Digital tools giving power to customers

“Take back con­trol” was the mantra that won the ref­er­en­dum for those want­i­ng to take Britain out of the EU last June.

As a slo­gan it brims with appeal. Its poten­cy is its promise. Signs of deliv­ery on that par­tic­u­lar promise are still unclear at best.

Busi­ness­es that make a sim­i­lar promise to demand­ing, dig­i­tal­ly ambi­tious cus­tomers want­i­ng more auton­o­my will lead the next era of com­merce. Unlike politi­cians though, com­pa­nies must deliv­er or die.

Cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion often boils down to key ele­ments such as speed, ease and per­son­alised ser­vice.

Con­trol is the next cus­tomer expe­ri­ence “stan­dard”. Dig­i­tal mar­ket­place busi­ness­es offer­ing cus­tomers more con­trol – think Ama­zon, eBay, Uber, Airbnb, Rakuten and Aliba­ba – con­tin­ue to reshape economies. Mar­ket­places are enablers rather than sell­ers. Their users have a greater degree of con­trol over ven­dor, prod­uct, price, pay­ment options and oth­er levers that per­son­alise the expe­ri­ence.

Such influ­ence is addic­tive. Smart busi­ness­es are build­ing propo­si­tions and mod­els to fit.

Examples of smart businesses

Naked Wines facil­i­tates a com­mu­ni­ty of 320,000 so-called angels – 190,000 of them in the UK – who pay £20 a month into a pig­gy bank to fund new wines. In return they buy wines at whole­sale and dis­count­ed prices. Angels are not silent part­ners though; they’re an active com­mu­ni­ty. They help wine­mak­ers devel­op the prod­uct they want to see.

Charles and Ruth Simp­son returned to the UK from France where they’ve made and sold wine for 15 years. They plan to make sparkling wine in Kent, but need­ed fund­ing upfront.

Though the first vin­tage won’t arrive until 2018, Naked Wines’ angels stumped up the cash and vot­ed on which of three dif­fer­ent grape blends should make up the wine.

Con­trol is the next cus­tomer expe­ri­ence ‘stan­dard’

These angels are active online too. Naked Wines’ UK mar­ket­ing direc­tor Lau­ra Rich­es says the hon­esty of feed­back and reviews on its web­site – there are four mil­lion wine rat­ings – has had two effects. “Buy­ing wine is tra­di­tion­al­ly a ‘black box’ with peo­ple fear­ing they’d get it wrong,” she says. “We’re giv­ing peo­ple more con­fi­dence to dis­cuss and buy wine.”

Those reviews also pro­duce incred­i­ble data enabling Naked Wines to devel­op an algo­rithm that points spe­cif­ic mem­bers towards wines accord­ing to their taste as opposed to just price.

Ama­zon and Net­flix built glob­al pow­er­hous­es around such algo­rithms offer­ing tai­lored rec­om­men­da­tions. The idea is being seized upon by small busi­ness­es as a way of out­ma­noeu­vring larg­er lega­cy com­peti­tors.

SME adoption

Pic­fair enables pro­fes­sion­al and ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phers to sell images, con­trol their pric­ing and, cru­cial­ly, receive the lion’s share of roy­al­ties.

Found­ed by for­mer trav­el jour­nal­ist Ben­ji Lanya­do in 2013, it aims to reduce the mar­ket hege­mo­ny of image licens­ing com­pa­nies such as Get­ty and Shut­ter­stock to pro­vide the first pho­tog­ra­ph­er-con­trolled image mar­ket­place.

Mr Lanya­do says Pic­fair, now more than four mil­lion images strong, is unearthing a new gen­er­a­tion of skilled pho­tog­ra­phers. Qual­i­ty would have been an issue if not for his “picked” algo­rithm that uses sev­er­al data points to iden­ti­fy the best images of any sub­ject by act­ing as a dig­i­tal ver­sion of our taste.

Com­pa­nies using dig­i­tal tools to empow­er and inform con­sumers employ the valu­able cus­tomer data to improve ser­vice. Jumia, an Ama­zon-style African retail mar­ket­place launched in 2012, serves more than 15 mil­lion month­ly cus­tomers, buy­ing across ten ver­ti­cal sec­tors in 23 African coun­tries.

Group chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer Fatouma­ta Ba says deci­sions “start with the cus­tomer” before Jumia cap­tures the data it needs to build “lay­ers of rel­e­vance”. It works with US com­pa­ny Dynam­ic Yield which offers mar­keters the abil­i­ty to per­son­alise ser­vices.

Ms Ba says Jumia’s under­stand­ing of cus­tomer needs through con­stant test­ing enables it to deliv­er the best con­tent and engage­ment for indi­vid­ual cus­tomers. “Three years ago we offered cus­tomer ser­vice by phone and e‑mail,” she says. “Now we deliv­er it through chat and What­sApp. That’s the expec­ta­tion.”

Val­ued at more than $1 bil­lion, Jumia owns pick-up sta­tions, deliv­ery fleets and ware­hous­es as you’d expect, but insight from its data allows it to keep inno­vat­ing in the area of cus­tomer ser­vice. Recog­nis­ing that first-time online buy­ers have trust issues and may not have access to a bank account, Jumia offers reas­sur­ance and con­trol via a cash-on-deliv­ery ser­vice. Cus­tomers don’t pay until they receive the goods and even then can refuse to pay if they’re dis­sat­is­fied.

What­ev­er your indus­try, wher­ev­er your mar­ket, busi­ness­es will­ing to invest in dig­i­tal tools to match cus­tomers’ grow­ing desire for more auton­o­my will thrive. The pen­du­lum of influ­ence is swing­ing back towards the cus­tomer.