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Brands are losing customers to poor customer engagement
Brands are built over a long period of time. The process of establishing the brand and its identity is done brick by brick or click by click – otherwise, you risk losing customers to poor customer engagement. Like the pyramids of Egypt, the final product takes years of work. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day!
Part of these building bricks are the customer’s experience. These include the product you offer, the price you sell it for, how it’s packaged and marketed as well as the customer’s buying experience. This can include the old brick-and-mortar store or an online store. Both involve intricate user experience.
ANA Magazine’s David Ward discusses a growing number of brands – including Edelman, the Minnesota Timberwolves and Volkswagen – who are hiring chief experience officers (CXOs). The move comes as tolerance for a bad or mediocre consumer experience continues to plummet. According to the “Global State of Customer Experience in 2021” report from CX Network, more than half of brands surveyed report that customers who are dissatisfied with a company will switch brands.
A few examples of losing customers to poor customer engagement
Let’s unpack some of the potential scenarios.
Does your brand’s visual appeal draw customers in? If so, does the product deliver on your promise? No longer can brands rely solely on their offer to the client. Their benefit, or lack of conflict, with the environment we live in it is equally important. An example, in the FMCG product category, are the brand’s packaging and ingredients consistent with the brand’s overall ethos – good to taste, healthy to eat and with little to no harm to the human who consumes them? The environment is now part of the brand’s packing degradation and part of the customer’s user experience consideration.
We can apply this concept to the motoring world too – let’s take Tesla’s meteoric rise within the car space. They produce electric cars only. This is their unique selling point. It’s innovative, but it’s also costly as an example. The brand’s following appreciates their thought leadership abilities. This has given them a market share and a share price that surpasses that of Mercedes-Benz, which has over a 100-year headstart in making motor vehicles. That’s profound and speaks to innovation and brand promise.
We are now part of a very innovative time. The disruption of industries doesn’t mean negativity but rather options. Millennials and Gen Zs are used to options. They were born with them. They swipe up and down and left and right over many options and live in a world that’s morphing into the Metaverse. So, as a brand, you need to deliver on your innovative promise, or the Millennials and Gen Zs will swipe left and cancel you, resulting in you losing customers to poor customer engagement.
What this means is going back to old-school values – just like a mom and pops store where the customer experience was personal. The store’s team would greet you – looking into your eyes, they knew you and cared about your shopping experience in their stores. They remembered your shopping habits and pre-empted your purchase before you. Technology now allows us to offer the same type of care/knowledge extrapolation. Data collection does this and can provide a similar proposition for the customer’s shopping experience. But there is a ‘but’! The but is the need for the human touch.
Effective strategies for losing customers to poor customer engagement
It is imperative for brands to move with the times and innovate, but to also integrate customer relations. I’ll give you an example of this PR exercise – let’s use an online cosmetic store. A customer logs in and presumably enjoys the online window-shopping process. Consider this a vital part of the customer’s shopping experience. If it’s poor, by virtue of complexity, the customer will feel this and click out. You will lose the customer to poor customer engagement. Let’s say they do enjoy the process. They then want to follow through on their purchase. They create an account in which data is collected. They purchase the product.
How does the product arrive? I’ve been shopping on Amazon’s website in London and have watched friends and family using fashion retailers’ sites. I can say there is room to improve. There is room to add in the human touch. This type of PR could be a handwritten note. The note thanks me, Daniel, for shopping and offers me well wishes in using the product. Perhaps a link to reading more about the brand or product I have purchased, a future purchase discount coupon and or friend referral system to inspire brand growth within a community. The lack thereof could cause Amazon, or the brand, to lose customers to poor customer engagement. I’ve also noticed the boxes and packaging the product arrives in – they are way too big, causing waste.
Using technology in a way that is part of the human touch would be for a brand to engage with the customer via their social media. This isn’t being done very well. Social media has been used to push content rather than engage with customers and a fan community. This allows customers to feel heard which essentially makes them feel cared for. This creates loyalty. Know that Millennials and Gen Zs are not fickle by nature, rather they are statured with options. This means that making the user experience personal is key.
Stop, say hello, be kind and add the human touch within your 360 digital Meta experience. In doing this, you will win over your customer, rather than losing customers to poor customer engagement. The jargon aside, humans are humans. We are all part of a human experience whatever generation you are from. Therefore, I touch on the human experience and the importance of integration versus the technology-first experience.
Do you have any strategies for losing customers to poor customer engagement? Let us know in the comments below.
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