September 2015

Charlie Hills

CHERRY LONDON’STOP TAKE-OUTS

From Europe’s Customer Festival

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1) THE CUSTOMER ISN’T KINGDeborah Meaden “How to breathe fire into your customer service”

Deborah opened the conference by smashing an old-fashioned marketing mantra – the customer is no longer king. She believes the relationship is now different “they are a friend I respect enough to try and get it right for them and in return they will see that I am trying to do the right thing for them.”

Positioning your customer king is wrong and dangerous, it imbalances the relationship, it de-humanises it. “We should be building relationships with our customers like we do with people.” Brands need to remember that customers are first and foremost people, not a single stereotype.

2) PENETRATION IS A BETTER AMBITION THAN LOYALTYMatthew Barwell, Britvic CMO “making your campaign matter more to consumers”

To be successful brands must focus on acquisition, of all types of customers, rather than loyalty with a specific group. His Dragon’s Den pitch would be: 1. We shouldn’t be talking about customers, we should be talking about people. 2. We shouldn’t be obsessed by loyalty, we should be talking about penetration. 3. The opportunity of technology to engage with a broad range of people has transformed everything.

3) MATTER OUTSIDE YOUR CATEGORYNina Bibby, “Defining Your Brand Position: The O2 Story”

She believes that brand success comes from:

1. Doing the best you can within your category, such as O2’s Gurus team

2. Stepping just outside your category; ask yourself what else you can do to assist, to help more. O2 Priority is a great example of this.

3. Expanding well outside your category. #weartherose is O2 levering its “strength to connect people, to galvanise the nation behind the team”

4) COLLABORATION IS THE KEY TO SUCCESSChanging the world, one breath at a time, Tamara Gillan, CEO and Founder Cherry London and The Rt. Hon. Lord Drayson, Drayson Technologies.

CleanSpace is a new social movement that unites the power of brand partnerships, networked devices and crowd-sourced data to improve the quality of the air we breathe.

“The vision, the ambition and the opportunity of CleanSpace is just too big to achieve on your own. By working with the right brand partners, Drayson Technologies have achieved exponentially more than they could have working alone.”

5) LOYALTY PROGRAMMES, DONE RIGHT,

ARE VERY PROFITABLEBoosting Customer Loyalty across Europe, ManaazAkhtar, Regional Marketing Director of Subway

The Subcard is Subway’s unique loyalty programme that rewards customers for buying subs across the entire franchised estate. It has driven customer loyalty and has achieved great commercial success.

Subcard holders:

• Spend 9x more every visit than non users

• The spend significantly more in Subway per year

• They make more additional purchases than non card holders

• In total, the programme adds £9m profit across Europe per year

6) LOYALTY IS CHANGINGDavid Rosen, Marketing Technologist, Analyst and Strategic, Tibco (@Drosen85)

5 trends will define ‘loyalty success’:

1. Stop chasing shiny objects

2. Prioritise loyal customers over loyalty schemes

3. There is no single measure of success

4. The volume of data is no longer differentiating; the velocity and variety of data are key now.

5. Context is King. Brands need to own their own best practices and relate and respond to context – there are no more universals.

7) SEAMLESS MULTI-DEVICE AND MULTI-CHANNEL IS KEYGetting eye level with your customers. Graham Cook, Group Head of Digital, Thomas Cook

“The ultimate challenge for us is that we need to be able to provide customers, at whatever point in their journey and lifecycle, the ability to oscillate between channels and devices as they want - move seamlessly between those – they need to be in control”

To achieve this, Thomas Cook have focused on 3 areas.

1. My account: “The Bridge between the channels”

2. Using digital to support and improve the bricks and mortar experience – e.g. using Occulus Rift to give customers the chance to really experience the hotel before they book, or using “wish list” emails to capture discussions with consultants.

3. Using digital to improve the entire Thomas Cook lifecyle – including a particular focus on mobility. Initiatives such as the Companion App help customers when they are on their trip, as well as improving the mobile search and boking experience before.

8) NEXT BEST ACTION IS THE BEST WAY BACK TO THE 70SCRM Evolved – Make your customers important, once again. John Everhard –Chief Technology, Europe, Pega (chief sponsor)

Pega work with RBS who are focused on using next best action to develop and deliver the “Jock” experience to all their customers. Jock was the Branch Manager of RBS in the 70s who knew his customers inside out and always did the best thing for them. RBS wants “CRM to go back to a time when banks knew their customers personally and not everything was a sales pitch”.

They are using Next Best Action to recreate this experience at scale – combining predictive analytics with adaptive analytics to develop next best action strategies that are best for the customer, not always the bank. http://pe.ga/4sK

9) SUCCESS IS AN INVISIBLE, PERSONALISED AND SEAMLESS EXPERIENCELeveraging Digital to enhance the customer experience: Harris + Hoole case study, Danielle Anderson, Head of Customer Engagement (now @Mr & Mrs Smith)

At Harris + Hoole Danielle was put in charge of using digital to improve the in-café customer experience. The answer was to study the experience, identify the key pain points and improve them. She identified that getting your name right, knowing your order and payment were the key opportunities that could differentiate Harris + Hoole from the others. An app was developed that did just that. The results? 25,000 downloads, 250,000 check-ins and a truly loyal base.

“Loyalty is an experience that no-one else can give.”

10) FOCUSING ON EMOTION CREATES EFFECTIVE ENGAGEMENTThe secret ingredient to win the battle for greater leadership cut through (Dr Christian Blei and Brendan Leece) e.on

Energy is a VERY low engagement sector – research shows the average person spends only 9 minutes a year thinking about it. e.on identified the ABC of loyalty in energy:

• Alignment – they actively help me get what I want

• Benevolence – they are a force for good

• Competence – I believe they will deliver

By following this strategy, adding emotion to the experience and celebrating their most emotional customer service stories they achieved true loyalty, increased NPS and significantly improved results.

OTHER FAVOURITE INSIGHTS“95% of every decision is unconscious, only 5% is conscious. Brands miss out by focussing too much on the conscious and rational” (Roger Dooley, Author, Keynote Speaker, Industry Consultant – author of Brainfluence)

“Black Friday is very significant for John Lewis. They transact £44m in a day, £2m in the hour after midnight” (John Munnelly, Head of Operations, John Lewis)

“Direct Line had to amazon-ify their entire operation – we changed everything. E.g. Replacement items ready to send in 8 hours, Car fixed in 7 days” (Mark Evans, Marketing Directors, Direct Line Group)

“Listen, use people’s names, just be nice. Audiences are the new assets.” (Ted Rubin, Social Marketing Strategist, Brand Evangelist and Acting CMO of Brand Innovators)

THANK YOU

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