I am unique. You are unique. We differ in many ways, including how we behave, shop, engage, talk, and react.
We are also creatures of habit and prefer to leverage a trusted vendor who has provided us with a consistent, good experience. For example, most people have a favourite local barista at the cofee shop we buy our large coffee from on the way to work. When we have consistent, good experiences, we return to the same trusted vendors or brands that serve our diverse daily needs like clothes, cosmetics, jewellery, housing items, pet food, travel and food.
These businesses also have an identity of their own, a unique approach and well defined processes for treating and serving special customers like me and you. However, there is often a disconnect between businesses’ approach to the customer experience and customer expectations.
The chasm between the needs of today’s customers and what experience brands truly provide, is referred to as the CX Expectations Gap. Meeting these needs requires a lot of work: time, money, effort, and resources.
There are places and companies who have been successful at addressing specific expectation and personalization needs. They are usually local vendors who have intimate knowledge and recurring facetime with their customer base. You interact with these local vendors every day, from your regular bar’s bartender, local diner manager, barista at the coffee shop on your way to work, or my local fruit vendor. They are all different in many ways but have one critical aspect in common. A process that helps them know everything about every customer.
My local fruit vendor works hard. He recognises me and knows my preferences. If there are great, slightly green bananas and it’s Monday he knows to save me these as I pick up fruit on way back from work. When he gets an order of figs (one of my favourites) and sees me exit the subway, he lets me know. He knows I like the extra hard cucumbers and the plums my kids make me buy everytime they come with me to buy fruit.He offers these as upsell and perhaps caters to people like me with a special offer.
He knows there is another vendor three blocks away, so after a bad experience with sour, bad grapes, he immediately refunded me and offered fresh grapes. And he now knows that everyone who bought these batches of grapes that day may have experienced the same displeasure and are at risk of moving to another vendor, risking a loss of repeat business and clientele. So he asks those he remembers if the grapes were ok and offers similar replacements.
But does this process scale? What if it could? What if you could make every customer a priority, just like my local fruit vendor, by knowing everything about them?
For that you need to ensure every system, app, and data point is integrated the right way as to portray your unique business processes, focusing on driving superior CX and enabling you to drive the right, informed action by agent, marketing, automation and knowledge workers in the company.
This requires the following:
- Incorporating every customer’s entire buying history, from self service, online, offline and every relevant action into as single repository that drives the right action for the appropriate customer facing employee.
- Understanding your customer’s engagement preferences, to be able to respond to them when needed and proactively reach out when appropriate.
- Analysing sentiment changes, trends, and patterns, as to drive informed decisions for a segment of customers, who may have received the wrong or damaged product.
- Enabling inventory demand vs supply shifts to notify the right person through their preferred channel of interaction and to offer alternate products now vs waiting for the restock.
Automating your business processes to drive great CX, enabling a full view of every customer’s unique story, and knowing everything about every customer as to drive informed actions — that’s the vision and future we all dream about.
Stop dreaming. And start today with Kustomer.
About Alon Waks: Alon Waks is the VP of Marketing at Kustomer. Previously Alon was VP of Marketing at 8×8, leading segment and demand globally, including all Go-to-market, content and sales development. Alon has a vast experience in B2B Marketing, Product Management, GTM and consulting. Prior to 8×8, Alon was VP, Global Head of Marketing at LivePerson, where he led all content, demand generation, field marketing and global operations, and also served as the head of product marketing for many years. Prior to that, Alon led Product Go-To-Market for Avaya. He has a rich background in IT consulting, Business Intelligence, Product and working worldwide with enterprise customer’s Line of Business, IT and marketing. Alon holds a dual degree from Tel Aviv University and a MBA from Duke University.
