Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news. This week, we’re looking at the shopping experience, KIA’s new CX journey, European retailers’ prep, new banking predictions for 2023, and a report on product-led business growth.
Key news
- Chattermill have announced that they have raised a $26 million Series B funding round. This will aid their path to unified customer intelligence, and is led by Beringea. To learn more about Chattermill and how they were founded, check out our CX Lore podcast episode with Dmitry Isupov.
- Reputation have announced a new alliance with Rent. – a marketing tech and services platform. With this, Reputation will power the RentRep. sentiment dashboard, enabling clients to monitor and manage their online reputation and social presence from one easy-to-use application.
- The world’s largest jewellery brand, Pandora, is embarking on a new digital journey, using RISE with SAP. Pandora is adopting SAP S/4HANA, SAP Customer Activity Repository and SAP Business Technology Platform as it refreshes its customer-first mindset. With SAP, it aims to deliver an omnichannel experience for customers across 100 markets that meets expectations for seamless and personalised services both online and in-store.
- Avaya have announced that, for the fourth time running, they have been named a Leader in The Aragon Research Globe for Intelligent Contact Centres (ICC) 2022.
- NICE has been recognised as a ‘Leader’ in Everest Group’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2022.
The shopping experience is more important than the deals
Cisco AppDynamics recently conducted a global survey of 1,000 consumers across the UK. This explored how applications are being used throughout the online shopping process during seasonal shopping moments. It also evaluated the significance of their role today.
Key findings include:
- 94% of the UK believe that it is important to have regular updates on the status of your online purchases. This is due to ongoing supply chain issues increasing the stress around receiving gifts on time.
- 58% of the UK will feel anxious and angry if the applications and digital services that are being used to find great deals this holiday season fail to perform.
- 82% of the UK state that it doesn’t matter how good the deals are that retailers are offering, there is still no excuse for poor online shopping experiences
Consumers rely on applications and digital services for almost all aspects of their lives. They’ve now become far more discerning about what makes an incredible digital experience. With the holiday shopping season upon us and multiple online sales events available to customers, the pressure is on. Brands must offer consumers amazing online bargains and incredible digital and application experiences.
Here are some CXM resources we have on making the most of digital retail experiences for your customers:
- 10 tips for building an effective omnichannel PoS strategy
- The high street come back: how to transform the customer experience
- Data, discovery, and innovation: shoppable media breathes new life into eCommerce
- What strategy to use to promote your online store
- How retailers can take on the pandemic through mobile apps
Incubeta are driving KIA’s CX journey
KIA, has partnered with Incubeta to drive its future marketing strategies through insightful data usage. The partnership will allow KIA to create a more detailed picture of their audience. They will dive deeper into their collected data – ultimately leading to a higher level of engagement across its campaigns.
Incubeta, an international marketing agency, will primarily focus on developing an Audience Analysis Model in Big Query and defining a best-in-class foundation for Google Cloud projects. This will provide KIA with the opportunity to enhance its audience understanding, with actionable insights that will help create better customer and user experiences.
The announcement follows a monumentally successful 18-month period for Incubeta, in which it has doubled in both size and profitability. Having already partnered with a number of internationally recognised brands, including the L’Oréal group and Les Mills, the digital marketing agency is well positioned to help drive future growth for KIA.
The initial contract between Incubeta and KIA is set to last one year, and has the potential to lead to a long-term collaboration between the two companies.
This follows the latest from KIA’s transformation last year, where they changed their logo, and unveiled a new slogan – ‘Movement that inspires’. The automobile manufacturer have a clear new focus on inspiration, confidence and the potential it can offer its customers.
European retailers are to now start preparing for crucial trading period
43% of Europe retailers are concerned about being undercut on price from online competition, Sony Professional Solutions Europe has found. This proportion rises to 50% in Germany, whilst 42% and 36% of UK and French retailers respectively share these concerns.
78% are investing in in-store operations ahead of what over half say is their most important time of the year. France (73%) are falling behind the UK (82%) and Germany (79%) in their efforts. When it comes to more cost-effective measures, retailers are taking to defend their business through revamping their pricing strategy. Other common areas of investment were a quality end-to end CX (29%), a personalised CX (28%) and staff training (28%).
Aside from staff training, ensuring digital signage is utilised to promote offers and synchronised across stores and online is the biggest priority for in-store business (39%). However, when it comes to actual investment, 28% have committed to making changes this year. This is indicative of the myriad of issues retailers have on their plate ahead of a critical period.
For next year, sustainable technology (42%) and digital signage (38%) top the priorities for major retailers. Reducing their carbon footprint and offering a joined-up approach across stores follow respectively. The latter is a priority that rises to 45% for retailers with over 100 sites, showing scale requires efficient and consistent operations for both the business and its branding.
Quadient’s banking trends for 2023
Quadient has identified three key trends for 2023 that are vital for banks. These should help consumers overcome increasing economic pressures and maintaining excellent customer communication.
#1 – It is vital for banks to shift to proactively helping their customers, steering them away from potential threats in advance. Most high street banks offer support to customers who tell them they are struggling. That’s a great first step, but next year they’ll need to take a more proactive approach.
For example, if they look at monthly outgoings, it’s possible to warn customers that may struggle to pay their bills when the Government adjusts its support package from March onwards. This proactive approach gives the customer time to adjust and prepare, before the problem hits.
#2 – With banks likely to have more bad news to impart as a recession takes hold, the way they share it will become increasingly important. Banks cannot continue communicating how they do now, simply telling customers that prices are increasing or rates are changing. Banks need to dig deeper, and consider the potential impact that these changes may have on individual customers.
#3 – Consumer Duty, coming into legislature next year, will ensure that retailers and organisations are providing customers with the best possible outcomes. This means that for those customers who may be struggling, banks need to be offering products with the best interest rates or more flexible overdrafts.
Customer data has an absolutely vital role to play in helping banks understand the situation that their customers are in, and the service that suits them best. Next year, we’ll start to see more legislation and regulations that force financial organisations to be truly customer-centric. This adds an extra incentive to do everything within their power to help customers. Failing to do so risks the customer base shrinking, or regulatory action.
HBR release new report on product-led business growth
The new report launched earlier this week reveals that businesses increasingly rely on product-led success. This is as a capital efficient, durable growth strategy to overcome economic uncertainty.
According to the report, a whopping 93% of survey respondents say product teams should have some responsibility for contributing to an organisation’s revenue growth. 81% strongly agree that a strong digital product experience positively impacts business growth. 76% of respondents’ organisations consider delivering an effective digital product experience an “extremely high” or “high” priority.
Just 16% strongly agree that their organisation is satisfied with the digital product experience it provides. 40% rate the overall digital product experience they’re delivering as simply “good.”
To overcome challenges to adopting product-led growth, organisations are exploring some approaches:
- 40% of survey respondents are providing product teams with better data insights to deliver a more effective digital product experience
- 43% of survey respondents plan to increase their focus on improving workers’ knowledge of digital product experience
- 58% of respondents said they were using data analytics tools that collect product usage data specifically to understand how customers are using their digital products
- 54% of respondents are implementing user surveys. 47% are using data analytics tools that collect customer data specifically. And 43% are deploying feedback tools
Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!