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  • Don’t be blinded by Black Friday – your customers aren’t

    Don’t be blinded by Black Friday – your customers aren’t

    South Africans will spend R56.8bn on retail goods online this year, representing a year-on-year growth of 39%. There is a terrific opportunity here, but if brands and marketers plan to get a share of these billions from events like Black Friday, they’re not seeing the bigger, better picture.

    Before you promote Black Friday in favour of other considerations, you need to know that price is not the most important thing customers want from you. If you can give them what they do want, you can unlock so much more than a one-hit shop-and-run. Give them the best customer experience and earn long-term loyalty from delighted customers who will become your advocates and spokespeople – and have not doubt that customers singing your praises carries far more weight than ever before.

    Reliability and delivery are more important to your customers than price when shopping online. This detail comes from our fourth annual South African Digital Customer Experience Report, which surveyed 2,000+ people to understand their attitudes towards the brands we engage with online.

    Reliability topped their list of most wanted attributes at 72%, followed by delivery at 66%. Price was only the third most important attribute, at 63%.

    What’s even more interesting about price’s role in the buying decision is that it was the most important attribute in our CX study last year. The fact that price has shifted in importance shows that customers will only buy from you again if they have a satisfactory online experience with your brand.

    It’s worth paying attention to the other attributes that encourage shoppers to make repeat purchases from the same brand online. Ease of use came in at 59%, and trust was at 50%. So now you know that four of the top five qualities customers want when shopping online are about having a good experience; it’s time to revisit Black Friday.

    Any big, concentrated sales day will always be fraught with variables. There are so many “ifs” to deal with: if customers have to queue, if they end up ordering something they don’t want because their preference is sold out, if their order is bungled because staff are too inundated to get every order right, if delivery or returns are compromised – I could go on but you get the picture.

    Any of these things going wrong makes for a poor customer experience that ultimately costs you the customer, and for what? A comparatively small return. If you take nothing else from our survey, take this: above all, customers want you to stick to your promises. This is what reliability and good delivery mean to them.

    Rather than a frantic Black Friday scramble to acquire one-off customers, a more considered and intelligent strategy is to invest in providing great experiences. Your primary goal should be to migrate once-off shoppers into repeat buyers.

    The fact that it costs you less and earns you more to retain existing customers than acquire new ones will become increasingly important through 2023.

    With rising inflation and the likelihood of a global recession, economically this is not the time for Black Friday thinking. As tempting as a discount day seems, you’re better off looking beyond the short term and focusing on consistently improving how your loyal customers experience your company.

    Regardless of what next year holds, there is room for growth in the online retail landscape. Online shopping is now an integral part of South Africans’ lives. Almost 90% of respondents to our survey had made an online purchase in the past year. And it’s not just particular types of customers either – it’s everyone. Online shoppers transcend income, age and geographic location, giving you a wide-open market to serve.

    A final word to the wise: keep sight of the fact that your customers evolve, and they do so quickly. Their wants and needs change all the time. Your job is to keep paying attention so that you don’t lose touch with what is important to them.

  • Brands: Stop having one-night stands and grow up

    Brands: Stop having one-night stands and grow up

    Marketing has long clung to the notion that a brand is mostly composed of the communications it puts out into the world. We do our due diligence and develop these lovely brand strategies. We sit and work out our brand DNA, or our brand eggs, or our brand onions, or our brand keys.

    These multi-levelled multi-faceted documents filled with jargon and acronyms that the consumer never sees and the brand team barely touches after the initial presentation.

    These things are necessary, of course. When you’re crafting the next big campaign, referring back to the original brand documents is an important starting point.

    Customer experience is the brand

    However, the consumer doesn’t care.

    Your latest omni-channel masterpiece slips right through their awareness. They don’t see the connection between the billboard and the Facebook page. They don’t care about your metrics, your reach, your engagement, your conversions.

    What they care about is their customer experience. In short, customer experience is the brand.

    This changes things dramatically because first and foremost it’s a space that many agencies don’t play in.

    Most agencies are pretty good at the big campaign, some even fairly good at collecting the all important first-party data. Those campaigns certainly do contribute to customer experience, so their role is not negated. But still, there’s a bigger picture.

    There are some agencies that are beginning to test the waters of customer experience. They do the big campaigns, but they also look beyond that, at the entire journey.

    The relationship with a brand may begin on Google, but what about the rest? Marketing often stops at that moment. We got them to notice you, maybe even smile at you. Maybe we even got them to go a bit further. Our job is done.

    Where the real magic takes place

    But the real magic of the relationship doesn’t live in the first kiss, it’s much more and much longer than that. What happens in-store? What happens during purchase? How did the sales clerk treat you? Did you get the item in a nice box? What happens if it breaks?

    A brand like Apple doesn’t have to do a lot of marketing because it has nailed down customer experience.

    Say what you will about the hardware, the experience of purchasing a Mac is really cool. The reason is simple, Apple has mapped out the entire journey with the customer at the centre of it. Sounds a bit obvious doesn’t it? Well, for a lot of brands, it isn’t.

    Number one priority: customer’s objectives

    Marketing conversations usually focus on two different, but overlapping things, the brand objectives and the marketing objectives.

    Our number one priority should be the customer’s objectives. Once we start talking about those experiences, then questions like what we do with all this first-party data answers itself.

    A new type of agency requires their clients to think about their brand differently and to open themselves to conversations not just about that first kiss, but how big should the wedding be, and how many kids you’re going to have.

    Stop having one-night stands and grow up.

  • The alignment workshop: Unearthing opportunities

    The alignment workshop: Unearthing opportunities

    In the good ol’ days, you’d make something useful, and then you’d put it on a shelf in your shop and somebody would come and buy it. You’d more than likely know that person as well. You’d be the supplier, distributor, shopfront, marketer, and customer services person all in one. You’d do all this and you’d still be home in time for dinner.

    Nowadays, things are a little more complicated. The process of getting your goods into a customer’s hands involves several teams. In my experience, very few of these teams are talking to each other.

    If you’re looking for a way to get alignment with your teams, there’s nothing better than doing an alignment workshop. What follows is a bit of an instruction guide to get you going.

    First things first, this is supposed to be fun and interactive. Everyone needs to participate, so if you see someone sitting back, invite them to give ideas or get their opinions. The fun part is that for the purposes of this kind of workshop, there’s no budget and no mandates. In other words, ideas don’t necessarily have to fall within each team’s discipline and this allows for participants to bring new perspectives to each other’s daily grind.

    You will need some A2 blank page workbooks and a bunch of post-it notes.

    Team creation

    Begin by creating teams. To run an interactive workshop with a group bigger than five is a nightmare of dominant personalities and ‘under-the-radar’ coasters. So, break them up a bit. Try to split the teams so that there is a good spread of expertise and personality in each one.

    There are two approaches to dominant personalities – put them all in one group and let them fight it out, or put one or two in each group. They both have their pros and cons, but I prefer option one because dominant personalities often become groups of one without input from others. Make sure each team has a designated scribe, a workbook, and post-it notes for ideas.

    Persona creation

    Once your teams are figured out, it’s time to begin creating personas. Personas are basically the archetypes of the kinds of customers that you serve. At the end of the day, every business is about serving a customer.

    The scribe needs to split a page up into three columns, titling them who, challenge, and opportunity. Let the teams make up people with rich personal lives, work lives and challenges, fitting all of these under their relevant columns.

    Once you get to the opportunities section, let them come up with some very broad ideas. Don’t get into detail here. You don’t need mechanics. If the idea is “a Facebook competition with a car as a prize”, that’s fine. No need to break it down further.

    At the end of the process, each team presents their personas to the rest of the room. This is for debate and crafting. This is not a competition to see who made the best personas. Keep it light.

    The customer journey

    The next step is customer journeys. Come up with three situations that a customer might find themselves in. Maybe it’s buying supplies. Maybe it’s looking for more information. For each situation, come up with what your customer may be thinking or doing. Are they stressed out? Are they phoning a lot of suppliers? Are they googling something?

    Then the ideas, as the name suggests, are where we come up with a few tactical ideas to help this customer with their thinking/doing or situation. This needs to be done for each persona and can be quite time-consuming. Gauge how many breaks are required here.

    The six in 10 approach

    Finally, there are six in 10. Six in 10 is coming up with six ideas in 10 minutes. This is a solitary activity. Each person sits with an A4 page to do this. Once they’re done, they converse with their team about their ideas and pick the top three. They then present those to the broader team.

    And you’re done. A workshop like this can take up to five hours, so make sure you can clear diaries to get it done.

    The next step is to take those personas, user journeys, and ideas and look at how feasible everything is. Compile everything into a document that you can share. By the end of the day, your teams will have understood the customer better, understood each other better, and you’ll hopefully have a few ideas on how to improve your customer’s experience.

  • A novel CX concept: we are government’s customers

    A novel CX concept: we are government’s customers

    Last week I had the pleasure of attending the CEM Africa 2022 summit, the must-go event for anyone who puts customer experience (CX) at the centre of their business. The talks were at best inspirational, at worst informational, and I believe that anyone who attended will have found it beneficial in some way.

    A talk that stood out for me the most happened on the main stage on day two of the event. Rashid Toefy, deputy director-general of the Western Cape Government Department of Economic Development and Tourism, gave a talk on CX in government. He explained how he did not see us as the faceless constituents of the Western Cape, but rather, as his customers.

    A novel concept

    What an incredibly novel concept – that we are the customers of our government, and as a result of voting for them, we should have a good customer experience. In fact, it’s so novel that there are only two places in the world that have employed a customer-centric approach to their citizens, Estonia, and the Western Cape.

    Toefy and his team began their journey by mapping out the milestones of their citizens. Birth, marriage, new business, death – the experiences that require some kind of governmental participation. They then asked: how do we make each one of these engagements a positive one?

    Less red tape, more red carpet

    With the mandate of creating jobs first and foremost, Toefy and his team realised that one of the more important milestones to tackle was starting a new business. Government cannot create jobs, but they can enable its citizens to create jobs.

    That statement drove the creation of the Red Tape Reduction unit, their maxim, “Less red tape, more red carpet”.

    In a nutshell, if you are starting a business and you need permits or licences, the Red Tape Reduction unit will assist you with getting those documents in a far more timeous fashion.

    I don’t want to specify any time frames here (I cannot speak for government), but Toefy did have a few case studies on hand which demonstrated a greatly reduced turnaround time.

    Finally, Toefy spoke about an app in the works that will allow you to connect with government in matters of documentation and information with ease, and from your couch. No queues required.

    CX taken seriously

    I found the talk inspirational on two levels. Firstly (and I think many would agree here), to see a charismatic and passionate government employee pushing through initiatives to make our lives easier is very heartening.

    Toefy is exactly what a politician should be: a servant of the people. When the person I was with couldn’t get his question answered because of time constraints, Toefy bounded off the stage, handed him a card and said he would answer the question offline.

    Secondly, to see customer experience being taken seriously by government institutions (notorious for outdated methods and processes), shows that every one of us should be taking customer experience seriously.

    In this hyper-connected world, a poor (and good) customer experience will spread like wildfire. While it is slightly more difficult to change your government, it’s a lot easier to change the people you’re buying your goods and services from.

    In closing, do yourself a favour and download the latest CX Report (it’s free). Secondly, the next time you see a CX event, attend it. They’re well worth your time.

  • The Great Return: Now is time to walk the talk

    The Great Return: Now is time to walk the talk

    Do a quick Google search and you’re going to find many articles with conflicting opinions.

    When I did a quick poll on my Linkedin page, I got a similar response. Some say that their businesses are fully remote and they’re happy about it, some say that they don’t trust their workers enough to keep them remote, noting dips in productivity.

    On the side of the workers, there is a lot of conflict too. Some miss the interactions they had with colleagues, others find the home office environment a more productive space. There are a lot more factors, but that isn’t the crux of the matter.

    The real issue

    What is the crux of the matter is that because remote work is so prevalent internationally, overseas businesses have recognised South Africa as a market ripe with cheap resources.

    To give you an example, a community manager earns around $50,000 p/a in the US. In South Africa, a similar resource will cost you R180,000 a year.

    In other words, if you’re working from home for a US business, you’re earning R800,000 a year. US businesses can pay a South African somewhat less and get the same level of competence. It’s a no-brainer.

    The ramifications are obvious. Local businesses are losing resources to international companies. It’s just impossible to compete with those kinds of salaries.

    This creates a scarcity of local staff resources, making recruitment a protracted process, putting pressure on existing staff to fill the gap.

    This in turn drives existing staff to also look for international remote work as well. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

    Let’s recap, you’re earning triple your salary, you’re working fully from home, and in many instances you are working shorter hours. Why would you keep working at a South Africa business?

    Fear of the unknown

    Fortunately, there is one reason, and it’s a bit of a nasty one: fear of the unknown. People are less inclined to make dramatic changes when there is very little drive to do so.

    What this boils down to is that the happier your staff, the less inclined you are to lose them. A no-brainer, right? Why is it so difficult for local businesses to get right?

    This research may be a little bit old, but in 2019 CareerJunction published a piece of research highlighting why most South Africans quit their jobs.

    Trust, approachability, favouritism, and taking credit for work done by others were just a few of the reasons given.

    Granted, compensation played a role, but it was dwarfed by the softer, more relationship-based variables.

    What is the perception that we’re so bad at people management? Is it a lack of access to cost-effective managerial courses?

    Is it the assumption that when you reach a certain age you’ll have the wisdom to lead people effectively? Perhaps it isn’t a problem that’s native to South Africa.

    I can’t tell you. What I can tell you is that if you’ve been punting the ‘people first’ narrative in your organisation, now’s the time to walk the talk.

  • The politics of platform – should your brand even go viral?

    The politics of platform – should your brand even go viral?

    Should brands trend on popular social media platforms? Should their campaigns even need to go viral to achieve brand objectives? It’s time to look at brand strategy and brand values.

    Like a mosquito buzzing around society’s collective ear, special interest groups are at it on the socials again. In the latest buzz, a firm named ‘Targeted Victory’ has implicated Meta (Facebook) in allegedly trying to undermine rival TikTok. The grievance is a series of articles and content claiming that TikTok is dangerous to children, originating from our beloved platform for the aged, Facebook.

    The only thing we know for sure is that Targeted Victory has indeed lobbied nation-wide media (US) to undermine the ByteDance owned platform and depict it as a danger to kids. There have been several innocuous trends like the #peeyourpantschallenge (self-explanatory) which have only served as an illustration of how boring lockdown can be. However, lunacy and idiocy prevail. When brands say, “let’s trend on TikTok”, I’m a little sceptical. Do you really want to trend alongside things like #poopchallenge (self-explanatory)?
    Let’s come back to brand KPIs

    I’m going to loop back to these things, but in order to do so, I’ll need my soapbox. While I’m fetching it backstage, please take the time to think about what your brand’s KPI’s are. Back. Firstly, ‘make it trend’ is the new ‘make it viral’. Agencies hear this all the time and while the phrase has changed a little, the sentiment stays the same. The sentiment being, I want a lot of people to see me, but I don’t want to pay for it. It’s a dream. Let go of it.

    Trending alongside ‘peeing your pants’ is not a strategy – creating an effective marketing-based intervention is. If you want something to trend, if you absolutely need something to trend, consider the strategic imperative here. There are ecosystems on each platform and if it makes sense to trend within these ecosystems, then do it. Otherwise, stop and make compelling communication instead. Agencies, stop promising the trend on TikTok. Brands, stop asking for the trend on TikTok.
    Take first-party data seriously

    Secondly – and this is where I climb on my soapbox – take first-party data seriously. We have put the fabric of society, our culture, our intellectualism, into the hands of tech giants. Every time you pay for an ad campaign you’re funding them. Every time you click ‘like’, you’re making them more powerful. I don’t want to come across as a heretical, social-media is-trash type person, but seriously, look at the politics. And actually, I do want to come across as that person, somebody needs to. There’s millions at stake here and they’re employing every nasty trick in the book to control their commodity. Their commodity is you, their commodity is your customer. First-party data is your liberator. When you get it, your customer has bought into you, you’ve got a direct line of communication. Sure, you’ve still got to use some of these platforms to get them there, but once they’re there, they’re there. All you need is a compelling reason for people to buy into your brand. A value exchange, something that will matter to them. Sometimes it’s just your product or service, sometimes it’s something a little more like a bit of useful content. Whatever that ‘thing’ is (and I don’t care, as long as you do), get that first-party data!

    Alright, I’m stepping off my soapbox. I’ll finish with a plea, please stop empowering the bad guys.

  • Digital Marketers don’t forget to look up

    Digital Marketers don’t forget to look up

    In 2021 we released our very first Township CX Report. It went well. It wasn’t a spectacular success, but it was good enough to motivate us to do it again in 2022. This time around, we wanted it to be bigger and better.

    An injection of authenticity

    We decided that part of the bigger and better was an injection of authenticity. It’s one thing to see some data on a spreadsheet, but it’s quite another to go to where the people are. To sit with them, to talk about their experiences, to connect. We chose three townships, Alexandra, Soweto, and Katlehong, and we planned our expedition.

    I call it an expedition because, for me, it was. If you can’t tell by my profile picture, I’m white. I’m suburban in every sense of the word. A trip to a township is not an everyday occurrence for me. It’s a thing. It’s an expedition. It’s new and alien and daunting. What is every day for most of South Africa, is not every day for me. In many ways, I’m a tourist in my own country. And that’s not okay.

    2021 was not a great year for South Africa. Covid-19, the riots, and a bunch of other things led me to believe that this country was in dire straits. I didn’t hold much hope. I expected our township visits to be depressing. I expected to see economic hardship, strife, and suffering. Sure, some of that was there. But there was also something else.

    A masterclass in entrepreneurship
    In Soweto we saw spaza shops and restaurants rebranding to their own unique look-and-feel. A shift away from the branded cold-drink signs we’ve seen so often. No, they had their own brand identities. We saw entrepreneurs coming up with new and innovative ideas, from bespoke food delivery services to unheard of financial services.

    If you want to attend a master class in entrepreneurship, downtown Alex is where it’s at. In Katlehong we met a man that has managed to connect spaza shops together through his distribution network, all while inventing a cold drink that’s just as healthy as it is delicious.

    In a way, 2021 was a blazing inferno, burning through the lives of South Africans, leaving ruin in its wake. But entrepreneurship and innovation were birthed in that fire, and they rose like the proverbial phoenix, carrying the township economy upward with it.

  • #NEXT2022: Will it be a festive season?

    #NEXT2022: Will it be a festive season?

    I am certain that many of you are experiencing the end of the year ‘throw in the towel’ blues at the moment. It’s been a long one, full of ups and downs. The struggle has been real. But there’s one more hurdle to overcome from a consumer point of view: the big festive season shop. The question is, what will it look like this year and how can we make sure we benefit?

    During the Covid Christmas period in 2020, South Africa was in the middle of a retail downturn and the Christmas sales reflected that. On average there was a 12.5% decrease in sales compared to 2019. If history repeats itself, retailers are in for a very bleak festive season. However, Black Friday’s performance has been better than previous years, but it isn’t the brick-and-mortar stores that will benefit from these changes. The upswing in sales came mostly from the online space.

    New behaviour is here to stay

    There has been a split opinion about post-lockdown behaviour. During the worst of lockdown, many were forced into the online space to make not only their big-ticket purchases, but also their grocery purchases. For some consumers, this behaviour became solidified as retailers rose to the occasion by sharpening up their customer experiences. Others believed that people would revert back to their old ways, but the reality is quite different. The behaviour has stuck.

    Get on ecommerce now

    There is an obvious takeaway – if you’re not selling your goods on ecommerce, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity. There is a not so obvious takeaway. Internationally, consumers are looking for consolidated shopping experiences. The reason for the popularity of platforms like Amazon, is that there is an exceptionally broad range of products. Consumers can visit a single website and have access to a vast number of product categories. Coupled with Amazon’s Alexa, repeat purchases are a breeze. Consumers are locked into repeat buying, and they don’t mind because it frees up time and is almost the definition of convenience.

    We’re experiencing a very similar trend rising here with our very own Takealot. You don’t need to build your own ecommerce enabled site, and even if you have, it’ll serve you well to make sure that your products are available on the big product aggregator sites.

    Social shopping – a viable alternative

    Social shopping is also seeing rapid growth. There are a few reasons for this:

    1. The social aggregator. As I mentioned earlier, the consumer is moving more and more to single space shopping platforms. There is no better single space shopping platform than social media.

    2. The recommendation factor. Consumers have lost all trust in brand messaging (and I don’t say that lightly); and are now looking to friends and family for product recommendations. Social media is primed for these kinds of recommendations, and these social shopping integrations bring social marketing and retail one step closer together.

    3. Attribution. One of the big conundrums with social advertising has been the conversion conversation. For marketers, social media is seen as a set of awareness platforms. Social shopping makes clear attribution reporting possible on platforms like Facebook.

    Bottom-line, behaviours have changed. We need to change with them. While you may not be ready for this festive season, make sure 2022 doesn’t have you relying solely on your physical store.

  • ‘Techceleration’ – a recurring phenomenon

    ‘Techceleration’ – a recurring phenomenon

    I’m sure we’re all familiar with World War 2, Hitler, Churchill, and all of those other historical tidbits. What you may not be familiar with is the huge technological leaps that we made during that period. Things like radar, atomic energy, advances in penicillin, and leaps forward in computing  came out of a pressing need to innovate, to stay one step ahead of an ever advancing enemy.

    It is not a once-off phenomenon. All throughout human history, techceleration has happened during times of duress. The black death plague kicked off our foray into medicine (and for some reason watches were also invented then); early wars kicked off our horse riding (the dressage you see today was how a soldier would demonstrate his horse-riding skills).

    COVID-19, our techcelerator

    COVID-19 is no different. It has placed us under immense duress, but at the same time it has encouraged a massive amount of innovation. Things like working from home, something which in the past was an activity filled with bureaucracy and pleading, has become the norm. Products like Zoom saw an increase in sales of 326% in 2020, and there are similar trends present in the food delivery service, medicine, and  e-learning.

    But what does that mean for you? Experts have postulated that COVID-19 has techcelerated us at least five years into the future. What you’re seeing in 2021 should only have happened in 2026. The question then becomes, how will you advance your business by five years?

    Trendwatching

    While most innovation seems like it comes out of the blue, the reality is that it’s usually been part of a trend that was taking its time. For example, we’ve been talking about work-from-home for decades now. It’s been a trend that’s been in the works, COVID-19 just sped it up. We’ve noted similar trends in the online space. eCommerce was a trend that was being slowly adopted, but with the arrival of COVID-19, 96% of a sample of 2,000 people said they were planning to spend more online in the coming year.

    Become your own futurist

    Taking out your magnifying glass, what are the trends that you’ve been sitting on in your own business? There are many things that have changed. Thanks to flexible working hours, customers are now shopping at sporadic times of the day. The Saturday morning rush has begun to dissipate. Customers are starting to see shopping as a day out, a break from the house, and so dwell times are increasing. Overseas, retailers are partnering with coffee and fast food brands to leverage these longer dwell times by providing snacks and beverages instore.

    Augmented reality has also resurfaced with a major deal between WPP and Snapchat having just been signed off. WPP clients will now have access to AR technology, opening up new platforms and tools for their customers.

    If you have not been paying attention to the trends within your own business, now is as good a time as any to start. Trends will continue to accelerate and if you don’t meet them head on, the results could be costly.

  • CX moments of truth

    CX moments of truth

    How many businesses actually go through the exercise of determining where their customer’s pain points are? I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work on a very interesting pitch for a popular automotive brand. Part of the task was to map out the entire customer experience. The point of the process was to determine where the brand should focus their efforts (and their budget) in the coming months.

    We conducted some interviews, including those in the market for new cars, and salespeople on the dealer floor, and built personas. We then broke down the journey into five key milestones, mapping out what each persona would be thinking, doing, and feeling. We determined the tools and experiences that would address any pain points, and then looked at whether those tools and experiences already existed. If they didn’t, these became the recommendations. The results it yielded were clear and gave the potential client some deep insights into where they could improve. Like many brands today, some areas of the customer experience were second to none, and some were almost non-existent.

    Content and marketing are not everything

    Many brands are obsessed with content. Visit any brand site or social page, and you’ll find content galore. Videos, infographics, long-form and short-form. Yet, time and time again, the consumer has made it abundantly clear that they’re not particularly interested in hearing from brands. In fact, recent research shows that on a scale of impact, reviews and recommendations from friends and family far outweigh brand messaging.

    Back to our CX audit. As I mentioned, there were gaps and drops in the customer experience, but none of those gaps were content issues. They were all to do with dropped balls and poor experiences at a multitude of real world and digital touchpoints. Boots CMO, Pete Markey, was recently quoted as saying: “Your customer experience is your brand, so focus on getting it right consistently.”

    Marketing moments of truth that matter

    Therein lies the real challenge – being consistent across the board. How much effort are you putting into your marketing vs. your customer’s experience? In a recent CX report published by Rogerwilco, we took a look at the moments that mattered, ranking them by importance to the customer. These moments of ‘truth’, when done well, act as marketing channels all on their own, earning positive reviews that count more than a brand’s self-praise. Surprisingly, moments like unboxing and delivery (in the ecommerce space), were far more important than the search and purchase phases. Many ecommerce brands tend to focus on the search and purchase phase, while neglecting these final phases.

    Ask the right questions

    The questions you need to ask yourself are, which phases in my customer’s  journey am I ignoring? Have I mapped my customer’s moments of truth? Have I taken time to strategise and understand my customer, or am I simply ploughing ahead with creating content and marketing that has no value? I would also implore you to stop using the term ‘audience’. You don’t have one. You have a customer. Start focusing on the things that matter to your customer.