Customer Experience in the Virtual Reality Age

Many brands still rely on tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing fire­works. Once ignit­ed, they pro­duce a loud “bamm!” with daz­zling col­ors, and every­one pats each oth­er on the back, con­grat­u­lat­ing them­selves on a suc­cess­ful cam­paign. But what is the real and last­ing effect on customers?

Let’s face it: All too often, the fire­works mes­sage fiz­zles just as quick­ly as it went up. Long-term mar­ket­ing suc­cess requires anchor­ing the brand and its val­ue in cus­tomers’ minds. The focus is the expe­ri­ence, which is trig­gered by the cus­tomer. Gone are the days when the prod­uct defines the cam­paign. The app increas­ing­ly becomes an ad, with mar­ket­ing and prod­uct expe­ri­ence now one. There­fore, to suc­ceed, brands must adjust. They need to be in the expe­ri­ence busi­ness, pro­vid­ing a per­son­alised and com­pelling expe­ri­ence at every stage of the cus­tomer relationship.

New Tech­nolo­gies Shap­ing the Cus­tomer Experience

Pio­neer­ing technologies—from the Inter­net of Things (IoT) to vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR)—promise cus­tomers a com­plete­ly new expe­ri­ence. Adobe exam­ines these tech­nolo­gies’ con­tri­bu­tions to the cre­ation of a new cus­tomer expe­ri­ence in its The Future of Expe­ri­ence report. The study describes five key areas impact­ing the cus­tomer experience:

• Per­son­al­i­sa­tion. Tech­nolo­gies such as VR and wear­ables allow cus­tomer to expe­ri­ence indi­vid­ual “moments.” Near­ly one in two respon­dents believes these tech­nolo­gies can con­tribute to their per­son­al well-being.
• Dis­cov­ery. Around two-thirds of respon­dents regard these tech­nolo­gies as hav­ing great poten­tial to dis­cov­er new and unex­pect­ed things. This, in turn, leads to a more authen­tic expe­ri­ence and increas­es trust in the brand.
• Empa­thy. Users sur­veyed expect VR in par­tic­u­lar to help ensure a per­son­al expe­ri­ence. They expect a brands to show great empa­thy for what they real­ly want (32 percent).
• Flex­i­bil­i­ty. The new tech­nolo­gies will help organ­i­sa­tions pro­vide a con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence across all chan­nels. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in the retail sec­tor: 35 per­cent pre­fer sta­tion­ary trad­ing, 30 per­cent pre­fer online shop­ping, and 32 per­cent claimed that it makes no difference.
• Inter­ac­tion. Users are enthu­si­as­tic about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Fifty-two per­cent said they would be will­ing to share per­son­al infor­ma­tion about them­selves if the machine could then deliv­er use­ful, prac­ti­cal, and per­son­al experiences.

Cus­tomer Focus Makes the Difference

Yet for all the fas­ci­na­tion with new tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments, the VR gog­gles and wear­ables alone do not cre­ate a last­ing impres­sion. Con­tent is what mat­ters. Rel­e­vance and added val­ue remain cru­cial in cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Con­tent offers this rel­e­vance and added val­ue, and com­pa­nies must under­stand their cus­tomers and tai­lor their offer­ings to their per­son­al needs and require­ments. They must read their dig­i­tal body lan­guage, con­sid­er inte­grat­ing their pre­ferred com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, break up exist­ing infor­ma­tion silos, and always respect their cus­tomers’ pri­va­cy. Con­sumers who feel trans­par­ent are as good as lost. Even the tech­ni­cal gim­micks must be sophisticated!

Suresh Vit­tal, Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing Strat­e­gy at Adobe, and Andy Gall, CTO of Red Bull Media House will dis­cuss the data-opti­mised cus­tomer expe­ri­ence of the future at the dmex­co Fire­side Chat “The Future of Expe­ri­ence” (14.09., Con­gress Hall, 13:45pm).

Adobe will present spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tion exam­ples from its Expe­ri­ence Busi­ness at its dmex­co exhib­it (A011 B016) in Hall 7.

Adobe experts will be avail­able at dmex­co for per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions. Make your appoint­ment with us now!