DM Magazine May 2019

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Preparing for Why aren’t the recurring people customer mentoring anymore?

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vol. 32 • No. 5 • May 2019

The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations

Jennifer O’Neill

CX: The importance of convenience ❱ 9 Auto financing provides a case in point ❱ 6 Trends that are

reshaping the CX

❱ 8 Why excellent

UX is required

// 3 On the cover EDITOR Brendan Read - brendan@dmn.ca PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Janine Allen Shawna Miller Emily Anderson Martin Schneider Scott Armstrong Stephen Shaw Max Ball Mike Sullivan Kevin Deveau John Wiltshire Charles Ingram David Yee LLOYDMEDIA INC. HEAD OFFICE / SUBSCRIPTIONS / PRODUCTION:

302-137 Main Street North Markham ON L3P 1Y2

Customer Experience (CX) ❯❯ 9

The importance of convenience Auto financing provides a case in point

Customer Centricity

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Service so good…

I’m glad they know my data

Customer Experience (CX)

home@dmn.ca www.dmn.ca EDITORIAL CONTACT: DM Magazine is published monthly by Lloydmedia Inc. plus the annual DM Industry Guide.

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Customer relationship management (CRM)

Trends that are reshaping the CX

Preparing for the recurring customer

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How to improve the CX

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Refreshing your customer communications

Why excellent UX is required

Marketing insights

Interview with Litha Ramirez, SPR

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Overcoming the 5 big B2B CX challenges

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Why aren’t people mentoring anymore?

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Events

Experience thinking Interview with Tedde van Gelderen, Akendi

Features

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Calendar

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Research that doesn’t sit on the shelf Using consumer insights to market shopping centres May 2019

CMA: B2B experts discuss challenges, solutions

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Canada Post Canadian Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement No. 40050803

Twitter: @DMNewsCanada

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Phone: 905.201.6600 Fax: 905.201.6601 Toll-free: 800.668.1838

Jennifer O’Neill

Vol. 32 | No. 5 | May 2019

Excellent Execution

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Mastercard’s sensory evolution DMN.ca ❰

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Customer Centricity

Service so good…

I’m glad they know my data

M

Max Ball is director, customer engagement,

RingCentral (www.ringcentral.com).

y airline gets it. Whenever I call, I am warmly greeted with something along the lines of: “Hello J, are you calling about your flight scheduled to leave on Monday?” They know who I am, and they even call me by my name (or at least they call me “J”, which I find endearing).

But then there are the exceptions of so many other companies I do business with that put me through IVR hell, only to have the contact centre agents ask me to identify myself yet again once I’ve made the connections. This isn’t just irritating, it’s expensive and stupid. An agent asking a caller to ID themselves is the most expensive way to get that information. And, if the caller is anonymous, providing priority routing to a VIP customer or immediate feedback on a ticket status updates is nearly impossible.

The information that’s needed is probably already there in a customer relationship management (CRM) system or somewhere on the back end. When a customer calls from their cell phone you can leverage the cloud to identify them, start the verification process and personalize the interaction. If this is not a common practice in your business then you are doing a disservice to your customers, to your company and to the world. Today, connecting cloud systems is not like integrations back in the day when you were trying to get your Avaya system to talk to a Siebel CRM. Integrations cost one-tenth of what they used to and are much more malleable and configurable.

Imagine the possibilities for your business and the world-class experience you can create for your customers.

If that is the case, then why do so many of my calls start with: “please listen carefully, as our menu has changed”? And why do I find myself identifying myself over and over?

Why change is needed, and acceptable The biggest factor is the pain of a big investment and the nightmare of change, but sometimes change is needed. One of the arguments I hear against a more personalized interaction is that customers will get creeped out if they feel that a company knows too much about them.

Data hacks and creepy Facebook and Google stories have certainly scared people off from sharing too much information. But customer service is different.

Customers expect the brands they interact with to know what they do with their company. In fact, research ❱ DMN.ca

we conducted at RingCentral proved that 66% of agents don’t have any historical data about the customers and their previous interactions and that 63% are not aware of customer interactions on other channels. This leads to poor customer experiences and results in customers dropping four brands per year on average.

So, don’t be afraid. Go ahead and use what you know to provide a better experience and save your company a lot of money in the process.

However, one thing to note is that customers are not satisfied with simply connecting over the phone.

They want to communicate with customers on the same channels they use to talk to each other: social media, e-mail, chat and messaging apps. In fact, with a billion or more users on Apple Messaging, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and WeChat, a customer’s voice on social media has the power to surge your sales: or send you into correction mode for weeks due to bad sentiment around any of your services.

It turns out that with the right tools these digital channels allow agents to take a more personalized approach to service. Organizations need a system to see digital conversations and interpret the intent of those interactions to connect relevant interactions to the right people.

Finally, organizations must be able to map all of the different profiles across the various social media and messaging applications into a single customer identity.

This is particularly important in the digital world where a frustrated customer can send off a Tweet and send a message at the same time to see where they can get the fastest response and if the responses are even consistent.

The feasibility of personalization The good news is that most social media profiles can be gathered and identified and in the same way that someone’s phone number can be used to recognize them: by building a database of the various identities with a master profile of the customer, regardless of how they reach out to you. This allows agents to see the full picture of a customer’s interaction history across all channels.

An organization can probably find out how many Twitter followers they have. They also have the ability to marry this information with CRM data to know what is going on, how valuable this customer is and why they are reaching out in a way that was impossible previously. Imagine the possibilities for your business and the world-class experience you can create for your customers.

Better service awaits if you are willing to approach it properly. Think about what it means to know your customers, think about what it means to create smart, personalized interactions that can close the sale and build loyalty like never before.

It’s valuable, it’s not creepy and it’s something you can and actually NEED to provide today.

May 2019

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Customer Experience (CX)

Trends that are reshaping the CX

By David Yee

D

igital transformation has irrevocably changed marketing and retail industries for the better.

Not only have brands embraced digital, they’ve completely reshaped their business models bridging the digital and bricks-andmortar experiences to empower and engage customers wherever they are.

Future success in marketing and retail will lie in providing an omnichannel customer experience (CX). Used effectively, today’s CX platforms are capable of not only targeting high-value consumers, but tracking each customer along multiple paths, combining the information collected from those paths into a single account and using analytics to extract real-time insights from them. The result: a frictionless omnichannel experience that delights customers: while allowing marketers and retailers to continuously optimize their services.

a comprehensive canvas that allows them to see and consequently consistently deliver the right message, through the right channel and at the right time. As examples, applying AI to their operation allows retailers to identify specific user segments and target each one with the right service. Also, applying retention scoring to a subscription service with millions of users allows the service provider to identify which customers are most likely to cancel their memberships and offer perks designed to keep them engaged. Additionally, AI presents an opportunity to view the impact of owned, earned and paid media across the full customer journey in real-time and allocate resources accordingly.

2. From account-based marketing (ABM) to account profiling.

ABM has proven to be a successful strategy used to reach high-value targets, with 85% of marketers saying their

Account profiling also allows business-to-business (B2B) marketers to accelerate their CX management capabilities, which was previously thought to be useful only in businessto-consumer (B2C) marketing.

By using an easy-to-use predictive account profiling such as Marketo Engage, teams can build target account lists, orchestrate personalized experiences across channels and measure success across a single platform. As a result, businesses will spend less time trying to pull together disconnected ABM solutions, and more time engaging customers with a smooth, connected experience across the entire account.

3. Near-field communication (NFC) technology: a new way to apply mobility. Most discussions about incorporating mobility into the retail or marketing experience are centered around making online purchasing easier for mobile users or optimizing ads for

Future success in marketing and retail will lie in providing an omnichannel customer experience.

Here are three trends that illustrate how digital platforms are transforming Canadians’ customer experience.

1. Artificial intelligence (AI): stitching together the customer journey across multiple paths.

It’s no secret that any brand’s long-term success depends on consistently making the right calls in the everyday decisions that affect customer service.

But with those customers increasingly moving between multiple digital and physical worlds, picking the right course of action has never been more difficult.

AI and machine learning technology offers a solution by allowing brands to stitch their customer data into ❱ DMN.ca

activations outperformed some of their other marketing, according to an ITSMA survey1.

However, ABM adoption has also been slow, as the time and resources required to build the right target account list, but this is where AI comes into play.

Account profiling combines AI with fit- and intent-based data to create an ideal customer profile that reveals which accounts sales and marketing should focus on, thereby taking the guesswork out of their ABM strategies. As a result, sales and marketing teams can work together to build data-based account lists that identify and focus on the accounts that matter most to their business and start closing deals faster.

mobile devices: all of which are critical in today’s omnichannel approach. However, they aren’t the only mobility-based options available to retailers or marketers. App or labelbased NFC solutions offer marketers a direct channel for delivering dynamic experiences to customers that opt in. It can also be used to gather deep insights into a customer’s offline behaviour. Although emerging elsewhere, the Canadian marketplace is still awhile away from effectively adopting NFC technology. It is, however, an early stage technology to keep an eye on.

NFC-powered tools can allow marketers to share content, such as exclusive product

information, promotional videos and contests directly with customers. The data collected through these interactions helps marketers not only improve the CX, but sharpen their customer segmentation, which can help create even more relevant, targeted content for future interactions. For example, engagement data gathered from NFC-enabled smart liquor bottles revealed the unforeseen popularity of a company’s beverages in a market that it hadn’t previously targeted.

The actionable information and increased visibility into its supply chain helped the craft distillery modify its marketing programmes and expand its distribution network.

NFC tags or labels can also be used to launch unique experiences on Apple or Android smartphones, while cloudbased analytics track consumer interactions before, during and after sales. If your preferred colour isn’t available on the shelf, the tap of a smartphone can instantly order the colour you want. Or, scanning an NFC tag can set up a notification for when it’s back in stock.

Following a purchase, analytics can determine what triggered the sale and can be used to tweak marketing messages and advertising campaigns.

As consumers’ daily lives become increasingly digital, it is absolutely critical that retail marketers embrace digital transformation.

At the end of the day, to effectively engage customers, retailers need the tools and knowledge to engage them anywhere, anytime and on any device.

As head of enterprise digital marketing at Adobe Canada, David Yee is committed to helping clients change the world through digital experiences. He has helped several Canadian companies such as National Bank, Manulife and RedTag.ca be recognized as digital leaders in their industries.

1 Julie Schwartz, “Account Based Marketing and ROI: Building the Case for Investment”, Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), survey, January 16, 2014.

May 2019

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Customer Experience (CX)

How to improve the CX

By Charles Ingram

T

ake a moment to think back to the shops frequented by your parents and maybe even your grandparents. Back in the pre-Internet days, those shops were likely small businesses owned by people who knew your family members by name, asked about their kids and worked to create genuine relationships with customers.

Fast forward to today. Quite a bit has changed; however, the desire for each of us to be treated with exceptional service is not one of those things. I believe that focusing on the customer experience (CX) has never been more important. We all want the businesses we patronize to know and care about us.

As is often said, we are living in the age of the consumer.

An age that demands we go back to our roots and get to know our customers, develop authentic relationships with them and try to solve their challenges before they even arise.

Focusing on the customer experience has never been more important. We all want the businesses we patronize to know and care about us.

But developing authentic customer relationships is a tall order, considering the proliferation of communication tools at the disposal of every business owner. Of course, there’s the phone and e-mail, but consumer preferences have shifted towards live chat, text messaging and social media. While technology solutions have greatly helped businesses meet consumer preferences, it has often left those same businesses with the challenge of piecing together disparate communications to better understand and serve their customers.

Fortunately, the past decade has seen the rise and mainstreaming of unified communications as a service, or UCaaS, which are suites of cloud/hosted solutions that are designed to help companies streamline multichannel business communication in one place.

Here are four ways UCaaS can significantly improve the CX for companies of all types.

1

Keep track of customer communications. Every one of us has called a company with a question or concern, only to be transferred multiple times to different people: people with whom we were asked to again explain why we called in the first place.

These situations are highly frustrating. Part of the reason for this disconnect is a lack of communication tracking. Typically, customer service representatives don’t have information from past interactions to inform their next call.

On the flip side, many of us (hopefully all of us) have had the experience of contacting a company and not having to explain ourselves at all. Instead of repetitive questions, a customer service representative should greet us with kindness and pick up where we left off with the previous representative. When that happens, we leave interactions happy and confident that we will do business with that company again. This outcome is the issue that UCaaS platforms solve for, thereby improving the experience of the consumer when contacting a company.

2

Create seamless customer interactions. Today’s consumers expect quick and seamless purchasing experiences. Companies like Amazon, Uber and others have innovated for this and customers have happily acclimated. This “new normal”, however, poses a unique challenge for small-midsized businesses that may not have the spending power of the giants.

Thanks to UCaaS solutions—many of which are now more affordable than ever— companies can track customer journeys and respond accordingly, often even anticipating potential questions. This innovation creates seamless interactions where customers feel heard. The latter is a vital component of thriving in today’s marketplace where, thanks to social media, bad customer reviews can tank a small business and good reviews can lead to a flurry of sales1.

3

Gain enhanced communication methods. Before today’s modern communication solutions, the primary method of communication between a business and its customers was the phone. While the phone is still critical, the downside is that it requires both the customer and the company to be available at the same time, which can be an inconvenient and expensive solution.

New solutions allow both businesses and their customers to take advantage of communications channels beyond just phones, such as e-mail and text messaging. These improvements can not only boost the productivity of sales or service representatives but can also allow customers to pick methods of communication that suits their needs and level of urgency. In turn, instead of handling one customer at a time, these solutions enable representatives to communicate with multiple customers simultaneously through a variety of communication channels.

4

Access business-critical data. Today, everything is about data. If you can’t track it, you can’t be effective. The best communication solutions allow companies to make decisions based on data: data about matters including customer preferences, profiles and sales and service histories. With access to customer data, companies can tailor offerings and solutions to the questions most often asked by customers, leading to direct improvements to the customer journey.

Moving forward, innovations in modern communication offerings will be essential to creating a positive CX. The most successful companies of all sizes will adopt UCaaS solutions and see the benefits of improved customer engagements obtained by tracking customer communications, creating positive customer interactions, gaining modern solutions and accessing valuable data: with a lower cost to serve. But those that fail to make the switch will continue to feel the headaches associated with antiquated communication methods. Now more than ever, business communications technologies are within reach to delight customers and help propel the best companies forward.

Charles Ingram is chief product officer, Nextiva (www.nextiva.com).

1 Gaetano Dinardi, “Importance of Customer Reviews: Building Real Credibility in 2019”, Nextiva, blog, March 15, 2019.

May 2019

DMN.ca ❰

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Customer Experience (CX)

Why excellent UX is required

By Brendan Read

DM Magazine (DMM): What marketing functions do digital assets provide?

Litha Ramirez (LR): From a marketing standpoint, a digital asset is a scalable, repeatable, trackable and self-serve piece of content that is consumed through an electronic device, such as an LED billboard, TV, smartphone, wearable, voice assistant and a laptop or desktop computer.

Digital assets are useful for many parts of marketing and can create strong customer relationships.

DMM: The great Canadian media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, said “The medium is the message”. Is this the case with digital assets? Do customers now view the UX as the products?

LR: The saying, “medium is the message” has always held true, but perhaps we are revisiting this now due to the pervasiveness of omnichannel customer experiences. It’s difficult in our modern age for people to decouple the overall UX from the digital asset itself as they are now one and the same. This phrase means that companies must understand the customer’s journey and context of use and ensure that they are able to interact with the brands and/or ❱ DMN.ca

digital assets in the way they want, with the content they want.

DMM: Is the way traditional marketing treats digital asset UX mistaken? And if so, how should marketers should look at it?

LR: Looking at UX as something done in channel silos without considering the overall omnichannel experience can hurt more than it helps. Today, customers see the experience as a continuum. Marketers need to leverage the power of UX to create a brand experience with continuity that emphasizes the overall experience, not just one channel.

DMM: What gains can marketers achieve by providing an excellent UX? And what makes a great UX? LR: In a hyper-competitive market, a strong UX is an important differentiator that fosters brand loyalty. Great UX starts with understanding your customer’s journey.

Businesses may have the best intentions when imagining what their customers want, but unfortunately, they often miss the mark. This is because, although they may be customers themselves, they are ultimately the producers of the products, services or digital assets, and have different pressures and immediate goals that can take priority over their customers’ needs. These “producers” often develop their products or digital assets based on assumptions they hold about their customers. The problem is that their customers’ preferences often change or differ across different digital assets.

Because of this, a good UX can start with a set of assumptions based on past customer trends, but they should ultimately be tested with actual current customers. It is only through interactions with your current customers that you can develop a great UX, because then you can ensure it aligns with their actual articulated and unarticulated needs.

Litha Ramirez, is executive director of the experience strategy and design group at digital tech consultancy SPR.

DMM: Conversely, what are the risks to marketers through having a poor UX? What are the common errors that companies make?

LR: A poor UX can risk you losing customers. If you are not making your UX across your channel’s digital asset useful, usable and desirable you can rest assured that there are hundreds of other brands that can step in and fill that gap.

The most common errors occur when businesses assume that their customers’ needs are the same as their business needs.

Businesses should realize that framing the problems from their customers’ points of view can solve for many of their business needs. For companies in hypercompetitive markets with several similar products and services, they need to determine what, if anything, their products or services offer customers that makes it worthwhile for them to engage with the companies’ brands instead of their competitors’.

This is where UX can step in.

You need to give something to get something in return. UX framed from your customers’ point of view gives your brand a competitive edge because it delivers something

Courtesy SPR

T

raditional marketing will tell you that when developing a strategy for a product you should consider the product’s attributes on which it differs compared to competitors, e.g. market share, brand perception and price.

However, for companies selling software, mobile applications, web sites or any other digital asset, traditional marketing tends to lump the assets’ user (i.e. customer) experience (UX) into these differentiating attributes.

But is this practice right?

DM Magazine recently talked with Litha Ramirez, who is executive director of the experience strategy and design group at digital tech consultancy SPR (www.spr.com) to get her insights.

your customers will see as truly valuable.

DMM: What are your key recommendations to marketers in ensuring a profitable UX? LR: First and foremost, marketers must know their customers’ needs, as well as their customers’ journeys. You cannot provide your them anything valuable if you don’t know their preferences and motivations. After this, marketers must align the customers’ journeys with their digital marketing funnels. This is only achieved through a build, measure and learn framework that starts with business assumptions, but ultimately tests these assumptions with actual customers before going to market.

Additionally, marketers must make sure that their UX makes their customers feel like they are getting more from the brands than they are giving it (e.g. time, money and contact information). Finally, marketers should avoid gilding the lily, meaning they must focus on the assets that provide the highest value to their customers without losing sight of opportunities to “delight” their customers through the UX. May 2019

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Customer Experience (CX)

The importance of convenience

Jennifer O’Neill

Auto financing provides a case in point

By Kevin Deveau

C

onvenience plays a large role in how people make day-today decisions. The simpler the process the more likely consumers are to choose one product or service over another as it generally improves their overall customer experience, or CX. The decision about how to finance the lease or purchase of a vehicle is no different.

As consumer preferences change, companies need to understand how to reach them and how to optimize their interactions in order to provide them with the best experience possible. By recognizing the shifts in the buying preferences of their customers, organizations can target their outreach more effectively and provide them with the best CX. But how are consumers deciding to finance their vehicles today?

Given new innovations, such as driverless cars managed by artificial intelligence (AI) and a move to digital experiences, there is clearly a shift occurring in the vehicle industry. However, these changing preferences also apply to the financing portion of the CX. There are several kinds of providers that customers can obtain a new loan through, like, but not limited to, banks, dealerships and credit unions. It’s up to the vehicle-selling/leasing and financing organizations to know whether all options are considered equally, if there are changes in the trends, the factors customers consider most important in their decisions and whether there are May 2019

any gaps in how providers are meeting customer expectations.

Results from consumer survey To get a clearer picture, FICO commissioned its second global survey on the consumer auto finance experience. In Canada, almost seven in ten (66%) of consumers applied for automotive financing directly at the dealership when they purchased their vehicles: more than any other participating country. Canadians seem to be most comfortable leaving auto financing to the perceived experts as 58% of respondents are also planning on using this method in the future.

The convenience of one-stop shopping, for purchases and leases and for maintenance and repairs that dealerships provide is also a major factor for Canadian consumers, with 46% of respondents recorded it as the reason dealerships were their top choice. This was followed by the expectation of promotions and discounts (42%) as another motive.

In addition, Canadian consumers are the most likely to only consider one financial lender before making their decision (70% versus 49% globally). Companies that gain a consumer’s attention and trust first are most likely the ones who will earn their business, potentially providing another advantage to dealerships. When customers are the ones to initiate the purchasing process (73%) the first option, and the easiest, would be the dealerships because of the convenience factor.

Dealerships currently have several favourable advantages

over other providers. However, Canadians are also one of the top participating country consumers (27% versus 22% globally) who indicated they initiated the financing discussion to purchase or lease a vehicle because of an offer from a company. While the number is still relatively low, it shows that Canadians are responding to financing offers more than consumers in most other countries, only surpassed by those in Germany (29%).

In order to better compete, other providers will have to determine how to make their customer experience and offers more desirable to consumers in order to draw them away from dealerships.

Opposingly, dealerships will have to ensure they are providing their customers with the best offers and service in order to keep them. So how can these providers determine the best CX with every consumer having slightly different needs? AI and data analytics.

The advantages of AI and data analytics More and more service providers are competing on CX powered by data, advanced analytics and connected decisions. Consumers enjoy receiving promotions that are personalized to them.

Target marketing works, but data analytics and AI are necessary for companies to identify the best offers for each individual. Analytic models can decipher data for each consumer and find the best offers for them to potentially initiate the financing discussion. This is the same idea that’s used by search engines to determine what ads

are best to display on web pages based on previous searches people have made. Based on the current behaviours of customers, it’s more likely that the financing sources (e.g. banks, dealerships) will begin personalized discussions based on pre-purchase behaviour signals and proven credit-worthiness, so that only those engaged in the market for a new vehicle receive early offers.

There’s a large quantity of digitized data, from both actual vehicles and consumers’ financial histories, that organizations can leverage to improve the customers relationships and experience.

Data points such as credit checks, any missed payments, number of kilometres driven, distances of each trip and when a car needs servicing can all be used to identify the best offers for customers.

Companies can learn a great deal about their customers through the use of data analytics and AI. They provide insight into their buying patterns and overall needs that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Engaging with customers directly can also provide organizations with an understanding that isn’t in the numbers. Speaking directly to customers and using any additional information to increasingly personalize the original offers to them will also improve the relationship. The more you know about your customers, the more convenient you can make the process for them and the more likely they are to be a returning customer.

Kevin Deveau is vice president and managing

director, FICO Canada.

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Customer Experience (CX)

Overcoming the big B2B CX challenges

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By Scott Armstrong

I

t seems like everyone is buzzing about the customer experience (CX) in the business-to-business (B2B) space right now. And just so we’re all on the same page, by CX I mean having a true understanding of what customers need, want or are looking for and delivering it in a highly relevant and timely fashion at each stage of those relationships.

In other words, the awareness, consideration, purchasing and post-purchase stages.

While there’s a definite hunger to embrace the CX, there are still some hurdles B2B companies are bumping up against when it comes to putting the theory of CX into practice. Here are five of the biggest challenges that are creating a gap between CX objectives, execution and results, along with some tips on how to overcome them.

Strategy alignment.

Many B2B companies struggle with aligning their CX strategies to the tools, topics and data they have available to them. As a result, the digital experience lacks substantial customization towards a client’s interest or need. It’s not that they don’t have the technology or capability to provide a more personalized and customized web experience: many of them do! They’re simply not making it a priority.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) companies such as Amazon and Spotify, on the other hand, do a great job of creating personalized experiences using existing data.

Therefore, and before anything else, B2B companies need to

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update their strategies to say, “we want to provide more customized buyer journeys, driven by customer data prospects and customer data.”

Systems complexity.

New and improved solutions are constantly making headlines, so it might seem like your tech stack is always in need of an update. Because of this, companies are increasingly struggling with complexity in the systems that they’re building, which means the execution is falling short of the capability. As you try to build a better CX, it’s key to implement a strategy over a length of time that encourages a holistic understanding. Plan to scale that initiative to deliver it cost-effectively, execute against it cleanly and then measure its impact.

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Operationalizing seamless CX. Running your sales/marketing/ service customer relationship management (CRM) on three separate systems won’t paint a holistic picture of a customer.

Data gets even more fragmented when there are different brands and product areas. There’s a huge opportunity to improve the CX through using predictive data models. In order to make those tools work powerfully, give them access to the broadest set of customer data. The solution is hard work, but it starts with making platform decisions around the technology that you’re going to use and

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continuing to build within the scope of that platform.

Trying to manage everything in-house. While smaller businesses can be nimbler and are more customer-facing, they also have less powerful tools, smaller budgets and limited resources to execute enabling a successful CX programme in-house. On the flip side, although larger businesses have more money to invest in tools to deliver a better CX they also have more complex environments and customer relationships, thus there’s a longer learning curve and a bigger time investment.

Anytime you’re in a new area of learning, reach out to service partners that are executing more projects faster than you are.

Chances are, service partners are working with 20 other companies trying to improve their CX, so they’ve got 20 times the use cases. It’s more effective to learn with a partner and then, over time, you can bring the service in-house.

4

How to value and prioritize the CX. When you’re a business selling to another business, it can be easy to forget that B2B buyers are consumers, too. There are obvious differences when looking at the B2B versus the B2C workspace, but the value of the CX shouldn’t be treated any differently. Its emphasis should really be relative to the complexity of the relationship.

Say you’re buying a can of soda.

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The CX factors that matter here are 1) the service is friendly, 2) the soda is cold and 3) the purchase takes less than 30 seconds. But if you’re buying software or manufacturing equipment that can be a multimillion-dollar decision.

You’re not just making a simple purchase. Employees must be trained on its components, which must be integrated with the other systems. In this case, the CX obviously matters much, much more. When it comes to the value of CX, there should be a direct relationship with the amount of time, money and decisions needed to complete a purchase.

So where do you go from here?

If your goal is to transform your overall CX over the next three years, what should you be doing in the next three months? All teams are accountable for CX delivery, but how can it be tasked effectively?

Get the ball rolling by focusing on marketing: how customercentric are your marketing activities and communications?

How can messaging be segmented to the interest area of the customer? Build a better CX over the full buyer journey and evaluate how to capture more relevant data to support it. By architecting the different stages of the marketing section of the buyer journey, other parts of the organization can leverage their components to transform the CX overall.

Scott Armstrong is a partner at Brainrider

(www.brainrider.com) where he helps companies create better B2B marketing including better web sites, content and lead generation and nurturing programmes.

May 2019

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Customer Experience (CX)

Experience thinking Interview with Tedde van Gelderen, Akendi

O Stephen Shaw is the chief strategy officer

Courtesy Akendi

of Kenna, a marketing solutions provider specializing in customer experience management. He is also the host of a regular podcast called Customer First Thinking.

Stephen can be reached via e-mail at sshaw@kenna.ca.

ver the past decade, design thinking has steadily grown in popularity as a catalyst for innovation. Before people started living digital lives, design was largely a back-office function, answering to product management, engineering or marketing. But with the pressure on businesses to ward off digital disruption, design thinking has taken center stage in freeing the corporate imagination.

Until very recently, design thinking was not even taught in business schools. The curriculum was dominated by scientific management principles with its emphasis on systems-driven productivity and efficiency.

Design thinking, by contrast, looks at problems from an outside-in perspective: how people experience the world. It factors in the emotional choices made by customers, leading to “Big Ideas” about innovative products, services and business models.

But what’s missing is a more holistic view of the customer relationship: one that takes a broader view of the end-to-end experience. Which is why the concept of “experience thinking” addresses a critical gap in the innovation process.

Q:

You started your company 11 years ago: long before design thinking came into vogue. What did you see as the opportunity at the time?

I really felt that bridging the gap between research and design was one of the critical challenges a lot of companies faced. Companies had a hard time turning insights into decent designs.

Different teams were usually responsible. It’s a challenge to be good at both. And so I wanted to create a company that was half research and half design. In our case the term “R&D” means research and design.

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Q: A: Q: A:

Or it could mean “Research, Design and Development” I suppose.

There you go: a new process.

You prefer the term experience thinking to design thinking. What’s the distinction?

You see the same confusion between UX (user experience) and CX (customer experience). I think each addresses a different part of the lifecycle.

You start with the CX because you become a customer first and then UX when you turn into a user. So, they really are intertwined; it’s not a case of either/or. First, you’re a customer buying something. But then you become a user when you aren’t thinking about the value proposition anymore; you’re interacting and transacting with the brand. Design thinking, however, is based on user-centered design, which is a distinct set of processes and steps which design thinking borrowed and relabeled, adding a couple more words like empathy. But, really, they’re the same thing.

Q:A:

Tedde van Gelderen, founder and president of the Toronto, Ont.-based design consultancy Akendi, author of Experience Thinking.

May 2019

Experience thinking looks at what’s important to customers at all stages of the lifecycle and homes in on the ideas that can turn a humdrum experience into one that customers will rave about. In his book Experience Thinking Tedde van Gelderen explained: “When you take a holistic look at how people react and would interact within a set of events at specific points in time, you are implementing Experience Thinking”.

As the founder and president of the Toronto, Ont.based design consultancy Akendi (www.akendi.ca), which focuses on the end-to-end experience lifecycle, van Gelderen has worked with a broad range of companies over the past decade, helping them create what he calls “intentional experiences”. His framework divides the design process into four interconnected dimensions: brand, content, product and service.

Together they should form a coherent and connected end-to-end experience.

Did you start out as a UX design company?

There was such a big gap between what I was talking about back then—experience thinking —and what the marketplace understood to be design thinking. The book, The Experience Economy, was published in 1999, yet people today talk about the idea of “staging experiences” as if it’s something new!

It just shows how long it can take for business to pick up on these ideas.

CX plateauing

Q:

The Forrester Research CX benchmark studies suggest that companies have plateaued in their customer experience ratings.

Why do you think companies are hitting a wall? Is it because experience thinking requires them to embrace complexity?

Absolutely. Like this morning, I had a conversation with somebody who does market research. And I said, “For some reason you think the journey ends when the customer buys.” They said, “Yeah, it ends when you purchase.” But of course, the experience does not stop there. The next phase is actually using the product, so the experience

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Customer Experience (CX) continues. You must look at the CX from end to end, and that’s where most companies struggle because it’s not easy to do.

Q:

Is that because organizational silos get in the way of creating a unified experience?

I think that’s what’s happening. Ultimately, businesses will be forced to change out of necessity. And while they still need to put out the small fires, I think they will look for ways to differentiate themselves through the CX.

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Q:

People talk about brand experience and customer experience. Is there a difference?

Defining the brand experience must always come first. You are creating a promise for people: what you are trying to do for the customer. And then you think about creating an experience to deliver on that promise. In my book I distinguish between brands, content, products and service. These are all distinct experiences. But that means working across different departments.

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Q: A:

Which is why companies plateau: it’s tough to do.

Yes, that’s exactly what happens.

Innovation as driver

Q:

How much of innovation is driven by experience thinking? Are they tightly interconnected?

I would never claim that innovation only comes through experience thinking.

However, I do see a huge opportunity because there is so much that can be fixed, where the customer says, “Oh, I wish I had this now or I bought it but now I have to install it.”

A:

Q:

Service argumentation plays a key role in extending the product experience. But how do you come up with ideas to augment that service in differentiated ways?

By looking at the full life cycle: at the experience people have from end-to-end. You

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“You design the experience around the journey, from the time you first become aware of a product or service to the need for ongoing service and support.” design the experience around the journey, from the time you first become aware of a product or service to the need for ongoing service and support.

Q: A:

Who should own that experience?

You’re starting to see people in a CXO (chief experience officer) role. You need somebody to connect brand, content, product and service.

Q:

So, their job is to be a unifying force in the company pulling together the disciplines required to execute against the design vision?

Yes, absolutely.

A: Q:

Do you see other organizational models that you would recommend as best practices?

More and more organizations have started to talk about service design where a person might be in charge of, or have influence over, multiple products.

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Q:

The challenge I suspect is that most P&Ls (profit and loss statements) are created around different lines of business. If priorities aren’t shared across those P&Ls, you’re fighting each other for resources.

That’s what you see. So you have to start with a holistic framework to help build bridges.

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Experience design as priority, and roadmap

Q:

When companies knock on your door today for

help, are they fighting multiplealarm fires or are they trying to fire-proof themselves?

We’ve been fortunate that increasingly we’re working on the bigger picture. Experience design has finally become a corporate priority. There is greater visibility and bigger budgets.

People are not as scared anymore of projects that involve additional research.

A:

Q:

In your book you talk about an experience roadmap. What does that mean exactly?

Let’s use the example of signing up for an Internet service. You’re moving, and you have to reconnect your new home.

The first decision: “Do I stay with the same ISP (Internet service provider) or do I go with somebody else? What are they offering?”.

Once you’ve selected the ISP, you then have to decide to go to a retail location or a web site. You sign up.

Once you’ve done that the actual move happens. You have to get the installation scheduled. And then someone comes to make the connection. Finally, you get your first bill.

So that’s the end-to-end life cycle I talk about. It crosses multiple channels. It’s the phone, it’s e-mail and it’s the web site.

It’s the installer van out there.

It’s all those things that make up the experience. So the roadmap is about connecting all those steps better. And not just looking at the emotion that people feel—“How happy or sad are you?” —but how do you make sure that these teams work effectively with each other to create a coherent experience?

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Q:

Does the experience map represent a broad, end-to-end view that is further distilled into more granular, task-specific journey maps?

Absolutely.

A: Q:

You describe in the book several steps in that design process. Could you just walk through what those key steps are and how they connect with each other?

The four areas that I talk about: brands, content, product and service, [forms] the overarching framework. The workflow is the same for all of them. You do some research, you develop a strategy and you do the design work. At the highest level, people recognize they have the same goal because ultimately it is all about delivering a better lifecycle experience.

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Making the business case

Q:

Does the role of experience thinking end when the problem has been defined? Or does it follow right through to analyzing the success and impact of a change on the organization?

When you’re talking about measuring effectiveness, that’s a business question. It needs to be dealt with separately.

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Who creates that business case?

That’s an important point to make because I strongly feel that even people who work in UX and CX have this tendency to dictate how business should be done. My response always is to ask, “Is that really your expertise?” I’m a big proponent of saying, “Keep it simple. It’s difficult enough to get the experience right.”

Q: A:

So, you’re saying it’s one thing to define ideal state and another to achieve it.

Absolutely. Traditionally we had business people and tech people. Now we have this third area called experience and they’re a partner at the table. Experience is on the same level now because it is the key to innovation.

May 2019

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Customer Experience (CX) The design experience tools

Q:

What have been the key tools you’ve seen really work in getting organizations to think differently about that CX? The answer is shockingly simple. Go meet some people. Most companies never talk to their users. They’re shocked when you say, “Let’s learn about the problems they’re having.” It’s mind-boggling. You want to meet people, learn from them, listen, observe and understand. That still is very much the magic sauce.

A:

Q:

Do you advocate the use of persona design to help describe what those problems are?

Well, persona design is one tool. What I like to do is understand people, full stop. Who are they? What do they do? How do they interact with a product and service? Where do they do it?

What’s the environment they’re in? What’s the situation they’re in?

What’s the context? Who they are is the persona part; the journey is what they do.

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Q: A:

What are the artifacts most essential to success?

We still need to do wire framing. We still need to prototype. But on top of that now we are adding journey maps to give us that end-to-end view.

Q:

And what about workshops? For example, empathy workshops to define customer pains and gains as they pertain to a specific use case.

Definitely. They can be effective for sure: co-design and empathy mapping. In research it’s a very good practice to always triage your methods. Let’s not rely on one method only but do a few.

Let’s do field research, monography, a co-design workshop, absolutely, do a survey, do some analytics and combine them all. I always want to “de-risk” my designs. Never rely on just one research method.

A:

Q:

What about cultural change? Making the pivot to customer-first thinking is a tall mountain to climb. How do you overcome resistance to change?

May 2019

A:

I find the resistance comes from not getting it: usually because it’s never been done before. And that’s the pushback you get: “How can you be sure there’s a better way?” That’s really where I see the biggest challenge lies. It’s a matter of creating greater awareness.

Check us out online dmn.ca

Successful examples

Q:

What examples come to mind of companies that are really getting it right?

I think of Disney, whose brand purpose is all about creating happiness, then delivering on that experience day in and day out in their theme parks.

End-to-end lifecycle design is hard. It’s really hard to find companies that can serve as reference models. You can view that as discouraging or a big opportunity. But at the journey map level, I definitely see companies doing it better.

A:

Q: A:

You mean companies are getting better at putting out the fires?

I think that’s where digital transformation to this day is still focused. But real digital transformation? We’re not there yet.

Q:

Is the grander opportunity to look at the world the way Apple and Amazon do, which is to offer an end-to-end experience through a fully integrated platform, creating as much add-on value as possible?

I think the Apple and Amazon models are the obvious next step. And I think there’s no doubt that companies will create more value when they start to do that. And I see that already. But just look at car manufacturers offering subscriptions. By doing that, they’re taking away the complexity, trouble, time and cost of owning a car. All that now is lumped together into one monthly payment. I just rent it for as long as I want. Volvo is doing it. A car as a service. Companies, if they’re smart, will move away from products to everything becoming a service. Why not? Its absolutely the way to go.

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For online advertising opportunities contact

Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca For online editorial opportunities contact

Brendan Read, brendan@dmn.ca DMN.ca ❰

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Features

Research that doesn’t sit on the shelf Using consumer insights to market shopping centres

By Emily Anderson

T

hink back to the shopping centres you experienced as a kid. Chances are those centres look much different today. Storefronts have changed, the video arcades have vanished, and clean, bright modern walkways have replaced the dark earth-tone hallways. Today, stores are no longer viewed simply as places to sell things. Instead these spaces are being re-imagined to create richer experiences that will inspire advocates who are willing to share their experience and connection to the brand on their smartphones.

This cycle of transformative change is nothing new. But the challenge has always been how to adapt these spaces to keep them relevant amid the ever-evolving shopping habits and consumer expectations.

Mall management companies, like Cushman & Wakefield Asset ❱ DMN.ca

Services (CWAS), are innovating to develop new ways of attracting consumers through food, entertainment and events to their properties. But these endeavours can be costly and involve heightened risk.

Adding to the challenge, malls and management companies often lack actionable data to help them understand what their tenants’ customers are looking for and to spot growth opportunities. CWAS wanted to base its investment decisions on the best information possible to ensure it was adding elements to its centres that would attract the most desirable shoppers within their trade areas.

Like most shopping centre operators, CWAS has a customer database it derives insights from, including tenant sales data and shopper postal codes. But it relies heavily on third-party data to provide a holistic view of the

opportunities in the local markets.

By turning to Environics Analytics, the company sought to understand not only who lived nearby, but who the actual shoppers were and which products and services they tend to purchase so its properties could prioritize their investments to increase market share. The goal was to make sure the centres had the right assortment of store brands and events to attract visitors, as well as find the most effective media to market to them.

“We worked with Environics Analytics to answer an array of questions, but primarily we wanted to understand who are our shoppers and, just as important, who are not our shoppers and why,” said Margaret Cooper, a national marketing consultant who works closely with the centres. “The more we understand about them, the more targeted and strategic we can be.”

Who shops where?

The project relied on several data sources from Environics Analytics, as well as some primary research by our sister company Environics Research. To help the properties better understand the shopping habits of the centres’ visitors, including where they were before their visits and where they went once they left, Cushman & Wakefield Asset Services used mobile data to study consumer behaviour. By geo-fencing its properties, it was able to collect anonymized, permission-based location data from smartphones to understand where visitors were and when. The insights from these data helped the marketing and management teams sharpen their view of their trade areas and observe how the local competition affected their properties.

From a primary research standpoint, CWAS conducted an May 2019

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Features

Special events, like the Indian River Reptile Zoo exhibit at Lansdowne Place in Peterborough, Ont. that took place from mid-March to mid-April 2018, are proven productive tools to draw targeted audiences to malls and tenants.

online shopper survey for each centre, which helped the marketing teams get direct feedback from several hundred shoppers on the types of retailers they wanted to see, what improvements would interest them and what attracted them to a particular mall versus a competitor.

For all of the data the CWAS properties had, it would not have had the impact it did without the PRIZM segmentation system.

PRIZM linked all of these disparate data sources together to help understand who was shopping at the properties versus their competitors, so that the company could pinpoint its growth opportunities.

Developing compelling experiences The research helped each CWAS property learn the types of shoppers it needed to attract in May 2019

Courtesy Environics Analytics

trying to find what motivates our customers to go to a shopping centre versus maybe an outlet mall to take on a different experience,” said Helen Edwards, marketing director with CWAS.

order to boost sales, which in turn would enable them to design programmes to engage those target audiences. For instance, at Lansdowne Place in Peterborough, Ont., it discovered that its current shoppers were young and aspirational.

Further analysis revealed that the desired family segment was more likely to shop at Lansdowne Place if the property was more family oriented and emphasized its connection to the local community. Based on these insights, the marketing director for the mall convinced a local reptile zoo to set up a temporary exhibit of their life-size animatronic dinosaurs in the shopping centre.

The display was a huge success.

Lansdowne Place saw an increase in mall traffic, which resulted in a corresponding boost in sales from their target audience.

“As retail experts, we are all

Finding better tenants, faster Shopping centres devote considerable resources to attract the right tenants, which has become a substantial challenge in today’s market. It’s not uncommon for management companies like Cushman & Wakefield Asset Services to prepare several pitch packages before finding the right tenant for a property.

Each tenant reviews many properties before selecting the one that’s the best fit for their brand, growth strategy and business model.

The detailed consumer insights CWAS was able to gain from this initiative has allowed it to streamline its pitch process to identify better tenant matches and secure lease agreements with prospective tenants more efficiently. As Cooper explains, now when the company pitches a tenant, it can bring in data that shows the types of consumers the tenant can expect at the selected centre and what those consumers tend to buy.

This data helps the CWAS properties focus on the opportunities they know will be mutually beneficial. In one instance, the leasing team opted not to offer a toy retailer a vacant anchor space because the data indicated that their priority shoppers in that market had older children who enjoyed outdoor activities as a family. As a result, the centre secured a new tenant MEC—Mountain Equipment Co-op—that is set to open in spring 2020.

This sort of evidence-based decision-making not only helps find a tenant that will thrive in the centre over time, it also helps the centre attract more traffic to the property, which ultimately benefits all tenants.

Unlocking new marketing channels When you manage shopping centres that spend millions of dollars a year promoting experiences and their tenants, it is critical to know if those programmes are reaching the desired shoppers. One essential part of the research focused on which media would allow the centres to find and engage hard-toreach consumers.

Using PRIZM and Opticks Vividata, CWAS was able to understand the consumer media preferences of its visitors, in addition to other critical attributes like their attitudes and lifestyles.

Based on the insights from the data, the shopping centres revisited their media strategies. In one market, the analysis revealed that Spotify presented a more effective way to reach certain shoppers versus the traditional channels they had been using, such as radio.

The properties have also started incorporating geo-targeted online ads to improve the way they reach their priority shoppers. Edwards says engagement is up 40% since they started applying their datadriven insights while partnering retailers have noticed a lift in sales.

Providing actionable research Environics Analytics produced insightful reports for every shopping centre in the CWAS portfolio. Since adopting this data-driven approach, CWAS has been able to identify groups of properties whose priority shopper segments are similar, allowing it to repurpose successful executions, saving money and time by sharing advertising creative and more.

Overall, this data driven vision has allowed the properties to align new insights with their stakeholders for improved clarity and has influenced key decisions.

“We wanted a simplified solution that wouldn’t just sit on the shelf,” says Cooper. “It has helped us more strategically market the shopping centres and, in some cases, redefine trade areas.”

Emily Anderson specializes in providing data

and analytics-driven solutions for the real estate sector at Environics Analytics.

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Features

CMA: B2B experts discuss challenges, solutions

By Janine Allen

F

or businessto-business (B2B) marketers challenged with leading their organizations through the advancements of modern marketing, it can be overwhelming to connect the dots between technological possibilities and strategic and actionable ideas.

To help navigate through these complexities, the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) hosted a highly anticipated CMAb2b event on April 10, 2019 to provide insights into the latest trends, technology tools and best practices. I caught up with key thought leaders from the event to discuss B2B marketing challenges and to highlight opportunities and learnings for attendees.

the customer and the business.

Au believes that it is imperative for marketing and sales teams be in constant communication.

“Stronger cohesion within workflows must exist to ensure greater transparency surrounding business priorities and budgets to deliver meaningful impact,” said Au. “Transparency is critical in fostering strong client-agency partnerships.”

Customer journey importance Customers are the cornerstone to the success of any business.

Marketers need to listen to their needs rather than shower them with fast sales and empty promises.

Organizational collaboration for meaningful impact A key challenge for B2B marketers is the alignment of sales and marketing teams. Obstacles to communication within these departments include increased competition, undervaluing other departments and working out of sync.

Andrew Au, cofounder and president of Intercept Group North America has seen meaningful collaboration between these groups lead to better financial results and added value for both ❱ DMN.ca

Conversational marketing is a great way to build relationships and engagement with customers by creating authentic experiences by understanding what your customers want, not only in days, but in minutes. Jared Fuller, senior director, partnerships for Drift, believes that buyers have all the control in the sales process and that it is the company’s duty to create experiences that are personalized, relevant and meaningful through conversations in order to engage them meaningfully. According to Fuller, “Companies have to map conversations to the buyer’s

attribution across all online and offline channels.

James Hannah, group director, advertising cloud at Adobe.

Miki Velemirovich, president, The Cargo Agency.

Jared Fuller, senior director, partnerships, Drift.

Andrew Au, co-founder and president of Intercept Group North America.

journey now, not later. That’s the power of conversational marketing.”

The importance of the customer experience (CX) is extremely important to those trying to reach small business owners (SBOs), who are passionate and wildly optimistic about their work and tend to be an emotional buying group.

According to Miki Velemirovich, president of The Cargo Agency, a company dedicated to helping big brands connect with small businesses, “SBOs are often misunderstood and neglected by big brands and simply put, they are underserved.” Velemirovich noted that success for big brands looking to market to small business includes taking the time to listen and provide a personal approach: “For small business owners, their business is their life.”

Advanced marketing measurement tools Being a successful B2B marketer means keeping up with the frenzy of new technological advances.

However, the key is to find the right tools and solutions to meet the right objectives. Adobe’s acquisition of Marketo, when combined with Ad Cloud, provides new opportunities to efficiently activate their data across paid media and holistically measure the

According to James Hannah, group director, advertising cloud at Adobe, organizational silos remains a challenge to creating a unified strategy and process to drive success.

“Marketers and agencies need to embrace the technology that enables them to plan, measure and optimize across all screens and all formats, resulting in a comprehensive campaign overview of performance,” said Hannah.

Success in B2B marketing will require a laser focus on delivering an exceptional CX, a renewed dedication to increasing organization collaboration and investing in the right tools for your business. The customer, now more than ever, is seeking a personalized and memorable brand experience that resonates with them and will boost their position in the marketplace. With the dedication to innovation, continuous learning and impactful programming evident at CMAb2b, this is a promise Canada’s marketers are well-positioned to deliver.

Janine Allen is a CMA B2B Council member

(www.the-cma.org) and senior vice president, general manager and partner at Kaiser Lachance Communications.

May 2019

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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Preparing for the recurring customer

By Martin Schneider

I

n my last piece for DM Magazine I outlined “Why CRM matters more than ever” (July/August 2018 issue).

And if anything, the need for modern and intelligent customer relationship management (CRM) solutions for all types of businesses has only grown more necessary.

This is because the technical drivers I mentioned, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and changing customer expectations have merged, in a way. Today, we are in what we at SugarCRM are calling the age of the “recurring customer.”

Beyond the subscription economy When we use the term “recurring customer,” we are talking about a concept that goes beyond the core tenets of what is becoming known as the subscription economy, but is very much linked to it. The subscription economy, in a nutshell, is the idea that consumers are now “joining” rather than “buying” items and services.

Think Netflix versus buying a DVD or food delivery services versus isolated trips to the local market.

In short, we are paying fixed monthly or annual fees for goods and services that we can consume anytime and without friction and the suppliers, in return, get more predictable revenue and cash flow.

technology is needed.

This is where CRM comes in.

After all, it has “relationship” right in the center of its name.

Key elements of recurring customer CRM For both B2C and business-tobusiness (B2B) companies, focusing on recurring customer relationships may be major transformations.

Most technologies in their IT stacks simply do not account for repeat billing, nor do they consume and manage the kinds of data or perform the types of analysis needed to better understand the health of recurring customer lifecycles. They also fail to provide the reminders and actions needed to insure sales and that other customer-facing employees reach out and properly manage and nurture recurring customer relationships.

So, how can companies best transform from traditional customer models to a recurring one?

First, investment must be made in advanced workflow or business process management (BPM). New BPM technologies inside modern CRM tools allows for more efficient management and automation of recurring revenue and customer models.

Second, data is king; no surprises here. Modern CRM tools are enabling businesses of all types to consume more data about their customers and about their use of

Consumers are “joining” rather than “buying” items and services.

But this new economic model means we must change how we market to, and service, the customer. For example, businessto-consumer (B2C) models typically focus on the earliest stages of customer acquisition, e.g. advertising, marketing, conversion and purchase. But when the ongoing relationships become the most critical metric—keeping the customer for life— a new set of May 2019

the products and services to which they subscribe. This dovetails with the connected devices, smart machines and the general trend towards IoT we are seeing across all industries. By consuming this data inside the customer management system (and not in some data warehouse far away from the points of interaction), businesses can drive more timely reminders and offers and can prevent issues that

may cause customers to churn.

We have talked about this kind of customer data nirvana for years; as an industry we are finally making it easier for businesses to achieve.

The platform is key None of this is possible with the right modern, extensible and flexible CRM platform. The first generation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products are proving to be limited in scope, performance and the ability to manage the complex processes and data requirements of a recurring customer model.

You will need to deeply evaluate if your current CRM cuts the mustard. And if you’re new to CRM, make sure the CRM system you choose is a true platform and has the following attributes: ❯❯ Clear and open application programming interface (API) set. Integration is everything, so make sure your CRM system has well documented and open API sets that are 100% free to access and are not limited in usage or scope; ❯❯ Ease of configuration. Some systems require you to “break into code” to make a simple change. But in today’s world of cloud-based systems, you should find a platform that leverages configuration models, where you can drag, drop and make significant changes with clicks, not code. Beware of CRM solutions with proprietary configuration languages. Instead select one that offers simple and easy to understand methods for making most system changes so that non-IT resources can be administrators; and ❯❯ Extension ecosystem. It is important to discover just how easy is it to integrate third party and legacy tools into the CRM systems. Make sure the provider has a marketplace where you can discover, test and consume new tools to further your customer experience initiatives.

Don’t forget about culture While we have outlined a lot of

technical aspects of creating a recurring customer management model, to ensure that it happens productively requires addressing the “change management” aspect of this fundamental shift.

Moving to a predominantly business acquisition model to a recurring customer model involves many behavioural and cultural changes. Like from “mining” customers, which drives extracting all their worth and, once depleted, finding the next seam or vein, to “farming” them, which focuses on nurturing. In the recurring model service drives sales; customers will buy based on their experiences, and that of other customers.

It is critical, then, to communicate how and why the business is making these shifts. Employees typically resist change, especially when it isn’t communicated as a net benefit to them. Also, to reward behaviours that support the change.

Businesses that alter compensation or recognition of employees aligned with recurring customer goals tend to see greater outcomes.

For example, compensating marketers on renewals rather than acquisition conversions gets them focused on retention/recurring concepts by design.

The benefits are worth the effort At the end of the day, recurring customer models make sense. All studies show it can be up to five times more expensive to land a new customer than to retain an existing one. And loyal customers are more profitable and provide predictable revenue.

Of course, new business is still important, but a recurring customer model done right allows your business to trade on a reputation of customer success and exceptional experiences: which in and of itself is one of the most valued forms of marketing out there today.

Martin Schneider is head of corporate

strategy, SugarCRM (www.sugarcrm.com).

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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Refreshing your customer communications

By Mike Sullivan

A

s a marketing and customer communications specialist, you know that assessing performance and benchmarking measurable results are an integral part of determining goals for upcoming campaigns.

Are you communicating enough with your customers? Are you communicating too much? Are your messages being read? Is the customer experience (CX) good?

Could it be better?

And is it time for a communications strategy refresh?

We’re always looking for ways to improve our communications strategies and be more productive.

Here are five things today’s marketers ought to consider as they plan new campaigns.

1. Are you connecting with your customers through their preferred channels?

Today’s marketers must be agile. In an omnichannel world, we need to leverage every available preferred channel as we guide prospective and existing clients through the customer journey. E-mail has been the most cost-effective marketing strategy for years, and businesses, both big and small, have successfully counted on this solid channel to connect with their customers. But is this channel successfully gaining traction with ALL your customers?

Adding channels to your marketing mix can make a huge impact by connecting with your customers through the channels they prefer. Consider layering in text messaging, in-app messaging, print or even voice dialing to breathe new life into your customer outreach initiatives. Increasing your communication touchpoints could be the answer to making your CX better and more productive.

2. Are you managing traffic effectively?

Do you ever feel like a fire juggler, working hard to avoid the perils that come with managing multiple ❱ DMN.ca

marketing and e-commerce platform solutions? Do you cringe when your customers receive messages offering discounts on items they just purchased at full price? Or when they receive both e-mail and text messages when they should only receive one or the other? You know it’s unlikely your customers will complain about receiving too many or the wrong kind of messages; they’ll just unsubscribe, and you’ll have lost the valuable touchpoints that you’ve invested precious time and money into building.

When your organization is managing multiple platform solutions it can be a real challenge to use them effectively. Integrating disparate solutions is often costly and complex. So what’s the solution?

Consolidating onto a multichannel platform minimizes risks while making your life easier.

When a solution is built as a multichannel platform from the outset it runs smoothly, eliminating the need for troubleshooting and leaving you more time for creativity.

Look for solutions that will allow you to move back and forth between channels easily and efficiently, without aggravation. Now who couldn’t do with a little more peace of mind?

3. Has your e-mail marketing process kept up with the times?

Is your e-mail marketing process the same as it was two years ago?

Or longer? Are you still sending non-personalized bulk messages?

Still using the same templates? Are you bored? More importantly, are your customers bored? It might be time for a refresh.

Now more than ever it’s possible to improve your customer connection, such as by using personalized messaging, dynamic content and images, applicable content based on purchase history, web activity and location.

Leveraging data points like tags, purchase histories or information volunteered by your customers

helps ensure that you deliver relevant content and build tighter relationships.

Don’t underestimate esthetics and the need for strong user experience (UX) that takes the new mobile reality into account. New, responsive templates can easily be added to refresh the look and feel of your messages while improving the CX. Finally, be mindful of marketing and privacy regulations. With robust anti-spam and privacy laws like Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL), the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), purchasing lists of e-mail addresses and sending out mass blasts is asking for trouble. Expectations around e-mail marketing have changed from the customer and regulatory standpoints. Choose a platform that makes adhering to new rules of engagement a clear, simple and efficient process.

Your customers are individuals.

It is not as hard as you think to personalize your messages for each one of them, while respecting best practices. Times have changed, so change with the times!

4. Do you have automation or triggered messages as part of your communication process?

Automation is becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Take advantage of it! Setting up automated journeys can lead to a great CX. Having a customer start a flow based on when they join your e-mail programme is a way of gently introducing them to your business and messages before they start receiving your bulk campaigns. Automated journeys can also leverage other channels, like text messaging, as a way of maintaining that all-important connection with your customers.

Effective processes include connecting with customers through a predetermined flow of welcome series messages, as well

as triggered messages reminding them of an abandoned item or thanking them for their purchase.

Once they have cycled through the new customer automated messaging process, you’ll be able to use your customer’s recorded history to seamlessly add them to your regular messaging flow.

5. Are you relying on outsourced help to conduct your customer messaging?

Now’s the time to bring your customer marketing in-house.

Creating beautiful content is now accessible to most marketers; technology is much easier to use and HTML coding is no longer a requirement. Your marketing team has the passion and ability to conduct compelling and successful messaging campaigns. Why entrust your creative vision to an external resource when your own team has the home-field advantage?

With cross-channel marketing automation platforms becoming more and more user-friendly, there’s nothing holding you back.

With these five tips in mind, unleash your creativity and make your marketing platform work for you. The sky’s the limit when considering ways to connect with your customers. Take stock of your current systems; if they’re creating too much complexity, or discouraging innovation, it might be time to seek out a new messaging platform. Make sure you’re at the top of your game, with the right tools at your disposal.

Your customer relationships depend on it.

Mike Sullivan is head of sales, Canada for

Symplify (www.symplify.com). With customers in markets around the world and over 20 years’ experience in digital marketing, Symplify is a leader in cross-channel marketing automation for marketers and CRM teams. We believe that everyday work should be simple, inspiring and empowering. Our vision is to simplify creative communication. Founded in Sweden, Symplify has offices in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Montréal, Toronto, Hong Kong and Malta. Step into the #WorldOfSymplify.

May 2019

// 19

Marketing Insights

Why aren’t people mentoring anymore?

By John Wiltshire

T

here was once younger staff. In addition, many marketing profession who pick up Ontario (LCBO)’s vice president a time when people in the industry are feeling the phone when I call to ask them of marketing and customer mentorship was less confident about the future a question. I don’t really have that intelligence. the norm. According of the profession, which makes it today.”

As our programme has proven, to the Association for Talent harder to get motivated to mentor.

As well, I learned, you can’t just mentorship doesn’t need to involve Development (ATD), formerly Plus, even if you’re lucky enough to rely on your immediate bosses regular meetings or one-on-one the American Society for find a mentor, there’s no guarantee for mentorship. It helps to have a sessions. It’s more important Training & Development, 75% of that person will help in the way you larger network of people to talk to, to make connections with likeexecutives said that mentorship want them to. In my experience, so you can get a range of advice. minded people in your industry has been critical to their career mentors, who are often bosses, and create the kind of relationship development1. come and go and CMA’s mentoring programme —with more than one person— Over the last several years while many If companies aren’t investing where you feel comfortable sharing though, companies of them more time and money into non-competitive information to have cut corporate want mentorship opportunities, help each other succeed. mentorship to then it’s up to others to help As attendees at CMA Café programmes, and make those connections: and to presented by Mastercard have it’s getting harder redefine what mentorship means. learned, mentorship must be a for younger staff In January, our organization two-way street and it’s not just to find the time launched CMA Café presented by up to industry veterans to share to meet and Mastercard, a programme that their knowledge with younger of executives said that learn from more allows senior marketers to expand professionals. We embrace senior managers their networks and reverse mentorship, where mentorship has been and executives. participate in more experienced executives critical to their career In another round table make themselves available to development ATD survey, events with developing marketers to hear just 29% said CMOs, their perspectives and to learn their organization new martech-related skills around has a formal mentoring things like customer experience, programme, while only 37% said blockchain, social media and they have an informal one2. artificial intelligence (AI). help, only As much as the marketing said their organization Why mentoring matters a few have industry is changing, having While this may not seem like a big the kind of someone to learn from who can has a formal mentoring deal—you’re still interacting with high-quality help you advance in your career programme more experienced employees and leadership is as important as ever. Yes, you’re learning on the job—studies skills potential mentoring and networking takes show people with mentors achieve mentees need to time, but with job competition greater career success than those learn to advance in only increasing, and with without. A report by the American their own careers. new ideas and innovations Psychological Association found Still, people need guidance, being adopted at a rapid that those with mentors often earn especially in today’s quickly pace, it’s an investment higher performance evaluations, changing world. One mistake that will pay dividends for said they have an larger salaries and progress in their people make when it comes to mid-career marketers and careers faster than non-mentored mentorship is thinking that veterans alike. informal mentoring individuals3. According to The meeting for coffee once every programme Hechinger Report, a Harvard Law couple of months or being around John Wiltshire is president and CEO School study found that women to answer questions takes a large of the Canadian Marketing Association who had not made partner in their time commitment. But that isn’t (CMA) (www.the-cma.org). He is an Source: law firm had fewer mentors during necessarily true. accomplished senior executive with experience The Association for Talent Development their first five years than the Another misstep is that we in marketing and product strategies.

4 women partners at their firm . often equate mentorship with 1 Alyssa Rapp, “Be One, Get One: The Importance Of Mentorship”, Forbes CommunityVoice, October 2, 2018.

This isn’t just a marketing friendship. But even though you Chartered Marketers and members 2 Association for Talent Development, “Mentoring issue, but there is certainly a lack want to see your mentee succeed, of the CMA community. So far, Matters: Developing Talent With Formal Mentoring”, report, November 2017. of mentorship in our industry. you don’t have to meet every one of we’ve developed more than 25 3 American Psychological Association, 2006 Presidential Task Force, Centering on Mentoring, Recently, I conducted a series of their needs. Here’s how one CMO sessions for small groups of six “Introduction to Mentoring”, 2006. interviews on this topic and found I spoke to explained it: “I don’t need to 10 marketers, with leaders 4 Andre Perry, “Not enough students have mentors, and we must change that”, Hechinger Report, column, that many chief marketing officers more friends,” she said. “What I like the president of Loyalty One October 16, 2018.

(CMOs) don’t have time to develop need are some people across the and the Liquor Control Board of

75%

29%

37%

May 2019

DMN.ca ❰

// 20

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// 21

Resource Directory LIST SERVICES

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Events Calendar May 14-16 Payments Canada 2019 Payments Summit Toronto, Ont. https://www.thesummit.ca

May 30 Association of Fundraising Professionals, Greater Toronto Chapter, Fundraising Day Toronto, Ont. http://afptoronto.org

May 16-17 DigiMarCon Canada Toronto, Ont. https://digimarconcanada.ca

June

May 20-23 Collision Toronto, Ont. https://collisionconf.com May 28-29 Retail Council of Canada STORE 2019 Toronto, Ont. www.storeconference.ca May 28-30 CSPN 22nd Annual Conference Toronto, Ont. http://conference.mycspn.com

June 5-7 PostalVision 2020 Arlington, Va. http://www.postalvision2020.com/2019annual-event/ June 12-13 Big Data and AI Toronto 2019 Toronto, Ont. www.bigdata-toronto.com/2019/

September September 3-6 Content Marketing World Cleveland, Ohio www.contentmarketingworld.com September 20-26 Elevate Toronto, Ont. https://elevatetechfest.com

October October 7 ACT Canada Forum Toronto, Ont. www.actcda.com/act-canada-forum/

August August 20-22 CONEX: The Content Experience 2019 Toronto, Ont. https://conex.uberflip.com/home

Visit us online for complete list

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Excellent Execution

// 22

A

s the lines between the physical and digital worlds continue to blur, marketers today must ensure their brands connect across all dimensions. With the rise of new technologies, and the always-on digital mindset of consumers, brands must now deliver immersive and seamless experiences that resonate with the way consumers live, shop and pay in an increasingly digital and mobile world.

At Mastercard, we have continuously evolved our brand, connecting with consumers by telling our story and vision for safe, simple and new ways to pay.

All while keeping the trust, convenience and security they’ve come to expect with us.

Shawna Miller is vice president, integrated

marketing and communications, Canada, Mastercard.

A new look and a name drop Our brand evolution accelerated three years ago with a new visual identity. The goal was to convey simplicity and modernity: a direct reflection of our transformation to a technology company.

This new visual identity helped set the stage for the next phase of our evolution: the name drop. The consumer and commerce landscapes are rapidly evolving, but our brand’s message of a simple, secure and frictionless payments journey is clear.

In this digitally-driven world we had the opportunity to reinforce our message. So, earlier this year, Mastercard announced that we had dropped our name to become a symbol brand. As one of the world’s most recognized brands, the flexible design of our iconic red and yellow interlocking circles could stand on their own and work seamlessly across the digital landscape.

From screen to sound As marketers know all too well, the world around us never stays still. Critically for brands today, the rise in voice-enabled devices is redefining how we engage at every point of the consumer journey. This year, 5.8 million people in Canada will use a smart speaker, an increase of over 50% from 2018. By 2020, that number is expected to rise to 6.7 million1.

Voice can no longer be an afterthought. Consumers now expect to be able to converse with every device,

❱ DMN.ca

Courtesy Mastercard

Mastercard’s sensory evolution whether it’s on their wrists, in their cars or on their kitchen counters.

Sonic branding What does this mean for brand evolution? It means consumers should not only see a brand logo they also need to hear a brand sound. A distinct sonic identity is now critical to how people recognize a brand today, and how people will continue to recognize and connect with it into the future.

As we enter a time when consumers search the web simply with the sound of their voice, brands will need to find other, non-visual means to connect with their audience across the channels they’re already using.

To match the iconic interlocking circles of our symbol brand, Mastercard has now introduced a comprehensive sound architecture. Consumers will associate Mastercard with a unique sound whenever and wherever they engage with our brand: from live events and marketing campaigns, to purchase transactions in-store, online and on every connected device.

Growing sensory opportunities New technologies are catering to the consumer desire for sensory experiences and simultaneously opening doors for brands to participate. Voice-driven functionality allows marketers to engage with their consumers in seamless and efficient ways that ultimately make consumers’ lives easier.

This type of engagement gives consumers greater flexibility and control over their interactions with brands and products. It also gives leading companies the chance to reinvent themselves and transform how they interact with consumers.

Looking ahead As consumers look for new ways to engage and connect, brands must identify, adapt and insert themselves into new channels and technologies. Sensory branding isn’t coming—it’s already here—and the brands that will be remembered will be the ones that can provide simple, seamless familiarity and experience.

1 Caroline Cakebread, “Who Will Win the Smart Speaker War in Canada?”, eMarketer, article, January 7, 2019.

May 2019

Reach marketers & financial executives Our magazines are must-reads for key executives in core corporate competencies.

Can you help our readers: • Create a strong financial structure and healthy economic ecosystem to ensure capital and cash flow keep their engines running?

• Determine who their customers should be, how they can reach them most effectively, and how they can turn data-driven marketing into profitable sales?

• Build efficient and effective financial systems to enhance payments and billings between their companies and their customers and vendors?

• Convert all the data and information they collect from every contact point into tangible benefits that increase revenue and reduce costs?

• Equip their companies with the tools, technology, systems and hardware needed to manage their operations, to create new services or products, and deliver them to their market?

• Manage their customers with smoothly functioning support departments that are properly staffed and equipped to solve problems, foster loyalty and retain customers?

• Make any or every step in that chain better, faster, cheaper, and more profitable?

We can help you tap into the ecosystem at the points that will drive your campaigns.

To advertise or get more information and media kits:

Mark Henry 905-201-6600 ext 223 | 1-800-668-1838 | mark@dmn.ca Visit our websites:

DM Magazine, www.dmn.ca Contact Management magazine, www.contactmanagement.ca

Payments Business magazine, www.paymentsbusiness.ca Canadian Equipment Finance magazine, www.canadianequipmentfinance.com