How to win friends and influence people
Digital is everywhere. Everyone is talking about it. Often it’s technical and impressive language, from people convincing us that they know what they’re talking about. Surely, if we don’t understand what they’re saying, then they must be an expert – right? Well that’s my issue. Yes there are major benefits to Digital and yes I am excited to be right at the heart of it, but I just wish more people could focus on the consumer and leave all that clever complexity to the technologists.
A thing occurred to me the other day while I was out shopping in Tesco, wondering which washing powder I was meant to be buying and what on earth non-bio means - wouldn’t it be great if Tesco knew I was here in aisle 12 and using my shopping history could proactively offer me advice or better still an instant offer.
So much of what the industry talks about today centres on technology push – it’s technically possible now, therefore you should do it. Isn’t it better to take a different approach, helping businesses to engage their consumers based on a complete understanding of their consumer’s behaviour and their preferences? This focus on the actual consumers of digital would then start to challenge the way projects are implemented.
Today, the big issue facing most companies that I meet is, ‘what should I do in Mobile’? Many digital companies are chasing this opportunity and putting forward clever solutions and mobile apps. But the majority of these are stand alone, siloed solutions that fail to consider existing solutions and channels already in place. This has a major impact on the Consumer. How does it feel for a Consumer to sign-in to the same service each time they use a different device? How does it feel when the information they gave to a company on their PC needs to be input again because they are now on their mobile?
If the Consumer was the focus, this wouldn’t happen. Instead solutions would be created around the individual and not the device. They would provide a fully integrated experience which felt familiar and was intuitive, regardless of the device being used. All of the user data would only need to be input once and all activity, across all channels, would be stored centrally in a single repository. That data could then be called upon every time the user came into contact with that business, saving them time and enabling the business to become very relevant in terms of its offers and information.
Isn’t that a better way to engage your customers? That way Tesco would have known where I was and which powder I was looking for and could’ve removed that moment of stress. This is very powerful and delivers benefits to both Business and Consumers. It would certainly engage me and encourage me to return to Tesco’s because I knew they understood me and could help make my life easier. Who knows, having influenced me, I might even let them become my friend?
Rockpool Digital takes a customer focused approach to digital. We design and build integrated web and mobile experiences that enable businesses to become more relevant to their customers. To find out how we can help your business mail peter.gandy@rockpooldigital.com.