Balancing Customer Convenience with Customer Engagement

CMO.com High­lights

Last week’s exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com focused on the top­ic of cus­tomer engage­ment and devel­op­ing a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence that both encour­ages cus­tomer loy­al­ty and accu­rate­ly reflects your brand. Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is a vital con­sid­er­a­tion for any brand’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, and engagement—especially emo­tion­al engagement—is crit­i­cal to cus­tomer loy­al­ty. Although strat­e­gy is impor­tant, hir­ing peo­ple with a pas­sion for learn­ing and a com­mit­ment to pur­pose are also impor­tant fac­tors. As more oppor­tu­ni­ties for cre­at­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ences are devel­oped, these peo­ple will prove invalu­able to brand success.

To begin the week, Stu­art Craw­ford-Browne, Direc­tor at Phoenix Ris­ing dis­cussed the need for many brands to bal­ance cus­tomer con­ve­nience with cus­tomer engage­ment. In fact, the emo­tion­al aspect of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence often affects a customer’s loy­al­ty more than ease and effec­tive­ness. Although cus­tomers may well leave a brand when the lev­el of cus­tomer effort out­weighs the brand’s emo­tion­al engage­ment, a design that removes all cus­tomer effort may fail to hold their atten­tion. Craw­ford-Browne chal­lenges brands to estab­lish brand rit­u­als to encour­age emo­tion­al engagement.

In last week’s exclu­sive CMO.com inter­view, Kei­th Moor, CMO of San­tander UK dis­cussed his company’s desire to hire peo­ple who are hun­gry to learn. These same peo­ple are flex­i­ble and adapt­able and find ways to push them­selves. He also described San­tander UK as “always-on,” which means they’re always ques­tion­ing how to keep their mar­ket­ing momen­tum going. A sense of pur­pose dri­ves the company’s many employ­ees to add val­ue to the company.

Vin­cent Blaney, Euro­pean brand direc­tor for media and dig­i­tal at Mill­ward Brown, dis­cussed the unfor­tu­nate war devel­op­ing between con­sumers uti­liz­ing ad block­ers and com­pa­nies fight­ing to get around the ad block­ers. Con­sumers want and enjoy con­trol over their con­tent, so brands would do bet­ter to pro­duce more focused and rel­e­vant con­tent than rely sole­ly on ads. The “skip ad” func­tion should be viewed as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­duce con­tent that engages con­sumers at the out­set of a piece of content.

Ben Pask, Co-Founder of Rare: Con­sul­tan­cy, shared some encour­ag­ing insights on mul­ti­po­ten­tial­i­ty. Many peo­ple feel the pres­sure to find one true call­ing for their lives, but Pask high­lights the ben­e­fits of hav­ing a vari­ety of inter­ests and pur­suits. One of these ben­e­fits is exer­cis­ing curios­i­ty, which should result in the abil­i­ty to look at prob­lems from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. Pask isn’t just an advo­cate of mul­ti­po­ten­tial­i­ty; he is a firm believ­er in let­ting his pas­sions dri­ve his life choices.

Klaus Som­mer Paulsen, CEO & Founder of Adven­ture­lab and Co-Found­ing Part­ner, CNA | SOPHIS, dis­cussed the poten­tial role vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) might play in a brand’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. The key, accord­ing to Paulsen, is to cre­ate an expe­ri­ence that uses the right sce­nar­ios to rep­re­sent your com­pa­ny and its ser­vices and prod­ucts. This means think­ing more like an archi­tect or expe­ri­ence design­er than an author. VR presents a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to pro­vide their cus­tomers with a unique expe­ri­ence that gets them thinking.

We invite you to take some time to engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and let us know what you think.