Is the connected customer distracted or engaged?

We see it every day. We are at an event and someone holds up their phone to video or take a picture. Or they are looking down at their phone at your event. You think they are distracted, not enjoying what is going on. Can’t they focus on the experience and be engaged?

Here’s the rub. They aren’t distracted. They are engaged. They are sharing the video of the event on YouTube. They are checking in on Four Square. They are always connected and they are always sharing their experiences. They do it as it happens. This is the new Connected Customer. They are sharing with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and text messages.

Engagement is completely different now. It is “in the moment” physically and digitally. We are becoming increasingly networked with individuals amassing hundreds or thousands of friends and followers. And it is in multiple networks. What they say to me matters more than ever before. Word of mouth used to be one-to-one. Now is one-to-many and that many could be thousands for real influencers.

There is a new kind of currency. In the network economy, there is the audience who has an audience that has most of the influence. This influence is changing everything about how customers connect with our companies.

 
The balance of power used to be to the company marketing message. The new way of engaging and influence gives all the power to the customer. Will that make a difference in how you decide to transform your company? 

The Digital Executive makes a choice to connect. This is both personal and corporate. Becoming personally connected (and open) helps you "get it". If you aren't connected, find someone who can help you connect. It will make a world of difference. 

Stop Telling Your Employees What to Do

Jordan Cohen, in the Harvard Business Review tells a great story that drives the point home about empowerment. For the digital executive, it makes sense to focus on outcomes of the customer experience and let creative talent figure out how to execute that for the customer.

I will never forget the experiences of getting my first suit. I was 12 years old and my father took me to a department store on 18th street in New York City. I was very excited; this was the transition to feeling grown up. A real milestone. I would have a suit like all the grown men I knew.

At the store, we headed straight downstairs to the boys department and I tried on several cream-colored suits (very mid-1970s Saturday Night Fever). Once we found the right one, the tailor had me stand on a box in front of a mirror. He then went to work pinning and marking for the alteration. When he finished he stepped back, and he and my father looked at the suit pinned on me. In the mirror, I saw my father point to the back and shoulder of the jacket and sleeve and then shake his head no. The tailor went back to work, re-pinning and re-marking. Once again, my father shook his head no. So the tailor added padding under my shoulder. Still, my father shook his head. After about 30 minutes of back-and-forth, finally my father nodded and my cream colored, three-piece suit with bell bottom pants went off for alteration.

For me, the experience was long and boring and not as exciting as I anticipated. On the car ride home I asked my father why he didn't just tell the tailor what to do (my father was a clothing manufacturer). He explained, "if I told the tailor what to do, he would have done exactly what I had requested — but then if the jacket didn't fit properly, he would have said, 'I did what you told me to do'. On the other hand, if I told him what we are trying to achieve (for the jacket to lay flat with no pulling in the back, shoulder, or sleeve) he could be responsible for the outcome I described."

via Stop Telling Your Employees What to Do - Jordan Cohen - Harvard Business Review.

Mobile (Digital) Wallets are gaining traction

A digital wallet refers to an electronic device that allows an individual to make electronic commerce transactions. This can include purchasing items on-line with a computer or using a smartphone to purchase something at a store. Increasingly, digital wallets are being made not just for basic financial transactions but to also authenticate the holder's credentials. For example, a digital-wallet could potentially verify the age of the buyer to the store while purchasing alcohol. It is useful to approach the term "digital wallet" not as a singular technology but as three major parts: the system (the electronic infrastructure) and the application (the software that operates on top) and the device (the individual portion).

An individual’s bank account can also be linked to the digital wallet. They might also have their driver’s license, health card, loyalty card(s) and other ID documents stored on the phone. The credentials can be passed to a merchant’s terminal wirelessly via near field communication (NFC). Certain sources are speculating that these smartphone “digital wallets” will eventually replace physical wallets. The system has already gained popularity in Japan, where digital wallets are known as Osaifu-Keitai or “wallet mobiles”

The potential of mobile payments is enormous: there are 1.3 billion active credit and debit accounts in the world, but more than 5 billion active mobile phone accounts. In Africa and Asia, financial transactions via mobile phone are a widespread way to overcome deficits in banking infrastructure.

In the western world, the growing adoption of smartphones and the technological progress have given rise to the idea of mobile wallets.

This chart shows key facts about mobile wallets: adoption, benefits and opportunities.

Get ready for a new generation of customers

Are you ready for a new generation of customers? Company executives, meet the Millennials. Millennials, meet XYZ company. Oops, there is a gap here. Most company leaders aren’t a part of Generation Y (also known as Millennials). Generation Y is considered to be individuals born in the early 1980s to 2000s. They come after Generation X. Millennials represent an important emerging group of potential customers as they are also sometimes referred to as “echo boomers”. This refers to their size relative to the large group of Baby Boomers. In the US, birth rates peaked in 1990. It is helpful to know that Millennials have distinctly different behaviors, values and attitudes from previous generations as a response to the technological and economic implications of the internet.

Society and technology is evolving faster than many companies can adapt. We have to come to grips with the fact that customer landscapes are not only changing, they are evolving beyond our grasp. You and your leadership team are not dealing with customers you know and recognize. You are in fact talking to strangers.

This means that we all need to spend a lot of time understanding what is important to this evolving group of customers. Why would they want to engage with our mission? How do they make decisions? Without that level of empathy, we can’t create meaningful experiences for this emerging and important customer. This group is critical to your future employees, advocates and customers. This would be the time to start designing experiences based on their interest and behavior. 

Here is some information that may be helpful in looking at these strangers known as Gen Y:

• Seventy-three percent have earned and used virtual currency.
• Gen Y will form about 75 percent of the workforce by 2025 and are already actively shaping corporate culture and expectations. Only 11 percent define having a lot of money as a definition of success.
• Sixty-six percent will look up a store if they see a friend check in.
• Start-ups dominate the work force for Gen Y’ers. Only 7 percent work for a Fortune 500 company. They expect large organizations to hear their voice and recognize their contributions. They need an “intrapreneurial” culture.
• They are three times as likely to follow a brand over family members in social networks.
• Millennials watch TV with two or more electronic devices.
• Millennials trust strangers over friends and family when it comes time for purchase decisions. They value user-generated experiences heavily.
• Twenty-nine percent find love through Facebook while 33 percent are dumped via TXT or Wall posts. (I’m not making this up)
• Gen Y’ers believe that other consumers care more about their opinions than companies do. That is why they share their opinions online.
• Most people on Facebook have about 240 friends. Gen Y’ers maintain about 696 friends.

We need to bridge the gap from being strangers to becoming partners.

Widen your view from generations to connected customers

We are beginning to think about engagement in terms of is it social or is it mobile? If our company goes social and mobile, we believe we will connect with the new generations of customers. It must be true since that is all that we hear about.

It takes much more than the latest technology flavor of the year to reach Generation X or Y or Baby Boomers for that matter. It takes a passion to understand and be empathetic. We all long to be known, remembered and served. That said, a number of your customers influence others and are influenced in ways that we don’t quite understand. Customers are connecting and sharing in ways that allow them to learn, discover, share and make decisions that are different than anything we have seen before.

So why wouldn’t being on Facebook and Twitter along with having a mobile application clinch your future relevance for your mission? The answer lies in seeing the customer journey as an ecosystem not a specific isolated channel. We need, and our customers want, a holistic experience where all the pieces play nice together. What good does it do to have a bad eCommerce experience because my credit card was charged twice to be helped by a pleasant call center representative? One bad experience and then a good one but I don’t hear from you except when you want me to buy again. Really?

What is different now is that the whole generational range (Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, etc.) of customers are connected. In our previous example, the frustrated customer posted a comment on Facebook when their credit card got charged twice. That is what their friends saw and remembered. All the devices they are on are more than just devices, they are becoming an extension of who they are. While this is data from 2011, 48% of 18 to 34 year olds checked Facebook when they got up and 28% did so before they got out of bed.

What is important is that the ecosystem is held together by the connected customer who needs it to be consistent. While there generational differences the commonality is the constant connectivity across multiple devices. This is bigger than a demographic as so many are embracing a digital lifestyle. This transcends age, income, ethnicity, and education. The connected customer does not surf the web like other customers. They live in a totally social world (online) and use all of their devices as a window to how they live. They do not learn like their non-digital counterparts. They fully embrace many communities which cut across demographics.

The generation of connected customers is vastly different than any segment you have addressed in the past. What you know about “direct response” will not help you here. “Open rates” may mean nothing any longer. What you think the connected customer may want and what they really value are probably worlds apart. They are always on and to reach them takes a different approach all together.

We tend to think about size of a market differently than think about connected customers that cut across traditional markets. We tend to think about how to reach Baby Boomers or how to reach Gen Y’s or how to reach Millennials. What does it mean when you layer in how to engage connected customers who cut across all those generations? The unconnected customer segment (across all generations) is shrinking and the connected customer is rapidly growing.

Since markets are shifting, think about your strategies. Are they being refreshed fast enough? Are you investing in small, fast tests to engage in new ways with the connected customer? On a daily basis, company leaders need to place more emphasis on the connected customer. This includes leading the charge to learn new skills, structure staff differently, and invest more in marketing technology. Which side of the changing demographics do you want to on? The shrinking or the growing?

Act like you are a global company

You are a global company. Do you act like it?

Your audience is 2.4 billion potential customers. You have international reach. Are you designing experiences with that audience in mind? The top 15 countries saw year to year growth of about 15% new users in 2012. Much of that is in emerging markets. The U.S has the highest penetration with 78% of the population connected. China added 264 million new users last year with only 42% penetration.

Key takeaway: You are a global company. Keep that in mind as you design the customer experience. 

Technology won’t save you

Will technology save you? Not likely. It can help transform you but without a passion for amazing experiences that customers enjoy, find simple to navigate and meet their needs, no amount of technology will help. It starts with a well thought out strategy. It moves to people who committed to great experiences. It involves processes that support the designed experience. And it involves the right technology. But it doesn’t, under any circumstances, start with technology.

It is a myth that this is about technology. Everyone thinks that technology is changing behavior. The opposite is true. Our behavior is using technology. For example, the inclination to share is nothing new. We have been sharing our experiences before technology could enable it. All technology is doing is speeding it and enabling it on connected devices.

Are you betting that social media and mobile devices are the new channels for engagement? What data do you have to support that? You may have some and that is great. You may not and that is dangerous. What role does Facebook play in improving the experience for your major customers? What ROI are you getting out of Twitter?

Trust me, I believe in the strategic use of technology. I’m not a fan of blind faith. Hope is not a strategy. Soft or non-existent metrics aren’t useful. You can measure most if not all of your customer experience initiatives.

What is needed for transformation is a path that begins with discovery and completely rethinking the new customer journey. It is intentional and it is cost effective. To get somewhere, we need some discipline to test and prove that it works. We also need to have courage to find out it doesn’t. We can’t get paralyzed because we don’t know if it will work or not. Avoid the temptation to pilot something and have the courage to embark on a small test.

If you have seen the TV show Dragnet, you remember Jack Webb making famous the line “Just the facts”. That should be our internal mantra. The truth is that results can and should be quantified. Someone advocating the flavor of the month with no tests and results needs to be challenged. It is generally a question of who will have the courage to do it. A spirit of discovery will lead you to know where you are losing customers and where you are gaining them. Donations are constantly being earned and lost. Some that is happening through new channels and touch points. A willingness to test and discover is your friend. Blindly following what hasn’t been tested is your enemy.

A great starting point is to always walk on the same path you think your customers are or should be. What is the experience you have? Is it the same one you want for your customers?