Six lessons on becoming an experience business from the Dutch

What does it take to become an expe­ri­ence busi­ness? One of the cen­tral top­ics of Adobe Sym­po­sium Ams­ter­dam 2016 was deliv­er­ing pow­er­ful expe­ri­ences to con­sumers, both online and offline.

Suresh Vit­tal, vice pres­i­dent of Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud, kicked off the event and intro­duced CCO Ruben Uppelschoten from Zig­go, who deliv­ered an inspir­ing keynote in which he demon­strat­ed how to deliv­er a top to bot­tom turn­around in cus­tomer ser­vice in just one hun­dred days:

Dur­ing the event, sev­er­al lead­ing Dutch brands talked about their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and their unique approach to deliv­er­ing an omnichan­nel experience.

These were the six key takeaways:

1. It’s okay to start small…

Trans­form­ing your busi­ness to an omnichan­nel expe­ri­ence sounds like a hell of a job. While it often is a quite inten­sive process that takes a long time, that doesn’t mean you have to get it right straight away. Bavaria, one of the largest Dutch beer brands, launched sev­er­al small online pilot projects: main­ly to learn from them. Stu­dents in two cities can now order cold beer via the Beer Couri­er. The advan­tage for stu­dents is that they are nev­er faced with an emp­ty fridge, while Bavaria is going through a steep learn­ing curve to become an expe­ri­ence business.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, order­ing beer is part of the cus­tomers’ shop­per trip. Con­sumers vis­it the super­mar­ket or a restau­rant and order beer. A chal­lenge for brands with­in the FMCG seg­ment is to stay close to cus­tomers because the major­i­ty of sales is indi­rect. By going online Bavaria is engag­ing direct­ly with the con­sumers and pro­vid­ing a smooth order process for B2B cus­tomers, which enables the organ­i­sa­tion to focus on their core busi­ness: pro­mot­ing beer. The online strat­e­gy also enables Bavaria to exper­i­ment with new busi­ness mod­els like online only promotions.

Next steps in the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion will be to fur­ther opti­mize online sales and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence with new ser­vices like Face­time inte­gra­tion. If cus­tomers (bar­keep­ers) are faced with a chal­lenge they can com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with Bavaria to solve the prob­lem imme­di­ate­ly. A key insight from Bavaria: a small step in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion can have a huge impact on the business.

2. …or go all the way from the start

Het Rijks Muse­um, the most famous muse­um in the Nether­lands, went full-blown dig­i­tal after reopen­ing in 2013 after hav­ing been shut for ten years for a ren­o­va­tion. Dur­ing those years, the world had changed and so has the muse­um. Not only does the Rijks Stu­dio offer an online ver­sion of the museum’s col­lec­tion, all the art­works are avail­able free for down­load and reuse. Vis­i­tors can even cre­ate their own online col­lec­tion. In this unique approach of Rijks Muse­um the images are a way for the muse­um to con­nect with per­sons around the world.

The aim of the Rijks Stu­dio is to make the col­lec­tion acces­si­ble for every­one and to inspire peo­ple. This will sup­port the brand­ing of the muse­um and will attract new vis­i­tors that want to see their favorite mas­ter­pieces in the museum.

3. Cre­ate a sin­gle cus­tomer view

High-end depart­ment store Bijenko­rf announced a pre­mi­um expe­ri­ence strat­e­gy some years ago: 200 mil­lion euros were invest­ed in a mul­ti-chan­nel strat­e­gy. One of the core tasks of the e‑commerce team was to cre­ate a sin­gle cus­tomer view — which is not easy in a mul­ti-chan­nel envi­ron­ment where more than 800 brands are offered. Bijenko­rf cen­tralised all its data points; data are col­lect­ed from all cus­tomers, through web data and bea­cons. Each cus­tomer has a unique pro­file includ­ing name, age, gen­der, buy­ing behav­ior, chan­nel inter­ac­tion and brows­ing his­to­ry. This analy­sis is cat­e­goris­es clients in per­sonas; from busi­ness man or woman, hip­ster, to Typ­i­cal Dutchie:

The key objec­tive is to be rel­e­vant for each cus­tomer. Based on the sin­gle-view of the cus­tomer, the defined seg­ments and per­sonas; Bijenko­rf is able to cre­ate rel­e­vant mes­sages for each per­sona and to auto­mate its online mar­ket­ing efforts. The dig­i­tal strat­e­gy has result­ed in a strong increase in per­for­mance of their online marketing.

4. Offer the extend­ed prod­uct range instore and online

For the out­door fash­ion chain A.S. Adven­ture one of the key ele­ments of offer­ing an omnichan­nel expe­ri­ence is hav­ing the extend­ed range of prod­ucts avail­able both online and instore. While stores may have a hun­dred Jack Wolf­skin jack­ets avail­able, the online store has ten times as much in stock — extra colours, sizes and acces­sories. By offer­ing the same prod­uct range in the phys­i­cal store, cus­tomers of A.S. Adven­ture have the same expe­ri­ence offline and online.

A.S Adven­ture puts the cus­tomer first; they decide which chan­nel or com­bi­na­tion of chan­nels they want to use to inter­act with the brand. The five key ele­ments to achieve a suc­cess­ful omnichan­nel strat­e­gy are: cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty, con­tent strat­e­gy based on exper­tise, click & col­lect func­tion­al­i­ty, extend­ed range through the com­bi­na­tion of in-store and online store and offer­ing a unique shop­ping experience.

5. One step for­ward, two steps back

Man­ag­ing mul­ti­ple brands, mar­kets or prod­ucts can be chal­leng­ing from a brand strat­e­gy per­spec­tive. Over the last two years @Leisure Group, spe­cial­ist in online vaca­tion home rental, has grown very fast due to mul­ti­ple inter­na­tion­al acqui­si­tions. As a result, it became more com­plex to man­age the mar­ket­ing with­out com­pro­mis­ing on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. To reduce the com­plex­i­ty, the inte­gra­tion of data, sys­tems and tool­ing need­ed to be eval­u­at­ed and aligned to opti­mize the cus­tomer jour­ney for each brand and cre­at­ing a sin­gle view of the customer.

The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for organ­i­sa­tions like @Leisure is sup­port­ed by mul­ti­ple mar­ket­ing tools. In gen­er­al employ­ees want to use as many tools as pos­si­ble. To reduce com­plex­i­ty, @Leisure group intro­duced the rule of thumb: ‘one tool in, two tools out’. This turns out to be an effec­tive strat­e­gy to avoid hav­ing mul­ti­ple tools that can do the same.

6. Cre­ate a learn­ing culture

Becom­ing an expe­ri­ence-led busi­ness often also requires a shift in the inter­nal cul­ture from inside-out to out­side-in. The cus­tomers’ needs should be lead­ing. Zig­go, one of the largest media and com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices providers in the Nether­lands, has suc­cess­ful­ly intro­duced a cul­ture that sup­ports opti­mi­sa­tion and learn­ing through­out the com­pa­ny. Zig­go devel­oped sev­er­al inter­nal pro­grams to stim­u­late employ­ees to con­tribute to a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. With the pro­gram ‘Wan­na bet?’, employ­ees are chal­lenged to work togeth­er to achieve ambi­tious objec­tives to improve the cus­tomer experience.

Zig­go also intro­duced a pro­gram that asks employ­ee to act as an ambas­sador of the brand. Each employ­ee reach­es out to Zig­go cus­tomers or poten­tial cus­tomers in their own street, at a school or at a sports club. If there is a prob­lem or ques­tion, they speed up to process to help the cus­tomer. These pro­grams have a big impact on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and moti­va­tion of employ­ees. 60 per­cent of the cus­tomers indi­cate that they believe that the cus­tomer sup­port of Zig­go has improved and the Net Pro­mot­er Score has increased with 10% in just a short peri­od of time

Becom­ing an expe­ri­ence busi­ness has impli­ca­tions for both front-end oper­a­tions and back-end process­es. Lead­ing brands are trans­form­ing their dig­i­tal strat­e­gy to antic­i­pate the changes in the mar­ket, con­stant­ly evolv­ing cus­tomer demands and to stay ahead of com­pe­ti­tion with unique cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is a learn­ing curve in which many organ­i­sa­tions learn from each other’s suc­cess­es and chal­lenges; Adobe Sym­po­sium Ams­ter­dam proved to offer just that.