Tech Guest Viewpoint: Enhancing Relationships in the Moment

By David Trice, Co-Founder and CEO, ENGAGE.cx

It’s happened to everyone. You take that trip to the drug store to get a new bottle of shampoo – and before you make your purchase, you scan your loyalty card at the coupon kiosk to see what spits out. You look down that long ream of paper to check out the offers: deodorant, candy, contact lens solution – but no shampoo. Okay, fine.



You go grab the shampoo off the shelf, and head to the register to check out. The cashier rings up your purchase and hands over a new batch of coupons. What’s the first coupon on this ream? Shampoo, of course. And the coupon expires in a week, not nearly enough time for you to use all of the shampoo you just bought. Getting offers and discount coupons right after making the purchase happens so often, it almost feels like a conspiracy – like the companies extending these discounts want to offer you a deal they know you can’t accept. It’s frustrating



The truth is, companies aren’t trying to play their customers. Rather, they just aren’t equipped to make the right offer to the right customer at the right time. Most companies have distinct, yet unintentional, silos that create barriers between them and the customers they serve. And, they don’t have the tools to truly manage their customer relationships. Instead of having a true CRM to help manage operations, many companies refer to their marketing databases or their loyalty operations as their CRM. These systems let companies push messages out, but they are not able to recognize a customer online or in a store, creating a massive blind spot for them. These systems are transactional in nature and focus on the sale or an offer, not on the customer.



Businesses instead need to empower employees with key customer knowledge in the moment is what really matters. Being able to extend to the customer the right offer or discount when the customer needs it most is an effective way to turn him or her into a loyal brand advocate. Customers don’t care about the various silos that exist within a business. Rather, they see the business as one solid entity, no matter whether they are engaging with it in a store, via the web, or over the phone.



Companies have tried to solve this problem by focusing heavily on the online experience. But few businesses have discovered how to truly bring the relationship with the customer to the forefront throughout the entire scope of the operation, including to the brick-and-mortar side.



And, while there have been some advances in improving the in-store experience, like using beacons and clienteling, the overall customer experience offered by most companies typically falls short. The solution is to put the customer at the center of a business and focus the technology around them, starting with the CRM.



Most experts agree that traditional CRM is broken. It revolves around a sales cycle that focuses on new customer acquisition rather than concentrating on creating real value through a lasting relationship with the customer. To that end, Gartner Group research concludes that 50% to 80% of CRM implementations are failures.



Successful brands will recognize customers across every channel – every time the customer interacts with them. They will collect data on each and every customer to create an individual profile, learning the customer’s likes, dislikes and preferences – and empowering retail associates in every physical location by giving them information about the customer and his or her preferences in real time, right at the moment of interaction with the customer.



The company’s performance with each customer will be measurable – allowing it to track how well it’s doing with each customer and with customers in the aggregate. This process of creating an overall customer performance index will allow companies to begin to correlate customer service to financial performance – a key indicator of success.



Undergoing this process of empowering and tracking the entire customer lifecycle will create new opportunities for a brand to improve how it executes by illuminating areas where a business may want to evolve to meet its customers’ needs. In today’s world, customers engage with brands across a growing universe of touch-points, often inhibiting great customer experience. It’s critical to create a consistent customer experience that builds a positive relationship with the customer and enhances brand loyalty.