MARKETING AFRICA MAL 18/17 mal 18:17 online | Page 21
thrust out. All at the customer’s
preferred place and time.
Selling as the most traditional yet
still highly effective promotional
activity, is bound to hit a dead end
should the potential customer feel
‘inconvenienced’ in any way, and savvy
sales people create convenient options
for their customers.
Prof. Steven Van Belleghem in his
revolutionary piece - How Bots and
Neuro Linguistic Programming are
Shifting the Customer Journey –
indicates that the reality for businesses
today, is that convenience is the new
customer loyalty. Where customers
used to fall in love with brands, they
now love interfaces, and customer
loyalty will be determined by the ones
that make their life easy.
He goes further to make the case for
bots and algorithm based decision
making, arguing logically that if any
company can intelligently predict their
customer’s needs, they can provide a truly
outstanding level of customer service.
This new way of approaching
customer convenience and applying
a futuristic model to current norms,
should keep all marketing and
customer experience professionals
awake at night. Brands should no
longer be competing on price and
packaging options, but on service
delivery as inspired by ingenious
ways to string the customer’s harp,
and strike chords that generate
convenience resonance.
Organizations should be scouting
for partnerships with technological
outfits that are innovating around
digital companions and apps that
will become man’s best friend, using
combinations of text analysis, visio-
facial analytics and audio monitoring,
to determine customer behavior.
Knowing your customer means really
listening to them at their comfort
through all channels possible, and
truly understanding what convenience
means to them; then using that
knowledge to create products and
solutions tailored to delivering
on their expectations, and further
exceeding them through delightful
service delivery.
Marketing has indeed evolved over
time, and current definitions by
marketing scholars revolve around
basing marketing on customer needs
and customer satisfaction. The central
place that value for customers at all
levels has taken in marketing discussions
needs to be acknowledged. Creating,
communicating, and delivering value for
stakeholders underpins the most tactical
and strategic marketing plans.
Customers attach value to two simple
things – their time and their efforts.
They are willing to pay the price and
appreciate return on investment for
products and services that demonstrate
requisite weightage towards the
worth and significance of these, to the
individual and collective customer.
Convenience, that is officially defined
as the state of being able to proceed
with something with little effort or
difficulty, or anything that saves or
simplifies work adding to one’s ease
or comfort, should constitute the
genotype of any marketing strategy
worth considering. Customer
convenience is indeed the new
marketing ... please take note.
Carolyne Gathuru is the founder
and director of strategy at LifeSkills
Consulting. She has several years of
experience in customer experience strategy
development and training. You can
commune with her on this or related issues
via mail at: [email protected]