A proactive era for customer engagement

The Covid cri­sis, lock­downs and the whole­sale shift to online has inevitably forced many busi­ness­es to rethink the way they engage cus­tomers the world over. Over the last 14 months, con­sumer expec­ta­tions have reached new heights, the dig­i­tal trans­for mation of many organ­i­sa­tions have moved up a gear, while dis­rup­tive, agile brands are rais­ing the bar when it comes to cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

The new imper­a­tive in the post-pan­dem­ic era is for brands to be more proac­tive when it comes to cus­tomer engage­ment, turn data into prac­ti­cal insights and forge a new rela­tion­ship with those peo­ple who buy their prod­ucts and ser­vices in order to main­tain mar­ket share, loy­al­ty and trust.

“Con­sumer behav­iour is chang­ing the longer Covid-relat­ed dis­rup­tions have gone on. Con­sumers have also dis­cov­ered some great expe­ri­ences with brands. They then expect that expe­ri­ence with every oth­er com­pa­ny and ser­vice they inter­act with. So, there is a cross pol­li­na­tion of expe­ri­ences that is hap­pen­ing.

This blend­ing and chang­ing is dis­rupt­ing busi­ness­es,” says Sun­ny Rao, glob­al senior vice pres­i­dent for sales at Von­age. The ques­tion is how much of the new online-focused behav­iours will stick as economies open up, high and main streets wel­come shop­pers, and phys­i­cal retail expe­ri­ences, as well as social inter­ac­tions return. There is no doubt that the coro­n­avirus has been an accel­er­a­tion event. The issue is whether it has real­ly shift­ed the dial when it comes to cus­tomer engage­ment and by how much.

“Liv­ing with­out mov­ing has become a lifestyle choice. That’s some­thing that com­pa­nies are hav­ing to facil­i­tate going for­wards. It doesn’t mean that this will be how peo­ple decide to live their lives entire­ly, but they want the option. Cus­tomers now need to have the con­ve­nience of bank­ing, health­care or food deliv­ery at their fin­ger­tips – that’s been a big shift,” says Stan­ford Swin­ton, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al care and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at Deliv­eroo.

When it comes to cus­tomer engage­ment there’s no doubt that brands need to do more. A sur­vey by Gart­ner of more than 6,000 cus­tomers found that only 13% report­ed receiv­ing any type of proac­tive cus­tomer ser­vice. The same research showed that proac­tive engage­ment also result­ed in bet­ter cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion scores.

“We still live in a reac­tive world. Brands must be proac­tive. If you want to reach 100% of your cus­tomers, you can only do that with machines,” says Dr Mark Smith, founder and CEO of Con­tactEngine. 

In recent times those busi­ness­es that have raised the bar in terms of ser­vice deliv­ery and cus­tomer engage­ment have done so by mov­ing towards a more cus­tomer-cen­tric oper­at­ing mod­el, with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the cus­tomer jour­ney end-to-end, par­tic­u­lar­ly the key touch­points. Action­able data is key. Empow­er­ing con­sumers is also part of this pic­ture, so they have the tools to engage with brands in a mean­ing­ful way.

“One of the mega­trends is to move to a sys­tem where patients are tak­ing more con­trol of their own health. A lot of the data with­in health­care is not real­ly used. Peo­ple are not real­ly tak­ing action or using data to be proac­tive with their health yet. In health­care, we will see a lot move for­wards in this space in the com­ing decade,” adds Johannes Schildt, CEO of Kry, or Livi in the UK.

Cus­tomers or patients have also become more com­fort­able with their vir­tu­al selves over time. Con­sumers are increas­ing­ly relaxed at shar­ing data with com­pa­nies and brands that they want to inter­act with online.

“Bank­ing has nev­er been short of data. But as a sec­tor we’ve not been great at using it in the past. There are a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties to use this infor­ma­tion to be proac­tive. Banks can do more to help cus­tomers be in con­trol of their mon­ey,” says Kat Robin­son, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence direc­tor at Metrobank.

She adds, “Banks can now use robot­ics and AI – arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence – to do a lot of the mun­dane and straight­for­ward trans­ac­tions, this can free up our staff to deliv­er more val­ue-added expe­ri­ences, whether that’s coach­ing some­one to use dig­i­tal bank­ing or help­ing anoth­er to man­age their mon­ey bet­ter.”

Look­ing ahead, the future of cus­tomer engage­ment looks brighter. Covid-19 may have been a cat­a­lyst and an accel­er­a­tion event, but it has also made brands rethink bar­ri­ers to mar­ket, stream­lin­ing bureau­cra­cy and forc­ing cor­po­ra­tions to make things hap­pen. 

“I think this is going to give rise to a lot of new busi­ness mod­els that are going to dis­rupt the mar­ket even more. You will see mar­kets dis­rupt­ed from health­care to food deliv­ery to insur­ance. So, we have some inter­est­ing times ahead of us,” says Rao. “How do you make data more action­able is the biggest chal­lenge and allow a holis­tic view of that con­sumer? Brands will need to offer a more con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence across all touch­points end-to-end.”

Anoth­er chal­lenge is the para­dox of choice. This needs to be tack­led. End­less options on Net­flix, Spo­ti­fy or any oth­er cus­tomer-fac­ing dig­i­tal solu­tion can lead to dis­sat­is­fied cus­tomers and a lack of engage­ment, as well as poor expe­ri­ences. “We are see­ing paral­y­sis from our con­sumers. Go on to Deliv­eroo in west Lon­don today and search for a burg­er you will get 150 dif­fer­ent options. Go on Net­flix and start scrolling, peo­ple spend two hours look­ing for the thing they want to watch,” says Swin­ton.

“We are in a world where we are get­ting too much selec­tion. The oppor­tu­ni­ty in the short to medi­um term is around cura­tion and dis­cov­ery. But as soon as you put cura­tion in, you shut down my prod­uct dis­cov­ery. This is what machine learn­ing does. So, it’s about good per­son­al­i­sa­tion and cura­tion, but also dis­cov­ery that allows you to taste things that you oth­er­wise wouldn’t.”

For brands in the future there will be a sweet spot when it comes to cus­tomer engage­ment. Not all will achieve that per­fect mix that brings togeth­er the hyper-per­son­al­i­sa­tion of prod­ucts, offers con­sumers enough choic­es that allow them to dis­cov­er new things, but also curates ser­vices in a proac­tive way, so that con­sumers are not over­whelmed.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it vonage.com/communications-apis

Pro­mot­ed by Von­age