Customers have evolved as technology has evolved, according to Johann Wrede, Customer Engagement Solutions, Global Senior Director, Solution Marketing at SAP.
During Thursday’s Loyalty360 webinar titled, “Want Customers? Get Engaged!”, which was presented by SAP, Wrede said marketers are faced with many challenges today due to the empowered customer.
“The big variable throughout the equation is the customer,” Wrede explained. “They have power as individuals. They are much more digitally connected than they were a few years ago and that applies to B2B and B2C. They are socially networked as customers. The networking effect impacts the decision-making process. People are better informed. Those customers are changing the rules for marketers. Fundamentally, the customer is in control.”
How can a marketer begin to influence and be present in those billions of conversations occurring each day?
“The challenge is it takes time to implement systems, to train people, to evaluate technologies, and come up with policies and strategies,” Wrede said. “How do we make them flexible and adaptable?”
It’s time to change the game and engage customers like never before, Wrede explained, with:
- The right insight at the right time–to drive meaningful and contextual conversations
- Across every touch point, every channel−spanning the physical and digital domains
- Integrated to your enterprise–with robust end-to-end business processes leveraging and supporting your entire business
- With an experience that drives results–and delights customers
Customers are unique cross industries, Wrede said, and everyone at every level is fundamentally changing how they interact with brands.
Wrede isn’t a big fan of the word “omni-channel”, but he defined it as “creating a threaded cross-channel communication that allows the communication to be in the fore. That threaded conversation, retaining the contact, is really what omni-channel is about.”
Finding ways to grow sustainably is a key for marketers, Wrede explained.
For marketers, engagement is “taking real-time customer insight and combining that with an end-to-end business process over a series of harmonized digital and physical experiences with customers. By focusing on customer engagement, you can have a measurable business impact. Customer engagement is key for driving growth. The journey drives the outcome.”
The customer experience is very important to people as nearly 80%, Wrede said, are willing to pay more for a better experience. But the customer journey does not follow a linear, funneled path.
Wrede said that 2.4 billion brand-related conversions happen online every day, and 57% of the buying process is completed before a first interaction with sales associates.
“The good news is these journeys can be broken down into stages around awareness, interests, consideration, action, use, and advocacy,” he said. “The solutions you deploy cannot manage the customer engagement in a linear fashion either. Every journey is unique and every point of engagement along the way matters, particularly when you want to engage the individual in a 1-to-1 fashion.”
One of the poll questions asked of attendees asked if they’ve taken the time to map out the customer journey. Nearly half haven’t mapped out the customer journey while 28% have, and another 28% replied “sort of”.
“This is a significant opportunity to see who your customers are trying to interact and engage with,” Wrede explained. “And take a look at how you’re trying to engage with them.”
Another poll question asked attendees which generation of software they currently use.
More than half (55%) are using second generation while 35% use first generation.
“It’s not about CRM anymore, it’s about customer engagement software,” Wrede said. “Traditional technology solutions no longer work. The first generation of solutions was constructed to serve the needs of business silos. The result being that customer information was fragmented across channels and customers received inconsistent levels of engagement dependent on the channels they used.”
With the second generation of solutions came the age of the CRM ‘suite’, which promised to provide a ‘single view of the customer’ across channels and business processes, but this was rarely the case, Wrede said.
“The platforms used typically didn’t go deep enough for the line of business need and were quickly superseded and integrated with ‘best of breed’ solutions that covered the key business requirements,” he said. “With the third generation, we are able to deliver on the promise of 1-to-1 customer engagement across all channels of customer interaction, delivering:
Contextualized marketing & service, serving the needs of the individual at the time of need
Fully integrated process and order orchestration across all sales and commerce channels
A harmonized customer experience across physical and digital channels AND CRUCIALLY
A platform not just built on customer data, but a platform built on CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE allowing you to ‘live in the moment’ with each and every customer
So how do you engage the individual?
“By delivering real-time, contextual, consistent, and relevant experiences regardless of channel or device throughout the customer journey,” Wrede explained.