Are you ready for the adaptive future?

Today’s con­sumers have high expec­ta­tions of the com­pa­nies they buy from. We assume that com­pa­nies will remem­ber us, know our pref­er­ences, and offer us per­son­alised pro­mo­tions and ser­vices on any device in any loca­tion.

For many years, it was assumed this kind of cus­tomer-cen­tric ser­vice was too expen­sive and com­plex for any busi­ness beyond Sil­i­con Val­ley star­tups. But this is no longer the case. Any organ­i­sa­tion that wants to be suc­cess­ful needs to be able to recog­nise cus­tomers at scale and offer an appro­pri­ate, per­son­al ser­vice. Now, the bar­ri­ers to do that have been removed.

At Merkle, we help auto­mo­tive brands reach their cus­tomers by con­nect­ing their view of the cus­tomer across dig­i­tal, phys­i­cal and human inter­ac­tions. We dri­ve bet­ter cus­tomer out­comes at some of the UK’s largest finan­cial ser­vice brands by trans­form­ing to dig­i­tal excel­lence.

Our tel­co and media clients increase cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion through a holis­tic view of their inter­ac­tions — from device to call cen­tre. And in trav­el, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and retail, new ways of serv­ing cus­tomers are made pos­si­ble through in-venue front-end plat­forms under­pinned by an adap­tive under­stand­ing of cus­tomer needs.

The customer identity

Cre­at­ing this type of cus­tomer-cen­tric expe­ri­ence relies on com­pa­nies hav­ing a sin­gle cus­tomer iden­ti­ty that spans chan­nels, prod­ucts and oth­er oper­a­tional silos. We have learned that in most cas­es, these pro­grammes need to be under­pinned by a full-scale data trans­for­ma­tion.

Today’s data strat­e­gy needs to move away from build­ing slow, mono­lith­ic data­bas­es. Our focus should be on being adap­tive – build­ing data capa­bil­i­ties that have flex­i­bil­i­ty in the design process and are pri­ori­tised by cus­tomer val­ue. We call this process cus­tomer expe­ri­ence man­age­ment (CXM).

CXM is a strat­e­gy that spans mar­ket­ing and IT and involves com­bin­ing data trans­for­ma­tion and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. This isn’t a one-time oper­a­tion – being adap­tive means being ready for con­stant change and this involves quite a sig­nif­i­cant organ­i­sa­tion­al shift.

An adap­tive iden­ti­ty strat­e­gy should put the cus­tomer at the heart of the busi­ness and deci­sion-mak­ing, includ­ing chang­ing what is mea­sured as suc­cess. There must be a focus on col­lect­ing and acquir­ing data that builds deep­er rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers, not just increas­ing the amount of data.

Adaptive identity strategy checklist

• The CMO needs to own the cus­tomer strat­e­gy and have a clear under­stand­ing of what they need to do to improve the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, but the CTO & CIO must have bought into it for the exe­cu­tion to work
• The strat­e­gy needs to include the entire cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, from web­sites and in-store expe­ri­ences to call cen­tres
• Busi­ness­es must plan for a rapid­ly chang­ing future and under­stand the inno­va­tions that will bring more con­nec­tiv­i­ty to their brand expe­ri­ence
• The cus­tomer iden­ti­ty should be host­ed in the cloud for max­i­mum speed and flex­i­bil­i­ty
• A fair val­ue exchange must be cre­at­ed so that the infor­ma­tion cus­tomers pro­vide is in pro­por­tion to the ben­e­fits they receive
• Keep con­trol of data for reg­u­la­tion and ensure that a senior exec­u­tive is respon­si­ble for data com­pli­ance

Case study — Tivoli Gardens

Tivoli Gar­dens in Copen­hagen is the biggest tourist attrac­tion in Den­mark, with restau­rants, rides, music and oth­er leisure activ­i­ties that attract a broad range of cus­tomers.

“Until recent­ly our company’s IT land­scape was frag­ment­ed, result­ing in a dis­con­nect­ed expe­ri­ence for cus­tomers. To cre­ate an enchant­i­ng dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence, Tivoli and Merkle devel­oped an omni-chan­nel pres­ence for includ­ing web, com­merce, apps and a loy­al­ty pro­gramme” says Micha­la Svane, senior vice-pres­i­dent, sales and mar­ket­ing, at Tivoli Gar­dens.

“This cre­at­ed a CX-dri­ven ecosys­tem that allowed Tivoli Gar­dens to piv­ot our entry tick­et and annu­al card-based busi­ness to a sub­scrip­tion mod­el with a month­ly or year­ly renew­al, called Mag­ic on Demand.”

Tivoli has grown rev­enue from local cus­tomers using behav­iour data and propen­si­ty mod­els, mak­ing it a more year-round busi­ness and less vul­ner­a­ble to fluc­tu­a­tions in weath­er and tourism pat­terns. In the last full year before Covid-19, local guest num­bers were up by 10% and annu­al card rev­enue increased 20%, while 40% of card hold­ers moved to one of the new sub­scrip­tion mod­els with­in the first year.

Three years after launch­ing the sub­scrip­tion-based mod­el, 57% of all annu­al pass­es are on sub­scrip­tion.

Inter­est­ed in find­ing out how adap­tive iden­ti­ty strat­e­gy can help fuel your organ­i­sa­tion’s cus­tomer expe­ri­ence man­age­ment strat­e­gy?

Then vis­it merkleinc.com/emea

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