Shoppers are getting smarter. They're becoming more astute, more demanding and more commercially savvy. So much so, they can spot an organisation that isn’t ‘joined up’ and offering an integrated service a mile away. Just ask Dr Nicola Millard, BT's leading customer experience futurologist.
Nicola has carried out some in-depth research among consumers which has just been published in a report The Multichannel Swap Shop: Exploring the Behaviour of the Multitasking, Multicultural, Multichannel Customer. What’s more, it could make uncomfortable reading for those companies that have invested in technology merely to cut costs, while neglecting the other opportunities that exist to increase revenue.
Of course, it used to be so easy. If you were a retailer, you had a shop and customers bought things. Not any more. Fast forward to today where the landscape is very different and is continuing to evolve rapidly.
Thanks to technology, consumers have become very used to buying goods and services via a computer or mobile phone. They might even access their retailers or customer service departments in multiple ways during the course of a single transaction – from window shopping via a website and phoning the call centre, to seeking additional information by e-mail before ordering by SMS.
Regardless of which channel they use, customers expect to have the same high level of service and efficiency as if they were dealing with their own personal shopping assistant. “The problem ," according to Nicola Millard, "is that too many firms see providing alternative channels as an opportunity to cut costs, rather than create new revenue streams."
"Customers today are changing more than the organisations that serve them. As they gain access to more channels and increasingly sophisticated technologies, they are becoming armchair researchers using multiple channels to get access to the best value propositions, information and advice."
Continued Millard, "With this changing customer environment, it is vital for organisations to understand why customers use different channels in order for them to respond with effective multi-channel strategies."
In her report, Nicola argues that a customer's channel choice will often be influenced by his or her motivational and emotional state, i.e. what are they looking to achieve and how do they feel about it.
She identifies three broad categories of customer, each requiring something different from the channels that companies provide them with:
"Different channels have different perceived strengths and weaknesses that depend on different factors," adds Nicola Millard. These might include where customers might be in the decision-making cycle or what their particular state of mind is (i.e. visionaries, customers in crisis, utilitarians). They are also influenced by psychological needs such as the perceived amount of personal control that a given channel gives them."
"Companies need to understand," says Millard, "that the key to a successful multichannel strategy is to ensure that the cross channel experiences are explicitly designed to support the needs and goals of the customers. Creating more opportunities to interact with customers can potentially increase the value of these interactions. Multichannel strategies are not just a method of saving costs
She concludes: "Shoppers are much smarter these days. And the smarter retailers or service organisations are the ones that recognise that they can deliver increased levels of personalisation and intimacy with customers and therefore opportunities for greater revenue and increased customer satisfaction."
To download Nicola's white paper click here