Embrace Your Inner Artist: Does Your Brand Masterpiece Look the Way You Think It Does?

Try to think of point of contact between your brand and your customer as a dab of Seurat’s paint. The stores, the website, marketplaces, call centres and chatbots, events, ads, demos, surveys, loyalty programs, reviews, social media, 3rd party sites, the delivery and packaging - when they are all properly connected and you step back, they create a beautiful picture.

If you were to take a couple of steps back from all of these touchpoints, and join up what you’re sending out to the customer, and the information from the customer that’s coming in, do you think the picture you’d actually see would match the idea you have in your head? Are you sure that you’re still connecting in the dots the right way in this post-Covid world? Are you using the right colours? Can you be certain that you still truly know who that target customer is? Because for a lot of brands, it’s someone who might look a little – or a lot - different to just a year ago.

Doing Business in 2021 Requires A Holistic View – And A Holistic Relationship

It doesn’t matter which industry you’re in – one constant for 2021 is that this relationship has changed.

Connecting with the customer means something different today than it did six months ago, and it needs to be more consistent and be felt across every single touchpoint and channel, online and off. Digital is more important this year than ever before. And that needs to be understood throughout the entire organisation, right up to the C-suite and the board.

To keep up with consumers and secure a competitive advantage, brands need to start communicating with customers in the same way those customers communicate with each other. That means becoming cross-functional if you aren’t already, and maximising the value of every single channel. Google found that as many as 85% of digital consumers start the purchasing workflow on one device yet finish it on another (Google) and 75% of consumers expect a consistent experience wherever they engage (e.g., website, social media, mobile, in person) (Salesforce). There’s no point in analysing that positive Facebook messenger thread when the customer dropped off unhappily because no one responded to their next reply on Instagram. It’s about seeing the whole customer journey.

This is a new frontier for brands. But it’s not a paint-by-numbers situation. This is exciting – it’s a chance to get creative and break some new ground. It’s no longer about just selling something; it’s about offering a more holistic relationship and getting back to really understanding what that journey is. It’s about embracing your inner artist. Customer service is evolving from a cost centre to a profit driver, so the goal will be to create more conversations and touchpoints, rather than limit them.

Customers Who Interact More Spend More

It takes more touchpoints than you think to make a sale these days. In 2019, Google identified the number ranging between 20+ (for a candy bar) and 500+ (for flights). Today consumers use an average of almost six touchpoints, with nearly 50% regularly using more than four. A lot of sources recommend between 5 and 20, but I consider 8 is a good benchmark, depending on your company and industry.

The proof is in every single pudding. Omnichannel is worth it: businesses that adopt omni-channel strategies achieve 91% greater year-over-year customer retention rates compared to businesses that don’t, according to a survey conducted by Aspect Software. And a HBR 2017 study of 46,000 customers pointed to the merging of digital and physical touchpoints across the retail customer journey finding that consumers increasingly use multiple touchpoints in all sorts of combinations and places. Those that did so spent on average 4%+ more on every shopping occasion in store and 10% more online than single channel customers. The more channels they used, they more they spent – customers who used four or more channels spent 9% more on average than those who used just one.

Once they have purchased, shoppers who used multiple touchpoints logged 23% more repeat shopping trips to retailers’ stores and were more likely to recommend the brand to family and friends than customers who relied on a single channel.

The potential value of that Seurat painting is $650 million. Just imagine the potential financial impact of connecting all of your touchpoints as harmoniously as Seurat did.

What Does the New Relationship Look Like?

COVID has toppled the rules of engagement. We’ve all witnessed a monumental shift from basic transactions to relationship-based interactions. Now more than ever, consumers want to connect with brands on a human and emotional level. They expect to talk to someone, whether on the phone, via chat, video or in real life. It's all about ensuring that the customer experience is solid, personalised and localised.

Consumers expect brands to have a point of view now. That means you need to have a story to tell and transparency and honesty in who you are, what you do and what your values are. Consumers want brands to act and put their money where they say their mouth is. This is what inspires and engages people and builds trust – and success. For example:

• A lot of financial institutions are forgiving upcoming payments during COVID.
• UK mattress company, Eve Sleep, worked with suppliers to donate beds to hospital staff.
• Brewdog started making hand sanitizer in its Aberdeen distillery and gave them away to charities, shelters, NHS staff in hospitals, and anyone in the community who needed them.
• Sainsbury’s introduced a shopping hour dedicated to the elderly and vulnerable, staying open for an hour longer each day.
• In response to nationwide home schooling, Ocado opened up its ‘Rapid Router’ programme, a free education resource that teaches children to code at home and continue their computer education.

This is the sort of forward-thinking brand behaviour that nurtures goodwill and customer loyalty through a crisis.

Businesses Are Re-Emphasising the Role of Customer Service and Human Interaction

Customers no longer base their loyalty on price or product. Instead, they stay loyal with companies due to the experience they receive. PwC surveyed 15,000 consumers and found that 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, while 92% would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions.

Human interaction is at the heart of the new relationship but increasingly digital is the means by which it is delivered. But with increasing intimacy between brands and consumers, the role of customer service is being reframed. That two-way conversation is one of the strongest tools a brand has and every touchpoint is another opportunity to go deeper and improve your bottom line.

Consumer brands are embracing the idea of personal interaction and focusing their entire business model around it. Brands like Hungryroot already understand the importance of the entire digital ecosystem. It’s an online service for plant-based food and it’s tackling the business model from a different perspective – creating a personalised grocery plan for each customer based on preferences revealed via a quiz.

The new DTC beauty brand Habit is another brilliant example. Habit is aiming to normalise the routine application of sunscreen. Customers that purchase its No 41 Mister, a facial mist with SPF 41, receive daily reminder texts for 21 days - the time it takes to form a new habit (see how they did that?). Investing in an enduring customer relationship is particularly smart and forward-thinking for a brand with a small product range.

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

Planks Clothing is another fantastic brand (disclaimer: I’m a NED). Their skiwear is awesome and it’s all about modern styling, sustainability and preserving life on the mountain. It’s Manchester-based and it’s about a truly rad culture. But it's not meant to exclusively be a Millennial brand and has customers from a wide age bracket – it’s not age delimiting. There are new questions that brands and their boards need to be asking themselves now, when examining and connecting all those touchpoints and the insights they provide. Questions about the language used in content and on the website, and the models used to sell and engage with consumers. Do you change those to reflect who’s actually buying from you now? Or are they buying from you because of that energy and the way the brand is portrayed?

There are times when there is a big disconnect between brands and their consumers, and the brand really needs to change it up. It’s easy to lose money when you’re not closely aligned. But then there are times where that misalignment is exactly what you want, because people are aspirational. A digital marketer at board level has a huge financial impact on the business because they can ask the right questions, and they know which data points will lead you towards the conversation that will help you make those sorts of decisions.

I’ve got a good feeling about 2021. Now is the time to go back to drawing boards, open up paintboxes, tap into your inner Seurat and experiment with some new colours and ideas.

The Tech Spec

Interesting tech I’ve seen:

• rais.io – A smart customer experience platform for small business – these guys know data.
• Hotjar – Yes, it’s been around for a long time, but it’s the tech I keep coming back to again and again because it’s easy to use and offers a powerful picture of what your customer is doing.
• SmartKarrot – Combining engagement, onboarding, success operations, adoption and customer experience for a single 360-degree view of every customer.

Written by Gabrielle Hase.

CEO of Soleberry Advisory and digital Non-Executive Director. I want to help solve the problem of the lack of appropriate female and digital skills and perspectives at the board table. 

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