Traditional one-way marketing and collecting consumers’ digital footprints and identities such as phone numbers or email addresses are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Businesses used to be able to dictate their brand image to the market solely through broadcast advertising. Today, with social media and quick & easy access to opinions from peers, trusted review sites or power users, brands are losing control and customers are, for the first time ever, truly in charge.
There is a growing awareness with companies that a memorable customer experience is a new way to differentiate their brands. So with today’s empowered consumers, organizations need to make a dedicated effort to not only win but also keep consumer trust. Businesses need to give customers their attention, versus winning the customer’s attention. It simply isn’t tolerated anymore when companies collect a plethora of personal information and digital identities of their customers without providing any insight into how the information they’ve amassed will be used. Consumers have become increasingly frustrated when their personal information and data is being used, in some respects, against them in the form of spam and over-promotion. So why would they want to provide anything?
If a business wants to succeed, they need to explain how they are going to use customer data to improve their experience with them over time. Consumers are more receptive to providing their information if in the process it leads to an improved customer experience such as faster access to account information over SMS or phone calls without complex authentication processes.
And making this happen is not a complicated undertaking. It really just takes adding a link “Why would we like to know all this?” that points to an explanation as to why a customer’s online identities will help improve service – e.g. through a short video. Or, give them a full-fledged preference page where they can tell you what their preferences are. Better still, give them the opportunity to tell you what their terms and conditions are for doing business with them.
Think about it: In the age of the empowered consumer, it seems out of place that a customer has to sign a vendor’s Terms and Conditions, but the vendor never has to sign a customer’s. If a customer can tell a company that they don’t want to be emailed at all, and never called during weekends, and that they prefer short proactive messages for relevant information via Twitter DM, and time-critical information via SMS, then not only will they get annoyed less frequently, they’ll also feel that the company respects and values their time and preferences. And this will ultimately lead to greater loyalty.
Going a step further, what about a consumer version of CRM systems? Call it VRM, Vendor Relationship Management. The idea here is that consumers get centralized dashboards and tools that let them track and manage vendor communication and relationships. Being able to compare vendors side by side in how they provide customer service will immediately value those higher that already provide great service. It could become a way to further differentiate – or simply stay at the top of the list. For the consumer, a concrete example of a VRM use case would be the ability to inform all of your vendors at once about your new credit card. How much time that would save!
The more transparent a business gets, the more likely it will be that customers share information openly. Knowing a customer’s digital identities can also help prevent fraud. Let’s say a business calls a customer for collections. If the customer doesn’t believe they are indeed the company they claim to be, they could read the customer a short security code and tell them “without hanging up, please login on our mobile app or website now and you will immediately get a pop-up telling you this same code”, thereby proving that they are indeed who they say they are. This requires the business to embrace omni-channel techniques, i.e. connecting channels and retaining context across channels.
If it’s not about the consumer not trusting the company, but the company not trusting the consumer, the company could ask the customer to tweet, text or Facebook-message a code, thereby proving that they are indeed who they claim to be. It is harder for a fraudster to steal not just one, but several identities at the same time.
I’m certain that embracing new technologies, and opening up to true customer centricity as explained above, will not only address growing consumer empowerment, it will also improve and prolong company-customer relationships, no matter the age group or demographic.
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