By Shadi Abdulhadi, founder and CEO, Boopin.
The past nine months alone have produced more digital transformation and behavioural change than the last decade. Many of those who were early adopters of digital transformation benefited from this shift, while others were displaced, making their need more urgent. This required entire organisations to reconsider the value offered by their products or services and communicate this value to the end-user or customer.
It is time for all brands to start working on marketing strategies that concentrate on defining an optimum customer experience (CX). The focus earlier was continuously on creating a differentiating factor or unique selling proposition (USP) for a product or service while the overall CX was overlooked and deprioritised.
Much as you might hate the phrase, this is the “new norm” that we need to adapt to. The consumers are more aware of the competition in the market and they have become picky. The consumers are now pickier with what they purchase and use and are very well informed about their needs. The “wants” for many people are now postponed until a vaccine is available or until they are more secure about their jobs and income sources.
Brands now need to further absorb consumer behaviours and adapt. Over the past five years at Boopin, we have been talking to our partners and clients about the importance of moving from “What I have to offer” to “What does the consumer want?”
During lockdown, the only way to access your favourite brands was via the internet. That has given the opportunity to consumers to be more digitally empowered than ever, thus making it difficult for brands to sustain existing customers and gain new ones. The way to connect with customers in the new norm is through trust and in delivering an outstanding CX.
Long after Covid-19 becomes a memory, the consumer will still be used to things like social distancing. Therefore, you can only expect that the consumer will interact with multiple online touchpoints as a learned habit that is hard to let go of.
Only brands that optimise their online experience will survive and thrive. This is all being made worse with third-party cookie data losing support in the near future – as soon as 2022. Consequently, most brands are playing catch-up with consumer data collection as they rush to empower their first-party data pools.
The deep understanding of the need to create an overall CX means we have onboarded and partnered with the biggest global players to ensure that we remain on top of the offering, but also sail into the future without any issues. Boopin, therefore, onboarded the latest in ad tech tools – from data management platforms (DMPs) to customer data platforms (CDPs) – to orchestrate a great consumer experience. Taking such a step was risky but is now paying off as our partners learn more and more about the importance of speaking to the customer the way they want to be approached and spoken to.
We are in the business of creating unique and customer-centric approaches that break the barriers of basic channel optimisations. Any approach now focuses on speaking honestly and transparently with all stakeholders to maximise revenue. Mapping out curated solutions and CX initiatives will maximise the return on media investment (ROMI).
If you have not taken this step yet, you are late. But this can be fixed as soon as your brand is able to absorb, learn and progress. The likes of CDPs are just the beginning and, with the development of artificial intelligence (AI), we will only witness more changes that we should be prepared for.
We no longer label brands working with us as clients. Adopting internally solid CX strategies has allowed Boopin to lead the digital transformation of our partners.
We have invested great resources into obtaining licences and offering them to partners as we are entrusted with their development and growth.
Over the past five years, we have maintained high satisfaction scores and won more business that has seen us continuously learning, growing and developing.
By being open-minded and ready for change, Boopin can assist you in taking your business to the next level as you appeal to your core consumers while onboarding new ones at the same pace as digital is evolving. In this digitally driven age, being digitally savvy is not about having the latest smartphone or smartwatch, but is about your ability to understand, develop and communicate approaches that revolve around the human.