Proactive customer experience management throughout the lifecycle is critical for companies seeking to build customer loyalty in today’s marketplace, experts from SoundBite Communications said during the opening session of the Loyalty 360 Engagement & Experience Expo.
“There are hundreds of opportunities to reach out to customers during their lifecycle,” said Jim Milton, CEO. “There has been a big shift to proactively reaching out to the customer.” To be the most effective at reaching out to customers, companies have to personalize the communications with the customer’s preferences in mind, Milton added.
These outreaches occur at customer acquisition, during customer care communications (i.e., customer service, surveys) to payments and collections. The outreaches come through multiple channels. Milton pointed out that it is essential to engage customers through the channel(s) they prefer. Some customers may prefer one channel for certain types of communications, and another channel for other types of communications. For example, customers might be fine with e-mails for monthly statements from a financial institution, but will prefer a text message if there is evidence of fraud.
Security of personal information is another critical factor, regardless of the channel of communication, Milton added. Certain legal restrictions, particularly with financial and health information, also have to be taken into account when developing customer outreach campaigns.
Those customer engagements are becoming increasingly mobile, Mike Romano, senior vice president of mobile sales and services. “Mobile coupons are redeemed at 10 times the rate of paper coupons.”
Additionally, Google expects 80 percent of customers to buy through a mobile device or tablet this holiday shopping season, according to Romano. The cost of customer acquisition via mobile is 20 cents, compared to $10 for direct mail.
But even within mobile, there are customer preference differences. Some customers prefer mobile Web and some SMS messaging. These differences exist regardless of the industry vertical, Romano said. “The customer is now in charge.”
To handle opt-in of current customers and customer preferences, SoundBite highlighted the practice of Fashion Bug, which offers customers a simple, yet comprehensive online sign-up for communications preferences as well as opt-in agreements.
Another challenge with mobile is that customers change their carriers often, presenting challenges not only in continuing to communicate with them, but also with opt-in rules. If a company sends out an unwanted marketing message to a person who now has a phone number that used to belong to a customer, the company can be liable for significant FTC fines. So it is essential that companies scrub their customer lists often to ensure they are working with updated, clean data.
It’s also important to proactively manage customer lists so that companies can proactively alert customers to when points are about to expire. Such a communication builds customer loyalty and is a much better option than just letting points expire or offer customers something like a magazine subscription.