For leading analyst group Forrester Research, there’s no big mystery about the future of marketing.
That’s because its research shows that something called proactive engagement is the future of all customer outreach: that’s to say, customers driving engagement with brands is the new direction of travel – and the brands that will win are those able to anticipate their customer needs, through active insights and data.
“Proactive engagements anticipate the what, when, where, and how for customers, and prioritise information and functionality to speed customer time-to-completion,” said the Forrester team.
What does this proactive mean in practice? Think of customer journeys that can be monitored and the resulting insights used to trigger a response, an invitation to chat or co-browse, an offer, a coupon, a multimedia tutorial – all at the right time, so the customer might benefit from them.
These findings echo what other commentators say, and the fact that organisations should explore proactive customer engagement for proactive pre-purchase engagements. The next stage in this evolution is to explore more sophisticated uses of proactive engagement, such as connecting the best company resources to the customer at the right moment, feeding back the learnings from these engagements to predict future customer behaviour, like their future purchasing patterns – and marketing to them accordingly.
Proactive marketing is about triggering the response you want
Technology (and the data that it uses as fuel) is the marketer’s best friend. The way you build your customer engagement has to be using a proactive/preemptive approach – remodelling the customer experience via technology as a way to increase satisfaction and dramatically reduce costs.
A good initial course of action would be to monitor customer journeys and see where to proactively trigger an outreach. With our customers, for example, our SMS, interactive voice messaging and visual touch solutions are all playing key roles in supporting proactive outbound communications that notify customers of key relevant events, such as in-store or online promotions.
Let’s consider a real-world example. Amazon, Argos, Currys and Tesco are among the leading British vendors who’ve signed up for Black Friday 2016. Scheduled for Friday, 25 November, we’re all onboard for a hectic, 24-hour sale.
From the retailer’s point of view, how do you ensure, with all the noise and commotion of the shopping weekend, that your customers know what you are offering?
How about a feature that allows brands to drop calendar items direct into a brand follower’s mobile from a text? That means you can personalise the Black Friday experience into something valuable for your target customers – personalisation that marks you out as a proactive customer experience leader, in the way Forrester suggests.
A major retailer we’re working did just that: customers will get reminders about shop opening hours and specific promotions direct to their phones, making it highly convenient for them to plan their shopping experience. We’re also adding in a location option so the brand can drop in reminders about Black Friday promos that link to where the nearest store or outlet is, where those deals can be found.
DX has to be about useful omnichannel interaction
The real takeaway is that proactive engagement is nothing but a delivery solutions (DX) slogan if it’s not about useful interaction.
The best interactions build from real conversations between you and the consumer. Consider threading inbound SMS responses with outbound replies from an agent, seeing how conversations are flowing and determining how best to prompt customers to next steps – whether via text, phone, email or web.
Proactive is what the future looks like for the switched-on digital marketer, then –it’s the best way to help demanding customers in a world where the competition is only ever one click away, and where not being proactive enough can lead to an unhappy time on social media with frustrated customers, if you’re not on top of your game.
By Steve Robertson, sales and marketing director at VoiceSage
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