Forrester analyst Kate Leggett thinks so,  believing that “companies will move away from merely duplicating their web presence in their mobile offering and focus instead on deploying the right mobile usage scenarios that add value to customers and which leverage the native capabilities of these devices, such as camera, video and GPS functions that are optimised for the device type, operating system and form factor.”

Strip away the jargon, and (I think) this means that smartphones can offer something extra to contacting customer service, beyond what’s already on a website. For the most part, this is about convenience – i.e. finding the path of least resistance to enable a customer to contact you. That is – assuming you want to be contacted by customers. With so many firms still driven by metrics like average call handling time, they may not want to get into a meaningful conversation at all.

My own belief is that customer service apps will have a place in the future, but as a proactive tool for customers – something they might download in advance of a problem, rather than because of one.

The case for using them as a reactive tool is weak – the whole purpose of smart, accessible online feedback channels is to reduce the hurdles to being heard, not add to them. Existing channels such as Twitter and Facebook are a far more natural digital domain for customers to ask (and find) help.

But if customers download an app as part of everyday interface with that brand, and then use the same app to deal with CS issues, that’s a convenient way for them to interact. For example, if you’re a commuter, and use an app to check train running status, then linking thru’ that app to customer service would be seamless and familiar.

click to enlarge

I’d highlight the Amazon app (iPhone) as a good example of how this works. Their app is most commonly used to search for, order and track items, and all of this functionality works reliably. But there is also a link to customer service (see image), which either takes you directly thru’ to the contact page on the website (no need to leave the app to fire up the web browser) or call Customer Service (on an 0800 toll free number which dials automatically on your phone – the only downside to this is that mobile operators still charge you for 0800 calls, but this isn’t Amazon’s fault).

As ever, the secret to good app design is to understand the customers’ needs and emotions, and be clear about how fulfilling them matches the brand’s own values and differentiates them in the process.

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Further reading: for a good external article of the pro’s and con’s of CS apps, click here.

PS: see my blog article for futher details on app design at: http://customerfaithful.com/3-tips-for-an-winning-app/

But what about pharmaceutical companies? In a world where the focus has long been about getting patients to comply with their medication regimes, how would a change in that mindset pay for itself? And how would we recognise its existence in a drug company’s behaviour?

For a start, we might hear a different language. One of the early lessons I learnt in understanding patients was from the Executive Director of Alzheimer Europe, Jean Georges. I was about to embark on a research project with Alzheimer’s Disease patients and carers at the time, and wanted to know from his existing studies how to handle early interactions in my interviews.

“These are people living with Alzheimer’s”, he told me, “both the person with the disease, and those caring for them. They are defined by their life, not their condition. It’s only the clinicians who always refer to them as patients.”

That realization points to how pharmaceutical companies will need to research health conditions in the future, if they want to genuinely gain a ‘customer’ perspective. That means exploring beyond the boundaries of their world – of drug pipelines and Loss Of Exclusivity (LOE) dates – and seeking to understand the lived experience, as well as the clinical impact, of those they treat. How might that happen in practice?

Personal priorities – for example, in the case of a person being treated for rheumatoid arthritis, a clinical goal may be to slow the progression of the disease, using disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). But the individual patient may frame that same goal in terms of maintained mobility or even personal independence. And from a regime adherence perspective, it may be that the patient considers effective pain relief to be their number one priority, feeling unable to engage in a meaningful discussion about longer-term treatment until such pain is under control. Only through understanding such personal life priorities can the wider health outcome of the individual be framed and measured in a ‘patient-centric’ way.

Broader horizons – similarly, in order for individuals to understand and make choices about their medication, healthcare information needs to be made clear, accessible and relevant. Such communication success may not always be achieved through mechanisms such as patient information leaflets. Patient-centric pharmaceutical companies will look beyond their legal and code of practice requirements, and embrace broader communication routes with family, friends, carers and communities. Such environments may be less familiar to drug firms, but will be more accessible, natural and friendly to the wider public.

Patients for life – in its Progressions Global Life Sciences Report 2012 (Ernst & Young), Sanjeev Wadhwa describes a future where the bond between ‘patient’ and ‘pharmaceutical company’, is more holistic, where lifelong relationships might exist, rather than population treatment histories. Such an approach might provide for more personalized healthcare for the individual, whilst also enabling drug firms to see the life impact of their medication alongside its clinical effectiveness.

Why should the pharmaceutical industry invest in such patient-centric behaviours? Outside of brand reputation and CSR commitments, there are clear commercial opportunities here too.  If pharmaceutical companies can demonstrate the social and community benefits of treating patient goals as seriously as clinical ones, the financial impact on government and insurance company decision-making could be significant. An example might be how the healthcare industry as a whole explores combatting depression. Of course drug firms already make an important contribution by offering existing medications to help this illness. But how might a patient-centric pharmaceutical company respond to research where individuals reported from their own experience that physical exercise (see ref. below) or meditation had positive benefits? What social benefits might accrue from an individual tackling their health condition in a park or a swimming pool, building confidence and friendships in the process? Could these informal health environments be more cost-effective for payers than clinical settings? And could a combination of drug and non-drug intervention become part of a broader assessment of patient outcomes?

In the traditional model, a patient-centric approach for pharmaceutical companies has the potential to impact its product research & development itself, by seeking to design medications and treatments, by being in tune with individuals’ needs and attitudes to healthcare. And in a more holistic model, patient-centricity may require a broader assessment from government, scientific bodies and investors in healthcare for how support provided by pharmaceutical firms are judged to benefit patients.

Journal Reference:

Ernst, C. et al. (2006) “Antidepressant effects of exercise: Evidence for an adult-neurogenesis hypothesis?” Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience 31(2): 84–92.

When asked to define which measures were most important in gauging marketing success, respondents scored customer experience and Return on Investment (ROI) as the top 2 factors, above traditional metrics such as sales and customer acquisition. 

We believe this study demonstrates that the recognition of researching customer experience at the individual level has finally come of age. The findings match what we’ve heard from our own clients – that by combining digital sources such as social media monitoring alongside in-depth accounts of how individuals describe their personal experience provides a clarity and depth of understanding that is simply missed by traditional survey methods.

Read the full IBM study at ibm.com/cmostudy2011

Find out how Customer Faithful captures individual insight : http://customerfaithful.com/what-we-do/insight/

Whilst such concerns over so-called ‘wave and pay’ technology are not new, I doubt that security worries are the main reason why these cards simply haven’t caught on in the UK.

Instead, the bigger issue is simply that consumers are more interested in reducing the number of plastic cards in their wallet than upgrading them to contactless ones.  As a customer, embedding a single chip inside a mobile phone makes far more sense, and the technology for these ‘mobile wallets’  is already available. (source below)

Photo courtesy of shareski - http://flic.kr/p/4SWr8q

Card providers are well aware of all this, but until recently, there’s been too much brand vanity at stake to admit it. Having a chip hidden away in a card doesn’t expose the branding each time a card is used for a start. And of course each credit card provider believes that it’s their brand that truly commands consumer loyalty above all others. For example, Orange launched its Orange Cash wave ‘n’ pay card using Mastercard’s PayPass technology amid a fanfare of proposed customer benefits, including as Pippa Dunn (VP of Orange Propositions) put it, a “unique ability to collect and redeem awards against future Orange products and services”.

But the truth is that Orange Cash is no more ‘unique’ than dozens of other card propositions that bundle loyalty points, cash-back and a whole range of other incentives into card use. It all comes back to the misguided belief that consumers truly love the card provider. They don’t. Above all else, most customers want convenience and optimum value-for-money.

If a single card was smart enough to know which would be the most beneficial loyalty scheme to use with a transaction for petrol/mobile phone top-up/cinema/etc., customers would ditch all that bulky plastic in a heartbeat.

Another reason why consumers aren’t gagging for wave ‘n’ pay is first-mover advantage. London’s Oyster card is the UK’s most successful wave and pay card by far. It removes not only the hassle of buying physical tickets, but guarantees the user the best price for the travel used that day. On top of that, it works reliably, despite being a little long-in-the-tooth as contactless technology goes these days. But I repeat, there are only so many cards a consumer actually wants to carry, and for Londoners, one of these slots is already allocated to Oyster now.

Against all of this, retailers are not stupid. They know that mobile wallets are the future, and the likes of Google and Amazon have stolen a march by creating online payment options that are easily accessed from a mobile phone. Whilst the big mobile phone networks lobby the European Commission to try and get a deal to pilot mobile wallets, consumer groups worry about security and fair competition.

So while all of that plays out in Brussels, back in the real-world, the consumer continues to carry around half a hundredweight in loyalty and payment cards that they could well do without….

Further reading:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9163969/Barclays-contactless-cards-exposed-to-fraud.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/07/mobile-phone-wallets-europe

Successful brands are an antidote to anxiety – brands that make us smile, brands that remind us of a simpler and safer time…the key is to understanding what’s going on in peoples’ heads and whether we can help them feel easier living in these times.

Everyone at the event agreed that the emotional component of this brand impact was important – key to having a difference beyond a race to lowest price, key to offering something extra above a purely functional transaction in an online space, key to ensuring that the consumer bond is with the provider brand rather than simply the product being purchased. But what happens when marketers successfully embed the expectation for an emotional ‘connect’ with the brand, only for it to be let down in the delivery? Isn’t this setting a brand up to fail?

A good example happened to me this week with Apple. Few global brands have done quite such an outstanding job, both in marketing and positioning Apple as more intuitive, user-friendly and consumer-centric than its rivals, and in consistently providing products that deliver this – from computers to its game-changing iPods and iPads. Yet, when my 3 years’ old MacBook (laptop) needed a repair to its keyboard this week, my brand experience at the flagship Covent Garden store in London was anything but an “antidote to anxiety”. Having been told that the repair would take 2-3 days, and that I’d be telephoned with an update within 48 hours, I found myself 3 days later with no further info. Successive calls to the Apple store provided the response “It may take another 3-4 days, you should not have been told 2-3 days”. And when asked why I hadn’t been called with an update, I was told not-very-politely “I can’t answer that, I’m very sorry. I’ve asked the Genuis Bar about your repair, and they said maybe another 3-4 days – why not call again on Friday?” I finally got an email (no call) from Apple two days later, asking me to come and pick up my repaired product. It was totally automated, and made no reference to the repeated calls I’d made, and no apology or recompense for the delay.

Apple Store - Covent Garden, London

It’s the kind of poor service experience I have come to expect from insurance companies, utility firms and local government – certainly not the glossy, market-conquering, stock-price-soaring Apple. In the Apple Store itself, I found the usual clutch of young and enthusiastic staff, who returned my Mac to me with care and courtesy, and apologised sweetly without actually making recompense.

Ordinarily, such a customer experience would leave me pledging to go elsewhere in future, but the truth is I’ll continue to buy Apple products. Only yesterday, I found myself drooling over the new iPad released in a fanfare of yet-more new features and benefits. But the Apple service experience has left me scarred. I still love the products and I doubt that will change, but my faith in the brand has been tarnished.

The human element, the friendly, smiling face of Apple staff that I had previously tagged as ‘on-brand’ will be re-coded. It will be replaced by doubt, suspicion, and a lack of confidence in their promises. And my ability to speak positively to others about Apple will be curtailed.

As so often with customer service, it has been the lack of a brand’s efforts to recover a broken promise that will last long in the memory. My conclusion is that Jonathan Sands was right – brands are indeed an antidote to anxiety, but such a brand attribute is transitory, and easily lost even with world-class products and marketing. In a world of multi-channel and digital brand engagement, firms would do well to remember the importance of a human touch, and its critical role as brand ambassadors.

Rick Harris, Customer Faithful’s Managing Director, said “We’re delighted as a business to become a BHBIA member. Its support in providing members with on-going learning and development will help us continue to improve our ideas and techniques in research. The BHBIA has a deservedly strong reputation within the healthcare industry for professionalism and expertise across a wide ranging programme of activities and services, and we expect to make full use of these skills.”

http://bhbia.org.uk

This took me to The Guardian and The Times, who both offer fully downloadable versions via a months free trial, followed by a rolling charge of £9.99 per month. Such a fee may well be attractive to committed mobile users, who are comfortable with an e-device as their preferred choice for reading. It also makes sense to make online editions free for those already subscribing to print versions, which makes access more versatile and so likely to increase frequency of use.

In short, my experience of these media brands is that the Telegraph and New Yorker reached out to me with flexible, pay-as-you-go offerings that made access both affordable and suitable for my needs. In contrast, subscription media had the feel of a mobile phone monthly commitment – buying more than you need, largely in order to avoid even higher one-off costs.

• “It’s tough to win new business” = Celebrate and WOW new customers – yes, it’s never been easier for customers to shop around and compare your product or service to your competitors. With web access not just super fast but also increasingly accessible on mobile devices, shoppers can make carefully judged buying decisions wherever they are, based on reviews, price, availability, and so on. But this also means that when a new customer does make a purchase, such a hard-won sale is a bigger triumph than ever before. So don’t let that pass you by….or the customer. Surprise them with an unexpected extra benefit, treat them with an extended warranty, incentivise them to buy again…soon. By working harder to improve repeat sales and the lifetime value of the customer, you can help offset some downturn in overall customer volumes.

• “My marketing spend gets me less these days” = customer advocacy and word-of-mouth is free! Well, OK, not quite free, as you’ll have had to impress them with your proposition to start with, but I’d view that kind of proposition effort as an investment, which pays dividends many times over. The key point here is that, unlike traditional media spend which is increasingly fragmented and cluttered, earned media activity like customer recommendations, positive stories and comments are both influential and poignant. Customers’ own accounts of their experience of a business are seen as more authentic than advertising of course, even if not everything is flattering to your brand. And where negative comments ARE made, it’s an opportunity to seize the moment and show how your firm both listens and acts on feedback.

• “My customers only want to tighten their belts” = so be the brand to help them! It’s hardly surprising that buyers (that includes B2B as well as B2C) are seeking ways to save money right now and make existing purchases go further. One of the foundations of experiential marketing thinking is to recognise this desire in the context of their lives and business, rather than your own. In practice, this means proactively offering ideas and tips for extending the value of your goods and services in customer terms. For example – is your product perishable? Then offer ways to extend its shelf life, or ideas to to use up those last few portions to avoid it going to waste. What about the packaging? One ‘rule-of-thumb’ is that the more your firm spent on the packaging in the first place, the greater the opportunity it could be re-used for something else. And if that extends the life and visibility of your brand on that packaging, so much the better. Be imaginative – remember that great ideas tend to end up getting shared by their proud owners and users these days in social media..

In tough times, it’s easy to get despondent, especially when some of the tried-and-tested marketing techniques you’ve used for years are no longer as effective in today’s economy. But brand marketers can seize the initiative, by embracing some of these challenges in a fresh way.
Most of all, be positive – if you can win and delight customers (new and existing) in these austere times, just think how much potential there will be to extend their loyalty as the economy starts to improve. Think of it as priming the marketing pump with time-release activities that will still be benefiting your bottom line when your competitor’s short-term media blitz is long forgotten….

Sadly, the review shies away from the ‘elephant in the room’ – that the High St proposition simply isn’t compelling anymore to very many people. We like the convenience, the multichannel access, the pricing, the range and the freedom that out of town, internet and mobile shopping offers. Unsurprisingly, we prefer not to sit in traffic approaching clogged High Streets, (buses are just as affected by this too), or pay parking charges for items that could just as easily be delivered. Home delivery is greener too, and slicker delivery windows are removing the need to wait in all day. Instead, we can make a trip to somewhere that’s rewarding, that offers a distinctive, valuable and desirable experience. This could be located where the High St is now, but Mary’s ideas (such as a National Market Day) simply demonstrate how piecemeal her proposals are. It has the rose tinted ambition of a Jubilee Street Party that feels good for a couple of hours, but really changes nothing.

High Streets in need of a raison d'etre

We need a High St proposition that works every day, not once a year. For me, the starting point for achieving this is a foundation on what our towns really desperately need: affordable and environmentally friendly housing. This is precisely the kind of redevelopment that could rejuvenate central town locations. It’s a far more radical solution than the Portas Review, but it makes more sense. If future community space was anchored around modern housing, the ‘retail’ mix would include restaurants, bars, entertainment, creches, gyms – all the things that Portas fleetingly mentions in 2 pages at the back of her report, but set in the context of peoples’ real lives, rather than dreaming up a reason for it all to exist, based on a romantic return to Victorian shop-keeping.

And whatever the redevelopment at a local level, it should be designed to complement major shopping malls, not belittle or undermine them. Janice Turner, in last weeks’ Saturday Times, offers a real world example of this, when going Christmas shopping at Westfield with her mother: “an ordinary town centre would have been impossible, with its distances, crowds, no parking. But in the London shopping centre, we had lifts, loos, we could borrow a wheelchair. My Mother bought plenty, whilst I shopped in my new modern way – making a mental note of things to buy, ignoring the queues and going home to order them online.”

The irony is that Mary Portas is clearly FULL of ideas for retail. Anyone who has watched her TV shows will realise the imagination and intuition she has for this industry. But rather than take pity on the High Street, by artificially propping up its out-of-date infrastructure, I’d rather see her report used as evidence that our town centres need to be primarily places to live, not shop.

Regular visitors to this site will know that we have a particular interest in Gen Y or the Millennial Generation, so we’ve been out in the run-up to Christmas, watching them shop, both in High Streets and malls, as well as on-line.

What have we learned? Here are a few clues……..

1. We’re here anyway – unlike the Baby Boomers who have made special, dedicated trips and plans for gift buying, Gen Y tend to meld their Christmas shopping into what they were already doing, and where they already were. For example, gift ideas and requests for suggestions came through friends on Facebook, often surfacing ‘in-the-moment’, rather than as a task to be tackled in social media. (Owners of  ‘sponsored’ ads in Facebook, take note.)
2. Find An Item, Find a deal – once a gift idea appeals, Gen Y expect immediate choice and availability to buy. Even whilst continuing with other on-line tasks, they will quickly find a retailer, assess options – colour, size, ability to personalise, payment & delivery options. But again, less like Baby Boomers or even Gen X, many will then happily add in a price comparison or voucher-code site afterwards to make sure they get “the kick-back I deserve”. Loyalty to a retailer is hard-won from this generation. They tend to identify more with brands than where to access them.
3. Get It On Display – in physical stores, we were struck by how Gen Y expect all product availability options to be on-shelf. Whilst older people might ask store staff whether additional stock is in the stock room, Gen Y are more likely to simply go somewhere else. We quizzed this with them afterwards and found a simple reason: they have grown up with the transparency of web shopping, and the idea of having to fight to find their size, their colour, etc. is very unappealing, almost unnatural. Unless they want that item really bad, expect them to find alternatives. Oh, and don’t be surprised if they vent their irritation on social media too.
4. Why Call when you can Tweet? – back in the virtual world, we found that when Gen Y have questions about an item, they much preferred to tweet their followers (or even a retailer direct) than call a Customer Service line. In particular, they like the fact that they can hold multiple conversations this way whilst carrying on other tasks at the same time. Compare that to a telephone call, often being held in a queue, navigating IVR and paying for the privilege and you quickly see why Gen Y is such a smart shopper. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Gen X are catching up here, with as many as 1 in 4 now using online communities too to gauge product suitability (Source: BIGResearch)
5. Wishing and Hoping – Gen Y may be a savvy shopper, but many don’t have the disposable income to actually make a purchase. We saw a lot of window-shopping (on and offline), having a real affinity for a brand, and perhaps longing for someone to buy them this item. The reality of today’s economy is that across Europe and the US, jobs for Gen Y are scarce. Retailers and brands need to take a long view with this generation, and to be patient with their attempts to woo a sale. Lead indicators of brand loyalty with Gen Y will be positive sentiment in social media – likes, re-tweets, followership and so on. Brands should be rewarding and nurturing this Gen Y crowd, not always for today’s purchase, but for future affinity and Christmases to come!

Demanding though Gen Y can be, the good news for retailers and brands is that, by meeting their needs for customer service, you’ll be impressing and exceeding the expectations of older Gen Xers and Baby Boomers too. It’s true that some of the on-line services may not be utilised that much by these older groups yet, but that is changing fast.

Want to find out more about how to attract Gen Y to your brand? Contact rick@customerfaithful.com