After a brief boom, when consumers were urgently spending money, they went into savings mode. To establish sales in such an environment, retailers must engage in hyper-personalization. Evgeny Lebedev, director of client relationship management systems practice of Odyssey Consulting Group, will tell us how to build their work with clients in a practically personalized way.
Customers today are not surprised, but annoyed when they see standard chains of letters, push-notifications and birthday discounts. All of these actions by companies, which until recently worked and brought results, are now identified as advertising and have a negative impact on the brand. In 2022, companies need a completely different approach to working with customers - hyper-personalization of interactions.
Today, companies have the opportunity to reach out to every customer personally. This is made possible by modern technology: conversational artificial intelligence (smart chatbots), collecting massive amounts of data about the customer even on third-party websites, working out personalized interaction scenarios with each customer. The journey towards hyper-personalization should begin with a change in the business model: the company should be ready to abandon mass, one-time sales in favor of building long-term, personal relationships with customers. Having made this decision, we build a system of communication at every stage of interaction with the brand. At this stage it is important to create the need for the goods of the company from the future customer. The company should conduct a total market analysis to find the potential audience by typical behavior before the awareness of the need. For example, a company selling building materials shows its ads on social networks and search engines to people who have recently bought an apartment, to be the first to offer them materials for repairs.
A winning strategy at this stage is to draw the attention of the audience through omnichannel presence and a familiar style of communication to customers. To do this, the company targets its communication based on information about customer needs and identification of the client with the audience, about which the company has already accumulated information. For example, a building materials retailer as a result of the analysis determined that his audience prefers to search for information in Yandex, and from social networks prefers VK and Youtube, and likes to communicate with acquaintances and brands on WhatsApp. Then these channels of communication will be a priority for the company for promotion. The next step is to analyze the communication style. The company divides all the potential audience into segments, and for each develops a specific style of communication, for example: - for men 25-35 years old - business and brutal communication, emphasis on the strength and independence of the client, - for women 50+ - polite communication, we give recommendations on the combination of products in a particular style.
Many companies in the market offer quite similar products today. Standing out in the market can be done through brand values embodied in action. The company should demonstrate that it cares about the customer. For example, with the help of data collected about potential customers can offer a customized set of building materials - a ready design solution - taking into account the customer's preferences, for example, in the style of the interior. The potential client may visit the company's website more than once during the selection process. Therefore, the company, based on the browsing history and its preferences (determined by the collected impersonal information) can personalize its site and show those products that the customer is most likely to like.
Standard service no longer surprises anyone. Win-win strategy for the retailer is to create customized interaction scenarios for every possible situation and determine what the company can do to retain, return or delight the customer. For example, a company that sells building materials analyzes the CJM (customer journey map) and identifies scenarios and methods to improve customer interactions, such as:
- The customer went to the site, looked at the products and came out. So, the retailer needs retargeting to visitors to the site, such as in VK, YouTube and the Yandex advertising network, because these channels are familiar to the customer in communication.
- The customer bought wallpaper, but it turned out to be defective. Instead of the standard scheme: the client has to come, prove that the damage is the fault of the manufacturer, not the customer, fill out a lot of applications and wait for a refund - the company can offer a return via courier or a quick replacement of the damaged roll of wallpaper. Of course, if it's important to customers. In this way, the brand can reaffirm its value - its concern for the customer - and provide a service unique to the market.
In the next stage, it is important for the company to convey information about additional services, while not imposing them. It's worth using CJM to select specific services that are important to this segment of customers, and talk about them in customer-friendly communication channels. For example, create a care service with a manager assigned to the customer who is ready to give advice on how to properly install wallpaper, or how to return leftovers that have not been used by the customer. Notify the customer about the purchase in an email, and handle customer requests on WhatsApp, because it is the preferred messenger for the audience.
Many companies have loyalty programs, but few customers actually use them (think of how many discount cards are in your bag or e-wallet). So, it's important to offer a customer-friendly loyalty program and use it to encourage returns for new purchases. For example, a DIY retailer, after analyzing CJM, found out that it's not the discounts that matter to the customer, but the ability to figure out what's missing to create a dream home. Then the company can offer items that the customer may have forgotten to buy. Or items that fit into a particular customer's interior, which we can recreate from their purchase history.
This level of personalization cannot be achieved without modern IT systems: manually processing data on each of the hundreds of thousands of customers is too long and expensive. The capabilities of modern IT systems are impressive. However, companies that dare to make such changes will have to face several difficulties. There is no single system for customer-centric E-com. For each company, it is necessary to individually identify suitable solutions, implement them and consolidate them into a single network so that data from one system is transferred to the others correctly and on time. Companies can go it alone, but it would require time, financial resources and employee distractions. You can optimize costs by engaging a consulting company experienced in building customer relationships. Difficulties with the digitization of marketing communications IT systems require an algorithmic approach to work. When applied to marketing companies often have difficulties. For example, how to determine beforehand, after which notification per month the customer will start to perceive brand communication as spam. Technology today can already do a lot, including adjusting the style of communication depending on the nature of the client. However, their implementation requires an active collaboration of marketing and IT specialists in order to really bring the expected result.
The transition to customer centricity often requires a restructuring of many business processes from the standard "from plan" approach to the "from customer order" approach:
- Purchasing for sale those goods and in such quantities that will be demanded by the customer;
- Reorganizing warehouse processes, making them quick and transparent for tracking by the customer;
- Changing the usual style of communication with customers.
It is human nature to resist even small changes, and such large-scale ones will definitely meet the rejection of the employees. However, resistance can be overcome with the help of change management tools. You need investment proportional to brand ambition Implementing a new approach to customer interaction will require investment. In this case, it's important to calculate the return on that investment. If the selected systems will attract more customers with lower costs and the payback period will meet the internal requirements of the company, then the change in the business model will justify itself.
Such a system of work with clients works well for companies with large turnovers. In smaller companies (for example, a local coffee shop) implementation may not give the expected effect due to the fact that the brand audience is concentrated geographically or on specific products sold in the company. By overcoming the difficulties of changing the company's business processes, the brand gains significant competitive advantages: customers feel genuinely treated and cared for by the company and become brand advocates. And this means that the company gets regular customers with increasing volumes of purchases from the brand and a natural increase of new loyal customers, who come on the recommendation of their acquaintances. All of this has a positive impact on the company's financial results and market share, and thus contributes to the prosperity of the brand.
