Insights into Better Customer Experiences

Cus­tomers are more con­nect­ed than ever, which means brands must work hard­er to cre­ate expe­ri­ences that are rel­e­vant and fos­ter cus­tomer loy­al­ty. Sev­er­al of our recent con­trib­u­tors on CMO.com touched on some of the key insights mar­keters should be tap­ping into in order to cre­ate a bet­ter cus­tomer experience.

Chris­tine Con­nor, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Accen­ture Inter­ac­tive, dis­cussed the rapid changes in mar­ket­ing brought upon by evolv­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies. While dig­i­tal cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for cus­tomers to be more con­nect­ed than ever, mar­keters are tasked with the chal­lenge of find­ing cus­tomers where they are in the buy­ing jour­ney and engag­ing them with rel­e­vant indi­vid­u­alised con­nec­tions in real time. Con­nor described a par­a­digm shift in mar­ket­ing, called “mar­ke­tec­ture,” with a new focus on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, har­ness­ing “on and offline data to deliv­er an always-on, seam­less brand experience.”

Kate Keny­on, prin­ci­pal for Con­tent at Cog­nifide, dis­cussed the impor­tant role of sto­ry­telling in the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Cus­tomers now expect excep­tion­al con­tent all the time. Draw­ing insight from Adobe’s lat­est report, “The Blue­print Rede­fined,” Keny­on shared the need for great sto­ries to be sur­round­ed by a “rock-sol­id con­tent infra­struc­ture.” This allows mar­keters to focus on sto­ry man­age­ment just as much as storytelling.

Pete Markey, Brand Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor at Avi­va, fur­ther elab­o­rat­ed on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and shared some key themes Avi­va focus­es on in light of Adobe’s recent report, “The Sum of its Parts.” In this dig­i­tal age, cus­tomers expect an expe­ri­ence that is seam­less between each touch­point. Markey believes that the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence sums up a brand.

In an exclu­sive inter­view, Tina Schwartz, brand direc­tor of Dan­ish retail­er Fly­ing Tiger Copen­hagen, shared some ways brands can use social to con­nect cus­tomers in both phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal domains. Although Fly­ing Tiger doesn’t sell prod­ucts online, Schwartz and her com­pa­ny have real­ized that their cus­tomers are online just like every­one else’s. For that rea­son, they’ve made hav­ing a dig­i­tal pres­ence a pri­or­i­ty in order to con­nect with cus­tomers where they are. The goal is to use these con­nec­tions to encour­age cus­tomers to return to their stores.

We invite you to read our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and learn from some of the top mar­keters in the indus­try. Please let us know what you think.