In this edition of the Quick-Take: Omnichannel’s ever-presence, B2B How-to, Travel’s magic pill, Be on the lookout for IOB, and you have a credibility issue.
Happy Wednesday!
OMNI
Omnichannel Becomes Ever-channel
Quick-Take: The number of touchpoints a consumer engages with before making a purchase continues to increase—a 2020 State of the Connected Customer report from Salesforce indicates that nearly 75% of shoppers have used multiple channels over the course of one transaction. The lines of demarcation between channels have blurred—where one channel ends, the next one begins.
CUSTOMER DATA
The Bigger Question is What Do You Do With It?
Quick-Take: About 96% of survey participants indicated they can resolve person-level identity in real-time, but being able to resolve identity is just the first step. Marketers also need a strategy and must transform insights into action.
CX
May be the Key to the Survival of Travel
Quick-Take: Travel companies are still absorbing COVID-19’s financial impact, and investing in CX now may seem too great a burden for many of them. But companies that prioritize CX during a downturn stand to outperform their competition for years to come—as McKinsey research on the 2007–09 downturn has shown.3 Indeed, wise investment in CX may be key to the industry’s survival, and flourishing, in a post-pandemic world.
PERSONALIZATION
Getting B2B Right
Quick-Take: The requirements and strategies for B2B personalization differ from B2C personalization. B2B personalization requires less personal information and more data about the customer’s role, business goals, and industry. B2B personalization also involves more refined segmentation than a typical B2C program, which is why many B2B marketers use account-based marketing (ABM) strategies to support their personalization programs.
Personalize or Consequences
Quick-Take: In “Audience of One: Consumer Expectations and the Power of Personalization” report, and statistics showed that companies lose credibility among the majority of customers (28%) due to inaccurate personalization. About 27% of customers typically call the business to explain the experience, while 26% unsubscribe from marketing emails. Nearly 15% say that they cancel their service or decide not to purchase from the business again.
TECHNOLOGY
Texting Takes Root
Quick-Take: Up to 80% of consumers prefer to track their orders via text when products were shipped. And around 45% of potential clients prefer to choose a brand or business after receiving an SMS from them, communicating on a personal level.
What Exactly is IOB?
Quick-Take: IoB platforms are designed to gather, aggregate and analyze data generated from a wide variety of sources, including household digital devices, wearable computers and human online activities. The data is then analyzed in terms of behavioral psychology to look for patterns that can be used by marketing and sales teams to influence future consumer behavior. An important goal of the IoB is to help marketers understand and monetize the massive amount of data produced by network nodes in the Internet of Things.
VALUES
Sincerity, Authenticity and Empathy for the Win
Quick-Take: “People don’t have the most positive perception of marketers right now and they don’t particularly trust us,” Camuso said. “We did a study last year at Pega and 68% of consumers thought that businesses weren’t capable of empathy or feeling or understanding what they actually need as customers, much less acting upon it.”
Speaking of Authenticity
Quick-Take: Integrity used to be a pretty poster on the wall of your staff area with encouraging messages. But now, integrity matters to a host of stakeholders beyond just your staff. The old adage goes: “Do the right thing, even when no one is watching.” Today, everyone is watching everything.
PS. If you like what you see here, you can get TheCustomer Quick-Take newsletter delivered straight to your inbox each week by subscribing here.
