Guiding Customer Relationships with an Integrated IT Approach

Featured article by Dennis van der Veeke, Chief Technology Officer, SDL

There is no denying that brands have taken an increased interest in technology for marketing efforts. In fact, Gartner reported earlier in the year that 81 percent of organizations now have the equivalent of a chief marketing technologist position. This trend continues to be confirmed by the evolving marketing technology landscape and the snowballing number of these vendors being snapped up, including Neolane, Responsys and Silverpop to name a few.

Driving this trend is consumer expectations. Consumers have more control than ever and expect to engage with a brand how and when they want. As a result, companies are putting more of a focus on providing an integrated and superior customer experience to increase customer spend and beat out their competition. Often times though, in the race to appease the customer, brands are pressed for solutions and turn to an IT ingredient for a quick-fix. However, ripping and replacing one-off solutions will not yield unified results. Instead, it will produce a disjointed customer experience with inconsistent and irrelevant messages that are not personalized for each individual customer.

To avoid the challenges associated with a fragmented customer experience, brands need an integrated approach with a focus on personalized relationships. New research from a survey of 2,835 consumers in six continents, nine markets, five languages and four generations has found that it typically takes more than two years for brands to secure trust and commitment from consumers, and at least five years to convert that commitment to ‘greater than average’ spend.  While these findings may seem daunting to organizations looking to drive brand commitment as soon as possible, this data indicates that there are ways brands can accelerate the process. In the study, consumers revealed their varying preferences when it comes to traditional and digital channels. By catering to generational preferences, brands can reduce the timeline to securing brand trust.  Considering this, brands should keep the following generational preferences in mind when it comes to customer engagement:

– There is a growing gap between older and younger millennials. Millennials are a cohort of consumers born between 1979 and 2000. This entire age group grew up embracing widely accessible technology, but the computer and mobile phone landscape of the 1980s differs vastly from that of the 1990s. Without even having to think about how wide this net is cast, it is easy to see why millennials are splitting into two different groups: older millennials and younger millennials. Although all millennials are receptive to social media channels, these two groups have very different responses to brands. When reaching out to older millennials, companies will have the most success using branded Facebook pages and mobile websites, while younger millennials show a strong preference in Twitter and online customer communities.

– The gap gets wider between Gen X and millennials. Those categorized as Gen X understand the convenience of technological advancements due to growing up in an era of emerging technology. Although less communicative with brands on newer social media platforms, this age group shows a preference in online chats and informational websites.

– Baby Boomers are least relatable to millennial channel preferences. Boomers grew up in technological landscape where there were no desktop computers at home and no cellular devices. Yet millennials cannot relate to a time where they did not have the option to remain “always connected.” Not only are millennials utilizing channels that correspond with this mentality, but the numbers of channels they rely on strongly outweigh those of previous generations. As a result, Boomers are most likely to engage with customer help lines and in person interactions.

So what does this mean from an IT perspective? While marketing technology is designed to improvement customer engagement, the journey to customer experience success does not start and end with IT purchases. Technology must be purchased and used properly, producing effective interactions that are valuable and relevant to each customer. It is critical that brands today provide consistent, omnichannel experiences; collecting, understanding and analyzing customer data is an important part of the process in order to further understand the nuances and preferences of specific customer segments. Marketing technology can help, but it must be supported by a strategy that puts the individual customer first. With the right level of personalization, supported by smart marketing technology, companies can achieve their customers’ trust and build relationships, resulting in increased customer spend a return on the IT investment.

Dennis van der Veeke is the Chief Technology Officer at SDL. In this role, Dennis is responsible for all SDL technology, including product management, software development, quality, service delivery and cloud operations.