Why is digital technology an important part of customer relationship?

Camille Macaudière, Communication Specialist at Splio, speaks at this One-to-One Biarritz 2019 conference to expose the impact of digital on customer relations.

Customer relationship and loyalty are a lever of growth for brands, provided they exploit their full potential. Today, these two key areas in the economic development of businesses must be digital and mobile.

Millennials, the preferred target of many brands, are an ultra-connected generation and other consumer profiles adopt similar behaviour, including browsing on Facebook and Instagram. The Millennials represent a tremendous opportunity for brands to launch and reinvent themselves.

Customer relationship management by brands is essential. Through digital and mobile, they can digitise the loyalty programme to the point where customers have all their loyalty information on the mobile in real time. The brands are then able to:

• Acquire directly from customers’ mobile,
• Assign loyalty points to followers,
• Enhance customer knowledge with the interactions they have with them on the different channels,
• Communicate with them without saturating their mailbox.

A concrete example developed by the Splio agency

Splio offers a platform to create an on and offline marketing loyalty programme. The company has developed a fictitious company and characters to illustrate the importance for brands to digitalise customer relationship and the purchase path.

They invented a French company that sells hats, and that has shops in France, in Europe, as well as an e-commerce site and a mobile app. The company wanted to modernise its customer relationship.

They created an Instagram ad, with a coupon to buy a hat. The person who clicked on the ad and filled out the form then had access to a 15% discount for a first purchase. She added the coupon to her Wallet to follow the news, and then received a push inviting her to follow the brand on Instagram.

By going to the e-commerce site, she had crush on a product. She bought it with the coupon, and it turned into a loyalty card directly on her mobile. During a party, she took a picture with her hat and tagged the brand on Instagram. She won 23 new followers for the brand.

Another day, she receiveed a Wallet notification telling her that she was near one of the hat shops and went there with her friend who didn’t know the brand. So, she followed them on Instagram. The first person mentioned bought a new hat and was offered goodies. Her friend joined the community by scanning the QR Code at the checkout.

With one click and without making a purchase, she has her loyalty card on her mobile. She also subscribed to the newsletter so as not to miss out on good deals and shared her preferred products on social networks where she was registered.

She visited the site more than 20 minutes a day over a month and was elected ambassador of the week. She then won 62 followers for the hat brand. She participated in a contest to meet a personality, but if she failed to win, she would receive an invitation to discover a preview of the autumn-winter collection.

What needs to be noted here is that the important profile is not just the one who buys a hat and makes a transaction. The profile of the second character, the influencerelected ambassador, is just as interesting in the field of customer relations. Camille Macaudière points out “We might not have studied this person a few years ago, but their profile as an ambassador is extremely important”.

Why? Because by bringing in followers, leads and visibility, she actually becomes a business driver. This is a finding that Splio was able to make in China, a country with which Splio works and where people are very connected.

How to work on new loyalty ?

Splio works on new loyalty in the field of customer relationship management. They are in fact completely reviewing the way in which the customer relationship is done. It works around three pillars with brands: loyalty, mobile and personalisation.

Personalisation

It is important to personalise loyalty programmes and customer relationship as a whole, that is to say messages, employee tone or rewards.

Targets and loyalty

Digital blurs the different profiles. It is difficult today to define separate targets, so they must all be integrated into a dynamic of engagement.

That is to say that we must not only retain loyalty to transactions, and that even socialinteractions are important. As part of the customer relationship, we can reward someone who visits the site, who shares on the networks. And the loyalty programme can be adapted according to the profiles (buyers, ambassadors, etc.). For an ambassador, it may be a matter of putting them in the spotlight on a story and for a VIP customer, to offer to meet the team at the brand’s headquarters.

We should not hesitate to surprise with an original loyaltyprogramme.

Mobile

We surf the internet mainly via mobile. It is therefore important to adapt the customer journey to mobile. More than 50 million French people have a smartphone. It is consulted all the time and more and more every day, for personal, professional reasons, and even by reflex. It is a terminal owned by the greatest number and that encourages interaction.

On mobile devices, Wallets are a feature to be exploited as part of the customer relationship. You can add a boarding pass or a loyalty card. It is a very effective tool for interacting with customers. With the Wallet, it is possible to digitise the membership card, and receive plenty of information. No need to connect to the site, everything is received on the Wallet. Brands can also activate a push to send information as soon as a customer is near a store and is interested in an offer.

Speaker:

Camille Macaudière, Splio