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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 52 MAL27/18 ISSUE 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