In this guest post, Ashley Diffey (lead image), the VP sales APAC and Japan at Ping Identity, says as brands increasingly face issues with a customer’s loyalty, customer experience is increasingly coming back to the fore…
In the recent full-year results season in Australia, one topic was repeatedly raised in presentation slide decks, speeches and strategy documents: customer experience.
Customer experience has been on the priority list of organisations for some time now – given its recognised importance to loyalty and customer lifetime value – but economic headwinds have really brought it to the fore.
Recent research in Australia shows why: in the current climate, customer loyalty is being tested.
A survey of 1400 Australian consumers by McKinsey found “a growing willingness to switch products, brands, and channels in search of better value.” The same research found a seamless online or app-based loyalty experience, and higher degrees of personalisation, made a difference to engagement.
That mirrors the findings of other research: a notable statistic from January is that globally, 81% of consumers “say they will reassess their budget over the next 12 months as they seek more personalised experiences”.
For Australian businesses with consumer-facing operations, making a really strong first impression with new customers so you can keep them coming back; and knowing your existing customer and what services you can offer them; has never been more important.
The goal of any customer experience or loyalty programme is to delight customers: or more specifically, to decrease the percentage of customers that want to abandon your website or app because they’re frustrated, while also driving customer lifetime value.
Personalisation, progressive profiling and leveraging identity and access management have become key tools and levers that brands can pull or use in order to drive towards a better outcome on the customer experience and loyalty front.
Better first impressions
At every point of interaction with a customer – from log on to log off; or from prospect through to account creation, updating a profile, using a service and becoming a regular customer – there are opportunities at each step to really make somebody happy, or to have the opposite effect.
First impressions count. In an environment where customers are shopping around, the chance of new customer acquisition is improved, but it depends how seamless the promised interaction is.
One thing that can frustrate or turn off a prospect is if you’re asking for too much data upfront, before the prospect even has a chance to be converted to a customer. Long sign-up forms and other barriers placed in front of the checkout may jeopardise any possible relationship at the start.
Most often, consumers are asked to register before the brand really shows them any value. Unless the consumer has a real and imminent need for what the brand provides, they’re unlikely to fill out a form with more than a few basic fields.
Consumers in this stage are probably looking for a free trial or more in-depth information to help them with a buying decision. They’re still in the non-committal shopping phase and haven’t yet seen value. By making it too complicated for them to sign up, brands run the risk of deterring them from doing so.
Research shows that only 37% of consumers encounter “very efficient” login experiences when they engage brands. The reaction to more frustrating encounters makes for sobering reading: 59% have abandoned an online experience when the login process was too frustrating, and 61% would switch to a competitor that had an easier login experience.
Progressive profiling eases people into a brand, making a good first impression and building trust. It’s a data-gathering technique that allows a brand to build a robust customer profile over time.
A key advantage of this approach is that it allows brands to keep their signup forms quick and simple. You ask for only the information you absolutely need at the onset of that relationship, making it much easier for new prospects to commit to the registration process so they can start engaging with you.
Then, during the course of lead nurturing, you ask them to give you a little more information at various key touchpoints. But only after they’ve warmed up to you a bit and trust with the brand has been formed.
In some cases, consumers may also be incentivised to share more information. This could take the form of a discount code – “Provide us with this data and you’ll get x% off.” This may induce the consumer to take another step in creating a personal relationship and building trust.
Perhaps the best part of progressive profiling is that it helps construct customer profiles that maximise the value of each individual’s journey. The ability to deliver personalised digital experiences at scale is what ultimately enables a focus on delighting customers, driving revenue and building customer lifetime value.
Customer identity and access management (CIAM) is the key technological engine that underpins progressive profiling and personalisation. Simple registration, consistent sign-ons and tailored interactions on digital properties is a formula for improving engagement, and for surviving the current customer loyalty test.
