front of the customer’ by not necessarily
physically being in place, but digitally at
the touch of the keypad to order, pay, and
have delivered.
What organizations must do to ramp up
their 2019 customer experiences, is to not
only think through the breakthroughs
related to their products and services, but
to deliberately have a strategy in place to
create relationships with tech innovators
that are putting together tools to better
understand how to move things closer to
the customer, and have the product go
the people instead of the people go to the
product.
Determining both customer and consumer
behavior, and their need for things to
swing over to them in the here and now,
is an area that will create the next crop of
great brands. The comfort of both great
products and great service delivery will
transcend the barriers of price.
Targets for the customer effort score need
to be set, and the ease of contact, ease of
experience, ease of communication, ease
of issue resolution, and ease of acquiring
the desired result, must be measured
and tracked. The easier it gets, the more
impactful these results.
Customers are actually willing to pay the
price and it is worth considering that
customer convenience is indeed the new
marketing, and must be a focal point in
every marketer’s 2019 agenda.
Customer Analytics
Generalizations and stereotypes have for
the longest time, been a key marketing
and customer experience strategy, to have
broad outlines against which customers
may be ‘fit’ in order to produce products
for them or design services for their needs.
The demographic chart that outlines
the different generations – ranging
from the traditionalists pre 1945, right
through to the centennials post 1996,
with its breakdown of behavioral traits,
has guided communication, service, and
product development.
This formula whilst generally accurate,
has varying exceptions, and analyzing
customer needs and trends, needs to be
more intuitively done. Brands need to
go the extra mile to discover as much
detail about customers in order to serve
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Now more than ever before, in this era of digital
mavericks has convenience taken on significant
importance. The more the customer can access
products and services with ease and grace, the
more attractive the brand, no matter what price
perception is attached to it. Competition nowa-
days is not measured by who is offering a similar
product or service, but who can get the product
or service to the customer, who wants their stuff
anytime, anywhere and using any device.
them better by anticipating, meeting, and
exceeding their expectations.
The tools available in recent times to
delve deeper to understand customer
backgrounds,
frequency
of
use,
peculiarities, wants and needs, preferences,
regular and irregular behavior, produce
interesting results for consideration.
The recent claim that ‘Data is the new
oil’ is more true for marketers, business
developers, and customer experience
strategists than other professions.
Know Your Customer as a strategy
for both customer excellence and risk
management has become very basic,
and should no longer be spoken about
in isolation, but the building block
upon which more complex systems are
constructed to gather, analyze, create
models and track trends, to make more
informed marketing and customer
experience decisions.
Partnerships are essential in the predictive
analytics journey. It is from various
sources that customer information may
be gleaned, and when the dots are joined,
the holistic picture of each customer may
be mapped.
Caution must of course be placed to be
careful around breach, and in the bid to
gather and use customer data to enhance
their experiences and design solutions
that are customized, that the principles of
the General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) are maintained. Whether it
exists as formal regulation or otherwise,
integrity, confidentiality, transparency,
and consent with regards to personal data
should not be negotiable.
2019 will serve to differentiate the brands
that have taken time to know who their
customers really are, what their needs and
wants are, how they want these packaged
and delivered from the rest. There is
a valid case for Artificial Intelligence
interventions to intelligently predict
customer needs to enable brands provide
outstanding customer experiences that are
personalized and impactful.
Customer Of Tomorrow
Brands need to focus on the youth. The
‘youth’ have become a buzzword with
every activity and event themed to address
‘young people’ in the attempt for brands
to seem relevant. Buzzword or not, the
figures truly indicate that young people
are a constituency unto their own and that
indeed focus must be placed in this area.
The global population places young people
under 30 years of age at 50.5%, with
89.7% of these found in emerging and
developing economies, particularly in the
Middle East and Africa. In Kenya 80%
of the population is under 35 years of age
with country’s median age at 19.1 years.
With these statistics in mind, brands
need to take a step back and ask
themselves if their planned strategies,
projects, initiatives, new products, and
services directly speak to this category of
customers, and if the language is designed
to be understood and appreciated by them.
To succeed, there needs to be specific
reflection about the dynamics of the more
youthful customer, and to acknowledge
without a doubt that they love to
experiment and they no longer want
to be ‘told’ stuff, but to see, touch and
feel what is being sold, and even more
importantly to experience it. Brands must