Why the best way to win your customers is with a mobile app

Recent stats show that mobile app usage has increased up to 500% in some areas since the start of the pandemic. In fact, the average person spends?nearly 5 hours per day?glued to their phone. The average consumer is communicating, watching TV, playing games, ordering meals, and even grocery shopping on their phones. And they're paying for these things with their phones too.

So, as a grocery retailer, if you want to immediately engage with your customers, the best way to reach them is through a mobile app. Here are just a few of the ways a mobile app can improve the customer experience.??

1. Reach customers through new touchpoints.

The customer journey isn’t as linear as it used to be. Adding digital to the mix means that customers can find you and interact with you in a thousand different ways. Mobile phones are personal, one-to-one, and immediate — so the touchpoints are even more valuable than some other potential avenues (like email for example).

And, as technology like mobile payments become more prevalent, mobile phones open up even more potential customer touchpoints. Take?Scan & Pay?as an example: by replacing the traditional checkout experience with a mobile app, customers are free to browse and shop at their own pace. They don’t have to queue up for service, or make small talk with strangers, or struggle with wallets and cards: everything is digital, automated, and convenient.

(Video: an example of Lobyco's own Scan & Pay service)

Digital touchpoints also provide more trackable data than in-person touchpoints, which leads us to the next point…

2. Collect more (and better) customer data.

Not just purchase and browsing data, but engagement stats as well. The more value a customer gets from your app, the more they will use it. And the more they use the app, the more data you can collect and use to increase customer value. You can also collect sentiment data through?customer ratings, polls, and surveys.?

Mobile apps can also help you synchronize the data from various touchpoints in one place. This can include engagement, browsing, purchase, sentiment, and even geotargeting data as needed. When you combine all this data and put it to use, you have all the tools needed to create a powerful?loyalty loop.?

Graph: The effect of Scan & Pay and app usage on average member turnover (index)

3. Improve personalization and boost engagement.

The more you know about your customer, the better you can tailor your personalization to them. A personalized customer experience is much more engaging than a set of boilerplate messages and offers — and today’s consumer expects to receive a highly personalized experience, especially from brands they are loyal to. If they fail to get the experience they expect, consumers are happy to move to a competitor: in a recent poll,?87% of adults?said they would “look elsewhere if a brand made them unhappy in any way.”

Great customer experience is one that keeps your customers coming back. According to?McKinsey, “personalization at scale (in which companies have personal interactions with?all or a large segment of their customers) often delivers a?1 to 2 percent lift in total sales?for grocery companies and an even higher lift for other retailers, typically by driving up loyalty and share-of-wallet among already-loyal customers (for whom data are more abundant and response rates are higher). These programs can also?reduce marketing and sales costs by around 10 to 20 percent.”

A mobile app is a great way to connect with consumers on a personal level because the experience is one-to-one: this makes it feel more personal and immediate than an email or a flyer. If you want to learn more about personalization and customer engagement through mobile apps,?request a demo?of the Lobyco retail customer loyalty platform.