The impacts of the past year on businesses are unparalleled. We’ve watched once thriving businesses close their doors for the last time, seen unprecedented support packages being rolled out from the UK government and large companies such as BA and WeWork report unimaginable losses. However, despite this, 2020 has also brought about accelerated change and transformation, one such example being digitisation and the reinforcement to brands of the imperative and the power of investing in the customer experience.
Customers and businesses alike were suddenly and abruptly faced with the need to be digital. For some this was a seamless transition but for companies who weren’t ready to digitise and consumers who weren’t predisposed to digital this proved challenging. Overnight businesses had to rethink entire marketing strategies and how they could be relevant and valuable in the eyes of their customers through a global pandemic. So how did they do this? The answer – through the power of consumer insights.
How consumer insights powered the bounceback of brands
Even before the pandemic consumer habits and behaviours were changing. Brands have always needed to adapt to these changing patterns and have a constant pulse on evolving market trends. However, 2020 has further highlighted the importance of gaining valuable customer insight and putting the customer first. As a result, we are now seeing businesses invest more into their consumer experience platforms, relying on valuable insight and feedback to direct their business strategy.
Moving away from the obsession with ‘seamless experiences’
Traditionally, marketers have always heavily focused on creating a ‘seamless customer experience’ with no interruptions within the user journey. Consumers are fast paced and therefore want to navigate their way through websites and digital channels quickly and easily. But arguably, making the feedback process as immersive and intuitive as possible, will encourage consumers to leave valuable feedback data in the moment. This allows brands to not only get a view of, but act upon customer data that highlights customer pain points, frustrations and needs.
Therefore, some friction in the form of gaining customer feedback is needed; and is actually beneficial to the customer in order to make authentic improvements to the experience that the consumer really wants. However, this very much depends on the process in which brands go about making this as enjoyable and easy for the consumer as possible.
The use of technology in driving customer feedback
So just how do businesses effectively implement this enjoyable feedback process? The intuitiveness of technology is the answer. Utilising customer experience (CX) technology platforms can help to deliver an unmatched customer experience.
CX technology can not only provide a place for customers to feedback on their experience, what works, what doesn’t work, but also can present in-depth insights into certain aspects of their online and website use behaviour such as what device they might use to access the website and are there any stages of the customer journey where there are recurring issues restricting completion? This type of data is invaluable and along with real-time feedback can push for new changes that really transform the customer experience and ultimately, the business success.
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As we emerge from the past year and the pandemic it’s clear that we won’t be returning to the way it was. Digital is here to stay and although people are craving in-person experiences again, the future looks to be a hybrid model of the two. To stay on the front foot it’s never been clearer that companies need to pay attention to their customers and market trends, listening to the needs of their user bases and pivoting and adapting to meet these. To ignore this would be at their own cost.
By Graham Douglas, VP of GetFeedback in EMEA at SurveyMonkey
About the author
Graham Douglas joined SurveyMonkey in 2020 and leads the company’s CX sales team in EMEA, where he focuses on driving growth for SurveyMonkey’s multi-channel agile CX solution, GetFeedback. Graham has more than two decades of experience in enterprise technology, holding management positions at companies like Compaq, PTC, Synergy, and most recently Oracle, where he led sales for the organization across North America and Europe for a decade. Graham leads the EMEA team from Dublin, where he is based.
