I recently attended the SAP hybris Customer Days Conference. This is a conference where businesses learn about the latest and greatest solutions that SAP hybris offers to help them market and engage with their customers at the highest level.
During the conference, I had a fascinating conversation with Charles Nicholls, the VP of product strategy for SAP hybris, about how marketing is rapidly changing. Charles shared quite a few insights and here are my thoughts, opinions, and takeaway from the conversation.
First and foremost…the customer is in control!
Customers are smarter than ever before. As a result, their expectations of the experience you deliver is higher than ever.
- Customers know what good service is, and they expect it.
- They understand traditional email marketing. They know that you put them on your mailing and email lists. They also know they can click on the unsubscribe button and it is “good bye forever.”
- They are willing to give you information, but, if you don’t use it properly, they will penalize you by disconnecting from you.
Although the customer is in control, not many businesses understand that. Most companies decide what they will market to their customers. This is especially true online. Based on feedback and trends, a business will decide what their customers will see. They want to put the right product in front of the customer at the right time.
The best businesses aren’t just looking at Big Data. They aren’t just taking the trends from the masses and deciding what they think the customer should see. The best companies are listening to their customers. They are also considering the customer’s behaviors, which I refer to as Little Data. Combining the trends with the individual behavior is resulting in an increase in sales.
Let’s use an online business as an example. Let’s say the retailer blasts out a million emails to customers in their database. Perhaps they will get an open rate of 20%. From there, about 2-3% may actually make a purchase. Most retailers are using the trends to determine what to promote. The best retailers are adding the individual customer’s behaviors to increase the sales, sometimes dramatically. How is this done?
Technology is giving businesses the chance to track a customer’s every move. What they click on, if they call for support, if they linger on the online reviews and much more. This information gives the business insight to the customer and the way he or she buys.
Here is a very simplistic example. Let’s say I own a chain of luxury hotels. I find a new location, near many upscale office buildings, with a few offices of national and international companies based there. I know from my other locations that this is a perfect place to build my new hotel. I’m making that decision based on data; Big Data.
Now my hotel is built, and the reservations start to come in. Our first guest arrives and walks over to the check-in counter. Guess what? It’s not his first visit to one of my hotels. It’s just his first visit to this hotel. We can see the guest’s history. Now, we’re moving to “Little Data.” We can see that he likes a king size bed, a corner room and has an allergy to feather pillows. So, our well-trained front desk host informs our guest that we have a great corner room, with a king size bed and we’ll have foam pillows brought up to his room immediately (if we haven’t already done so). There’s something else we know. He loves the chocolates we leave on the nightstand in the evening. We know because the housekeeper made a notation in our guest’s profile that he always eats both pieces. So, we make a note to leave him four pieces that night.
This is just the start, but I hope you’re seeing the picture. Combine the big picture with the individual details and you begin to create more than a luxury hotel experience. You create a personalized luxury hotel experience.
And, it’s dynamic; ever changing. What the customer did yesterday may be different than today. A habit may change or a new interest may become obvious. Take advantage of these changes.
The customer is in control. They will decide who they do business with. But we can influence that decision. Listen to your customer. Observe your customers’ behaviors. Combine trends with the personalized experience and some of that control will shift back to you.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert and New York Times bestselling author. Find more information at www.Hyken.com.
Also on Forbes:
