FROM THE TRENCHES
Customer Experience:
Do You Really Know Your Audience?
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Because of the many factors contributing to consumers’ buying patterns and media habits, there is no silver bullet to improve customer experience. Instead, the goal is to minimize wasteful spending while learning to invest in the drivers of customer satisfaction from desirable customer interaction. Do you know what makes your customer tick?
Your customer may have already shifted his or her spending in favor of private label brands over name brands or reduced the quantity or frequency of buying altogether. Perhaps the freemium business model has become the new standard to get your customer to try your product. Whichever way you look at it, consumers’ perceptions of an interaction are influenced heavily by their purchasing experience, how they research and who they trust.
To understand and improve customer experience, companies should first research their customers’ natural behaviors and then seek opportunities to influence those behaviors through targeted strategies and niche offers.
A recent Nielsen analysis revealed generational shopping habits that reflect diverse lifestyle preferences and economic habits.
Click below image to enlarge
Naturally, Boomers have the highest earning of any group, followed by Gen X, then Millennials and finally Greatest Gen. What’s interesting is that according to the study, “Millennial and Gen X shoppers favor mass supercenters and mass merchandisers over more traditional formats like grocery or drug stores which remain a draw for the Greatest Generation and Boomers…Millennials today represent the largest population segment—over 76 million strong—just slightly larger in number than the Boomer segment. The two groups together represent half of the U.S. population.”
From this data, marketers should apply behavioral economics to further understand the minds of their customers. Once you understand the patterns contributing to buy and not buy, you can craft highly targeted campaigns and behavioral tracking techniques to connect with customers. Couple that with direct customer research such as surveys or focus groups and you will end up with a customer segmentation metrics that can help you define how offer changes can influence the way people react.
However, it’s critical that a more systematic approach to behavior targeting is used when defining your customers. This will help to make irrationality more predictable in an attempt to understand the behavioral economics of your customers.
Some questions that help improve customer interaction:
- Where does your customer go when searching for your products and services? Online communities, offline advertising, word-of-mouth, search engine, blogs?
- How and where did they obtain the knowledge necessary to make a purchase? Do they know how to find what they need?
- When and how do customers gain access to your products and services?
- What kind of lifestyle and overall financial situation are they in?
- What does value mean to them? Where is the line drawn between getting a bargain and being cheap?
- Who and what influences their buying decision? And why?
- What conversations are generated around the “benefits” of your products/services?
- What are some of the potential barrier to purchase? Lack of knowledge, confusion in the market, price points, product features etc.
- Who are your competitors and how are they perceived in the customers’ eyes? What other options do they have if they don’t buy from you or your competitors?
- In your vertical, does your customer look at brands first or price first? Is the service or support more important than the product itself?
You may consider paying for research or, if you’re not ready to pay for research, you can always conduct direct customer survey yourself or simply start gathering free data from the web on a regular basis. Often, paid research firms will provide complete, up-to-date, free reports if you subscribe to their newsletters. There are many valuable resources to help you investigate current trends or to form your own insights.
About the author:
Eric Tsai is Principal and Web Strategist at Visual Duration Studio. He helps smart companies stay on top of marketing trends and advises them on how to create and implement robust
Web strategies that complement and support business objectives. In addition, he provides thought leadership, research and advisory on media strategies to create engaging brand experiences that drive actions, not just aesthetics. Visit his blog at: http://www.designdamage.com/blog/
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To explore leading solutions, be sure to play the “Solution Wheel” and join a series of rapid-fire, one-on-one meetings with leading solution providers at GIL 2010: Silicon Valley,
Monday, September 13, 2010 in San Jose, CA. The event will take place at 12:00 p.m.
For more information, visit:
http://www.gil-global.com/siliconvalley/eventagenda.html
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