today we hear a lot of terms like customer quotient, customer experience, brand recall etc. What does this really mean? After all, at one point in our lives we are also consumers at one stage. How can we relate to this?

A decade ago, there was not much thrust or focus on context sensitive marketing as it is today. Humans are wired for experiences. Experiences shape our thoughts and memories and give us the route to what we call brand stickiness or brand recollect. It’s our experiences with a brand -the good and the bad that creates that final impact. The industry as such didn’t have the necessary insight or roadmap to getting more out of customer interactions till a decade ago, as support systems were still in the making and most experiences were reactive. If someone wanted a product or a service, they would be the first to go out and look for it, so these kind of experiences were outside the confines of a home or a personal space.

Today all that has changed. The tables turned. It’s the customer who calls the shots. With the Internet, ecommerce and Social Media platforms booming today, with so many new tools and technologies to gauge customer preferences and trends; we have analytical tools that precisely tell us where our customer base is going and heading. Not only that, this technological leap has also empowered customers to go where he or she has not gone before. The power of knowledge comes as a great enabler, it’s a great liberator. Today’s customer is 200% sure of what he wants, how he wants, why he wants and how he wants. Where did this knowledge and confidence come from? New technologies, analytics, powerful algorithms all have created a new and improved customer 2.0 where the customer creates the demand and zeros in on products or services that match the requirements.

All these technological marvels have only strengthened the bond between the customer and his brand. New age consumers are brand conscious more than anyone around, thanks to the plethora of social channels, feedback forms, surveys, reviews, context based marketing that’s commonplace today. This only increases the brand stickiness of the customer to his loyal brand, and we all know that your customer didn’t become your customer overnight. He/she would have read countless forums, seen product demos, read literature, spoken to fellow customers who have bought and used the product, went for a demo before finally turning in. Across all these stages, the customer is having a first-hand account of brand loyalty. That’s brand equity. And, when devices are able to proactively, intelligently guide you to solutions, your relationship with the brand strengthens even more and you begin to vouch for that brand wherever you are. No wonder that the very mention of certain powerful brands change us completely. It’s not so much with the product or the service that matters, but the overall experience that leaves a mark.

It’s all because each of those brands attacked one pain point consumers had and created a unique solution that alleviated them of that problem forever. Long live brand equity!

All hail the connected customer!

Technology has altered the way we communicate, interact and do business. Large scale adoption of main stream technology has given rise to a number of vendors who make digital devices that fill up our homes and which connect up with the other devices at our homes and offices. The end result is an elevated experience and an always-on connection. Though this has had a positive effect on lifestyles, a growing concern among all vendors is providing pain free support, as this is one major piece that customers look for in any deal. The consumer electronic market is crowded with millions of devices and it will only increase as technological changes rule the day.

The consumer’s journey with a brand starts much before the product is bought. It all starts with the experience of that product or brand and that has to captivate him. The invisible, intangible component here is the support experience that the product or brand wields – and that translates to whether he becomes a prospect, lead, customer or a statistic! It is imperative for all support providers to ‘wow’ customers with every interaction. This is possible only when support providers know all about their customers well, interact with them, understand their trends and pain points etc. Customers are also very learned today as they don’t need to go out looking for information, information is available at their fingertips. This is what gives them the power to make instantaneous decisions. It all lies in the first very experience of a customer with a brand. That interaction forever alters his approach (whether positive or negative) to the brand. This is where support providers need to innovate and innovate constantly.

The Internet has boomed and changed the way we work and function. Social media has turned out to be the biggest and most cost effective platform for connections, opinions, reviews. Where are the vendors homing in? If they are still looking at traditional models, then they’ve lost focus. There needs to be a concerted effort to tie in all the communication channels, listen and pick out from the digital trail consumers are leaving to understand where their brand presence is going. There needs to be a singular view of the customer to find out where he started from, trace his journey with the brand, run the data gathered through an analytical engines and plot trends to further gauge what customers are thinking about your brand, what are they tweeting, what experiences their products are creating and most importantly whether your customers are still sticking to your brand or, are they running away.

An able support vendor with a rich analytical experience should be the ideal go-to partner to bring out hidden meanings in customer conversations that would propel customer stickiness and loyalty.

Up with the Count

“TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

- William Blake (1757–1827)

On January 20th 2015, the Government of India announced its findings on the recently concluded tiger census (All India Tiger Estimation 2014). As per the report, the number of tigers in India had increased by 30% since 2010 to 2,226 in 2014. India today is proudly the home to 70% of tigers in the world.

Tiger census is done every four years in India – the earlier census,(2010), reported that India had 1636 tigers only .The landmark 2008 report, Status of the Tigers, Co-predators, and Prey in India, published by the National Tiger Conservation Authority, estimated only 1411 adult tigers in existence in India. So with this announcement there was much to cheer – by tiger lovers, by forest officials, by conservators, by environmentalists, by NGOs, and by CSS Corp too.

For us at CSS Corp this was heartening as CSS Corp played a role though small, in this – as part of its CSR efforts. CSS Corp, the only IT Company to have come forward and supported the Forest Department of Karnataka, in its efforts to estimate the number of tigers and it was the first time that the camera traps were deployed here for tigers estimation. CSS Corp donated camera traps to two tiger reserves, (Nagarhole Tiger Reserve and Dandeli –Anshi Tiger Reserve) in the state of Karnataka. Camera trapping is the preferred method for conducting estimates of tiger and is now a mandated method as part of the tiger census protocol.

Image of a tiger using a camera trap

For the uninitiated – India today is home to the largest tiger population in the world. The Government of India had taken a pioneering initiative for conserving its national animal, the tiger, by launching the ‘Project Tiger’ in 1973. This effort had a humble beginning- from just 9 tiger reserves since its start, the Project Tiger coverage has increased to 47 at present, spread out in 18 of our tiger range states, with Karnataka earning the sobriquet as the tiger state. 

It is now the state with the largest tiger population.

Tiger conservation is no mean achievement

Conserving the big cat in the wild has numerous challenges – from poaching, to habitat fragmentation, forest protection, man-animal conflict, tribal rights, climate change, protection of its prey – these are all challenges that have to be addressed. In India, a sustainable tiger conservation strategy cannot be achieved without the full participation and collective action of individual rural households whose livelihoods depend on rights of access and use of the forests where tigers live. They must be included in conservation efforts. As per the latest census India is winning the battle to save its tigers – with participation and commitment from the government, forest officials, local communities, NGOS, corporates along with framing sustainable policies for forest conservation and tribal rights. All is not lost! And remember technology is increasingly becoming a good resource in conservation, let’s use it more!