Digital transformation, the development of social networks and the health crisis have forced brands to rethink their entire purchasing journey, for a more human and transparent experience.
Digital transformation, the development of social networks and the health crisis have forced brands to rethink their entire buying journey, while significantly improving the experience they provide to their customers. These changes have resulted in hyper-personalized approaches and greater transparency from brands.
The customer experience of the future will be hybrid and human
With the acceleration of the digitalization of customer journeys, we observe two important phenomena. First, customers’ desire to be heard and understood by brands, particularly through human interactions. Then, the possibility of easily combining purchases in physical and those on the internet for a fluid and seamless experience.
For example, Crédit Agricole Nord de France measures the customer experience at all key moments in the journey and on all the channels available to the user. Thus, by questioning customer satisfaction by telephone or email at each stage, the bank is constantly optimizing the experience and integrating human interactions throughout its customer journey.
At the same time, brands will need their customers to build their success. By engaging consumers through a process of feedback and comments, brands co-construct the products, services and the “brand/consumer” relationship of tomorrow. This approach can also be enriched and humanized through written experiences and opinions as well as videos of consumers in order to share their experiences, spontaneously or requested.
Authenticity: the key to a successful marketing strategy
Today, the consumer demands absolute transparency and real authenticity from brands. He wants her to be committed and her promises to be backed by concrete evidence at every step of her journey. To meet this challenge, you can use social proof: a driver of consumer behavior, which plays on an innate psychological phenomenon. The latter leads us to assume that the actions of others reflect the right behavior to have in a given situation. It is therefore in your best interest to use customer testimonials or nano and micro-influencers who can produce authentic and spontaneous content. This creates reassurance, improves conversion rate and show an authentic image. This is what the make-up brand T.LeClerc did. It relied on social proof, and more specifically used influence marketing. His notoriety on social networks has improved in just 6 months! She reached 680,000 Internet users thanks to her campaign and achieved a good engagement rate of 4%.
The optimization of the customer experience will be made of AI
One of the current challenges in brand marketing campaigns is that of artificial intelligence (AI) and the implementation, thanks to it, of a data-driven approach. Indeed, according to research from The AI Journal, most executives (74%) expect AI to make business processes more efficient and create new business models (55%) as well as new products and services. (54%)[1].
AI has many benefits for managing and improving the customer experience. It can help you make life easier for your customers, by offering services and relation client personalized. And today, you even have to go further by personalizing all the messages you send them. They should only receive relevant and targeted messages to offer them the right product, on the right channel. AI allows you to achieve this and automate your campaigns for a better final ROI. This technology also meets the current knowledge needs of your customers through the analysis of the data collected. Listening to the customer, knowing their perceptions and expectations allows you to improve the online and offline experience, as well as the products and services. By connecting your marketing tools and your customer knowledge tools to a Customer Data Platform fully integrated with AI, you can harness the full power of customer insights.
The lingerie brand RougeGorge, for example, has implemented a Customer Data Platform integrating AI. This tool allowed him to predict customers with high potential value, target twin profiles on social networks and exclude current customers from campaigns. It obtained -38% in acquisition costs compared to a classic campaign and a reduction of 10% in the budget spent.
In addition to AI, you can also rely on IoT and connected objects to analyze and further develop your data-driven strategies. Indeed, by analyzing the data from these technologies, you can discover the purchasing habits of a specific type of customer, on many platforms. On the other hand, you will have to face, by the end of 2023, the end of cookies on Chrome. You will no longer have access to the demographic and behavioral data of your customers usually used to target your advertisements and analyze the performance of your offers, products and services. You will therefore have to rely on data that users have explicitly consented to share.