Cracking the Connected Consumer Code – Ensuring the Right Experience for the Right Channel

In today’s increasingly digital, mobile and social purchasing landscape, shoppers have a greater say in when, where and how those needs are met.  To break through the disruption and provide quality experiences for these connected consumers at all stages of the purchasing cycle, businesses must examine the ways they engage their target clients through established and emerging digital channels.  Here is what our expert, Jason Maloney has to tell us about the right channels and the customer experience:

How do you ensure the right experience is created for the right channel?
Every touch point between the brand and a customer has the potential to offer a great experience. To truly create that experience, you really need to get to know the people that you are creating the experience for.
For example, if you work for a bus company you just might want to get on one of your buses and become a fellow traveler. You’ll want to observe other travelers and really become empathetic to what they are doing, what they are needing and how they engaging with your company. You’ll want to identify exactly what you’re purpose is, which –in truth and perhaps to your surprise– might not be what you thought.
What started then as a desire to update a mobile app may turn into something far more important and useful, like creating a more efficient payment system that enables travelers transact on-board for their current trip or even in the future.
Likewise, you may be trying to create a more responsive design website but sending your customers e-mails in antiquated formats that can’t easily be read on today’s advanced mobile devices. By direct observation of your members, you’d come to more fully appreciated their point of view, literally, thereby compelling you to rethink all your touch points for a more seamless, frictionless, total solution.
The point is that there is a need to look beyond the obvious and not just the specific application or solution that is being built so as to see the overall picture more broadly, and with a better understanding of the different ways your brand and your customers interact.
If everything looks great and works well in the channel or device, should this mean the brand’s experience works too?
In theory, yes, but the experience goes well beyond creative and aesthetically appealing interfaces. It goes back to how well one knows the consumer. How do you segment them and get to know them on a more granular, individualized basis? How can you understand the different drivers of these differentiated consumer segments and really tap into the needs of each? That level of insight, which is derived not just by Big Data and analytics, but by participant observation, is what will really create meaningful and lasting connections, generating loyalty beyond the moment.
What it really comes down to is getting to know, really know, those who want what you are offering if you want them delighted and want them coming back.
As Michael Forhez is fond of saying; “Hail to the consumer!”