Experience

BLOG

Branded Customer Experience: Three Steps to Higher Impact

The right positioning, experience principles and design parameters reinforce what is unique about your brand.

Companies have become hyper-focused on delivering frictionless customer experiences, often stripped down to the simplest elements, that brand identity has become an afterthought. With many brands using the same technology platforms and focused on the same goals of “ease” and “speed,” the experiences often begin to fade into a sea of sameness. Too often, the three clicks customers used to book a luxurious escape to a high-end resort, feels exactly the same as that of an overnight at a roadside motel.

Branded experiences remind consumers why they prefer some brands over others and reinforce unique company positioning while encouraging ongoing brand loyalty. Yes, they should be streamlined and seamless. But simple doesn’t have to mean bland. When customer interactions consistently reflect your brand’s unique values, they create lasting impressions that drive loyalty. When everyone is offering speed and convenience, companies must find ways to be memorable. That’s because each customer experience, no matter what channel, is a valuable chance to gain relevance. When businesses offer experiences that feel generic, they miss opportunities to deepen connections with customers.

“Simple doesn’t have to mean bland.”

Some companies excel. No one thinks of Costco as just another supermarket – they remember all the times an enthusiastic employee has offered them a tasty free sample or satisfied their cranky toddler with a $1.50 hot dog. And who doesn’t love the way Disney’s magic band allows beloved park characters to know your child’s name without asking?

But when experiences are off-brand, they are destructive. Ask anyone who has recently flown an airline that promised safety but then crams passengers together or has shopped a fitness brand that focuses on self-care but shames larger body sizes.

Critical Connections for High-Impact Experiences

When companies produce unremarkable customer experiences, we typically find the same cause: marketing, product and experience don’t come together early enough. Instead, each group works in their individual silo and by the time they meet to “collaborate,” they’re already entrenched in less-than-ideal solutions. While all three teams are focused on customers, the internal dynamics need to align to provide more clarity on the role each plays.

To be effective, companies need to spell out:

Brand positioning: The brand strategy is the foundation of customer experience. It is what encircles every aspect of how customers meet your brand. Brand positioning delineates a brand’s purpose, promise and principles and should be internalized by employees and resonate with customers.

Experience principles: Overseen by the experience team, these carefully developed standards explain how a company delivers its brand through user experiences and categories of interactions. Experience principles are inspired by brand principles and act as a filter for what differentiates the branded customer experience from its competitors. They guide the team as they develop experience concepts and signature brand moments.

Design parameters: These are the nitty-gritty details that ensure experiences are both helpful to customers and offer genuine moments of brand connection. They guide audience-specific touchpoints, such as products, channels and service. They reflect the brand and experience at the most precise moments, like when a Chick-Fil-A employee says, “My pleasure” instead of “You’re welcome.”

These three components make up the tenets of success. When teams use them to develop projects they are no longer just functional moments —they become branded building blocks that drive emotional responses from consumers. Each parameter clicks into a growing universe of interactions, deliberately reinforcing the brand’s relevance in people’s lives.

3 Tenets of Branded Experience Design

The Three-Step Secret to Powerful Customer Experiences

There are three moves organizations can make to immediately enrich customer experiences.

Come to a High-Level Agreement on the Value of Branded Experiences: Once companies understand that these are a critical component of brand relevance, it’s easier to break down silos. Organizations can avoid tensions and increase productivity when their goal — to create memorable moments of engagement — is aligned from the beginning.

Infuse Brand Strategy in Each Step: It’s important to make the distinction that brand is not more valuable than customer experience. Though brand positioning should be considered at every level of decision-making, encouraging brand police is also not the answer. To do this, the brand team must work harder to distill and communicate a positioning strategy that is most helpful to the experience and product teams. They should also check in with one another early and often, to make sure brand identity isn’t compromised.

Prioritize the Branded Moments That Matter Most: In an ideal world, there would be enough time and money to make every touchpoint perfect. But for most companies, certain moments matter more. Using the experience principles and journey maps will illuminate areas where your brand can best delight customers and differentiate itself from that sea of sameness.

By identifying these areas, teams can focus on what we call signature moments. Signature moments are proof points for customers, embodying the brand’s promise. They aim to elicit specific, positive emotions that relate to the brand’s positioning. Signature moments deepen the relationship with customers, reminding them of what the brand stands for and why they’ve made the right choice. Whether it’s Spotify’s Year in Review, Nike’s self-driven in-store digital exploration or BMW’s driver experiences (including on-ice training in Austria), these connect with customers in ways that are much larger than a single transaction.

Reimagine
Brands

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

Companies need to bring brand, product and experience teams together early on to create branded customer experiences that stand out in a sea of sameness. Not only does early collaboration result in powerful signature moments, but it also paves the way for a smoother experience evolution as market needs and consumer expectations remain ever-changing.

Looking for ways to help your organization create branded customer experiences that lead to growth? Contact our team today.

CONNECT WITH US

BLOG

4 Steps to Optimizing the Remote Employee Experience

It’s time to re-evaluate what works best–and what that means for recruitment, retention and profits.

Remote teams want a better employee experience. Where to start?

Getting work done remotely isn’t the issue. It’s getting it done well, in a way that’s best for the organization and most engaging for the virtual workforce.

Through our efforts in digital transformation, customer and employee experience and cultural change management, we’re discovering straightforward approaches that companies can implement quickly. And by focusing on increasing employee engagement and productivity, they are leading companies to more effective–and even transformational– solutions.

Learning the ropes of engaging a remote workforce

It goes without saying that the work-from-home trend was well underway before the pandemic began. Many companies have long allowed at least some employees to contribute remotely. These organizations are already enjoying long-term benefits. They recruit the best talent from all over the world, regardless of location. And they enjoy a higher retention rate, especially among Millennials and Gen Z workers, who crave a better work/life balance, shorter commutes and more affordable housing.

But with the global surge in home-based workers holding strong, it’s important for all companies to design the best remote employee experience. That means supporting the company’s purpose, culture and customers, as well as its people.

4 Steps to Optimizing the Remote Employee Experience

Step 1: Start by analyzing workflows

Smart companies are treating the evolved employee experience as an opportunity to accelerate digital transformation, digging into which internal workflows might remain virtual for the long-term, even as recommendations of social distancing begin to ease.

To continue to identify workflows that make the best fit, implement metrics for what’s working so far, measuring productivity and engagement in all departments.

Step 2: Create engagements that support the culture

Zapier, a global remote company that helps users integrate web applications, has been primarily remote since it started back in 2011. To increase the sense of collaboration, it hosts a weekly Design Club, a digital open house that allows anyone in the company to present work for feedback. Anything is fair game, including research plans, visual designs and new concepts from product teams.

Using a Design Club channel on Slack and a weekly Design Club video call, colleagues can sign up to receive asynchronous or real-time critiques from their peers and stakeholders. It fosters an inclusive culture of appreciating and leveraging diverse perspectives, giving people visibility into what others are working on. And best of all, it improves the quality of the work.

With a little effort, most companies could implement similar ideas in less than a week.

Step 3: Review tools and applications often

Workers have grown numb to the onerous burden of email. And while switching to remote work offers much more efficient options, like Slack, Teams and Zoom, they can be just as paralyzing if they’re poorly managed. Finding the right mix and balance of communications channels becomes even more critical for a remote workforce.

Pay close attention to what seems to be working, and what’s burying staff in pointless group alerts and notifications. In an interview, Matt Mullenwegg, founder of Automattic, which operates WordPress.com and a host of other properties, discussed the importance of trial-and-error in building a virtual company with 1,200 people around the world.

“Today we use an internal blogging system called P2 instead of email,” he tells Ben Thompson, author of the popular business strategy blog Stratechery. “We use Slack for real-time chats and things like Zoom for calls and meetings. But over the years, we’ve also developed just a lot of cultural things around how we use these tools.”

For example, with employees in multiple time zones, meetings in real-time become more difficult, so asynchronous options are essential.

Step 4: Keep weighing the long-term implications

What changes might remote work have on your business long term–in terms of recruitment, retention and profits?

Automaticc’s Mullenwegg often surprises people when he talks about the company’s considerable investment in employee travel. Because almost everyone is a remote worker, real-estate outlays are minimal. But it spends heavily on group meetings, bringing the entire company together at least once a year. And individual teams of up to 15 people meet more often. “There’s nothing, no technology, VR or otherwise, that has the same effect of breaking bread across the table or sharing a drink with someone, for building trust, for building communication, for getting to know someone,” he says.

“There’s no doubt that as companies adjust to the new normal, they must revisit the definition of their employee value proposition.”

For many companies, building for the future means getting past the question of whether employees will like working remotely. Not all will, just like some people hate open-floor office plans. The point is to quickly pick up on employee concerns about efficiency, productivity and engagement.

Try fostering models for continuous exploration of better ways of working remotely. Those might include a group of colleagues who have this as a side project, internal and external surveys to see what different teams and companies are doing, or a Slack channel where people share ideas.

It’s important to keep looking at new tools that are worth testing. For example, new video-conferencing platforms, such as Around, offer features like AI-driven background noise cancellation and facial focus.

Shockingly, many companies have stopped probing employee sentiment at this critical time. And if they are, they are often asking about process and technology, instead of the key question: “How is this working for you personally, and how can we make it better?” Tools like Glint, an employee-engagement platform, make this kind of pulse-checking easy.

There’s no doubt that as companies adjust to the new normal, they must revisit the definition of their employee value proposition. And as companies thread their way through the after current of the virus, , we don’t expect to see many overnight decisions. But we do believe this will be the most durable change wrought by the coronavirus and one that will benefit both employers and their employees.

The reality is that there are far more people who are underserved in their desire to work virtually than most employers realize. Many will fare better as remote team members. And as best practices continue to emerge both from digital pioneers and remote newbies, we see the best results for those who design the optimal remote employee experience. That means creating a continuous model for improvement, steadily looking for net new benefits and using the right tools for the right reasons.

Empower
Employees

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

Take command of the situation today, with these three simple steps:

  • Identify the workflows your teams indicate are best positioned for long-term success in a remote, virtual model
  • Provide the right digital tools to enable their work
  • Be flexible as needs change, requiring new tools and working methods

Continuously re-assess, finding new workflows to convert to remote teams or bring to more of a hybrid or dual model in the future. And don’t forget to consider implications for your broader employee value proposition.

Interested to learn more about how to improve the remote employee experience? Get in touch.

CONNECT WITH US

BLOG

How Five European Brands are Winning Over U.S. Consumers

IKEA, LEGO, Dyson, Spotify and BMW keep finding new ways to gain relevance.

The Prophet Brand Relevance Index® ranks hundreds of brands on the characteristics that U.S consumers find most meaningful. And while many of the usual suspects rise to the top, a year of pandemic and political upheaval has caused dramatic shifts. People are embracing and rejecting brands in entirely different ways.

This is the sixth iteration of our ground-breaking research, based on the same core principles of relentless relevance. We measure whether a brand is customer-obsessed, ruthlessly pragmatic, pervasively innovative and distinctively inspired.

Five European brands have risen fast in the relevance stakes, offering lessons that transcend industry and category and apply to any brand trying to compete in the U.S.

LEGO: Providing creative escapes for all generations

Danish brand LEGO has shot up 23 spots into 5th place this year. And while competitive toy brands like Mattel, Fisher-Price and American Girl also saw their relevance scores increase as parents adapted to their unexpected role as home-schoolers,  yet LEGO was the brand with the highest marks for innovation. Consumers love that it “engages with [with them] in new and creative ways” and perceive that it has better products, services and experiences than competitors.

Much of LEGO’s purpose is built around its commitment to helping children flex their inner architect. However, it also understands that adults hunger for creative play too, launching such products as LEGO Botanical Collection, which allows grown-ups to build flower bouquets and bonsai trees from its bioplastic components.

Spotify: Hitting those personal sweet spots

Pandemic living is zapping some of the music streaming category’s relevance, with fewer people commuting to work. Yet Swedish music maestro Spotify (#12) sits at the top of all media and entertainment companies, outperforming Pixar and Netflix. It wows in the attributes that drive customer obsession, ranking fourth among all brands in both “connects with me emotionally” and “makes me happy.”

One way it does that is by offering intuitive, adaptive and highly personalized products. It then communicates those advantages with dialed-up marketing. To introduce Spotify Premium Duo, adorable puppets dramatized couples’ challenges in sharing music accounts. And as people scrambled to find productive ways to fill the downtime created by stay-at-home orders, it introduced a digital campaign called “Music, Meet Podcasts.”

Spotify’s real relevance comes from understanding its users’ deeper yearnings. “Listening is Everything,” for example, is a brand platform that continuously reminds people of everything they love about music, doped with personalization and inventive social-media interactions. A sharp marketing effort that truly reaches users’ emotional sweet spots.

Dyson: Limitless capabilities for the ‘Apple of Appliances’

Very few companies can inspire the same sort of brand loyalty and consumer confidence as British brand Dyson.  Jumping up to #30 in this year’s ranking, up from #51, its commitment to continuous innovation sees it disrupting markets and outpacing the competition. The brand reimagines mundane domestic appliances – such as vacuum cleaners, air purifiers and hair dryers – to spectacularly enhance their utility. And with more people spending time at home over the past year, appliance-buying has been on the rise.

Respondents rated Dyson highly for being modern and in touch, engineering technology to actively destroy harmful gases in the air and to dry our hands in rapid time – just in time for the world’s obsession with hand hygiene.

But good products alone are not enough to win consumer favor today. Nor is it about innovation for novelty’s sake. Consumers want products and services that align with their personal values and genuinely benefit the greater good too. As a brand built on ‘lean engineering,’ Dyson is devoted to making things more efficient while using less resources – putting sustainability is at the center of its business.  Whether they are better for the planet, for people – or both – purchasing a pricey but environmentally responsible Dyson product makes consumers feel good about their buying decisions.

IKEA: Offering initiatives that support a shared sense of purpose

With hundreds of millions of people staying safer-at-home, the living room couch became the center of the universe. So did the need to quickly turn laundry rooms into office nooks, kitchen tables into classrooms and bedrooms into a place to hide from the rest of the family. This was IKEA’s moment in the sun. It sailed into the #42 spot, up from #93, easily passing such companies as the Home Depot, Lowe’s and Wayfair.

For all its practicality and commitment to affordable, functional furniture, its strong suit in the U.S is an inspiration. And it earns its highest scores for “having a set of beliefs and values that align with my own.” IKEA has baked purpose into everything it does since the furniture maker was founded in Sweden in 1943. Initiatives such as #buybackFriday, where the company bought back unwanted IKEA items for Black Friday, demonstrates how the brand’s North Star goes well beyond kitchen cabinets. IKEA extends its trademark warmth to everyone: One advertising effort, “Be someone’s home,” encourages people to accept all sexual orientations and gender identities.

BMW: Linking heritage to innovation

Fastest-rising brand in the automotive category? Look no further than Germany’s very own BMW. Accelerating 45 places to #67 in the BRI, its growing relevance in the U.S. could answer why BMW beat Lexus and Mercedes-Benz as the best-selling luxury car brand in the country in 2020.

With more time to think about cars and road trips, BMW stands out from other brands by aggressively showcasing what it has always stood for: Well-designed vehicles that push the boundaries of what’s expected.

Autophiles are already drooling over the BMW iX, the electric sport utility vehicle that will compete with Tesla, due in the U.S. next year. And it’s making waves with its Remote Software Upgrades. No wonder people give it such high marks for “always finding new ways to meet my needs.”

At the massive U.S. Consumer Electronics Show, BMW released a short film that both mocks and brags about its innovative history, including a car fight between a 20-year-old “Grampa” model with a smart-mouthed all-electric “Whippersnapper.” An artful blend of safety and familiarity in its marketing strategy that builds trust with U.S. consumers while emphasizing design and innovation signals its commitment to continually improving.

“Consumers want products and services that align with their personal values and genuinely benefit the greater good too.”

Reimagine
Brands

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

Of course, we know that the brands that rank highest in the BRI aren’t doing one thing. Those leading relevant brands are pursuing multiple paths.

Here are four key areas on which to focus in order to connect better with customers:

Lead with purpose.

A compelling purpose is a roadmap for change and should drive everything a brand does.

Adopting a mindset of customer obsession.

Focusing on increasing customer understanding so they can invest in delivering products and services that truly meet an important need in their customers’ eyes.

Improving the customer experience.

Making bold steps to delight and drive loyalty. Driving more holistic, targeted and personalized omnichannel marketing efforts.

Innovation is critical.

Without innovation, organizations will not be able to grow and thrive. Many are moving at two speed, introducing products and services to address immediate needs, as well as driving a forward-thinking innovation strategy that paves the way for future business growth and success.

Want to learn more about the most relevant brands? Download the Prophet Brand Relevance Index® today. If you need help building and maintaining your brand relevance, then our expert team can help. Get in touch.

CONNECT WITH US

BLOG

Three Ways to Win With The New Digital Care Continuum

The right platforms can fix breakdowns between care settings.

Ten years ago, it was all about the patient experience. More recently, it was all about healthcare consumerism and now, the focus is shifting towards enablement – the healthcare platforms. For years, healthcare companies have been talking about the full continuum of care but nobody wanted to own it. Even when you look at the so-called Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs), they weren’t truly “integrated,” meaning their urgent care clinics, surgery centers and home care were all run as different business units by different leaders (often with different incentives).

Back in 2016, Prophet and GE Healthcare’s Patient Experience study found that because nobody owned the full care continuum, patient experiences often broke down in between care settings. At the time, we saw the opportunity for digital solutions to bridge those gaps. Now, enter the modern healthcare platforms and the digital care continuum.

“The biggest disconnect between how patients experience healthcare and how executives rate their performance was around non-clinical aspects.”

With two decades of extensive M&A activity within health systems and little improvement in the patient experiences, healthcare platforms are rapidly scaling to become not only the digital care continuum for patients but THE care continuum.  By now, we all know Teladoc Health and Livongo, as well as Carbon Health and One Medical. And let’s not forget the original healthcare platform, Kaiser Permanente. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they are approaching $100 billion in revenue. They were half of that a few years ago, and they have the leading market share in most of their markets. While not digitally native, they are more of a true platform business than virtually all of their peers of the same age.

You might be asking, what is a platform? A platform business facilitates value exchanges between two or more interdependent groups, usually consumers and suppliers. The next question becomes, how can I prepare my business for the future of healthcare platforms and digital care?

Here are a few things to consider when building your digital care continuum:

Stop Running Your Business as Self-Contained Units

Enterprises with standalone businesses and distinct P&Ls are great for managing costs, but terrible at delivering integrated care experience. This is not to say you can’t do discrete budgeting and hold people accountable for fiscal performance. But combine that with organizing and incentivizing them to create products and services that integrate into a platform that supports a patient (or any type of customer) continuum. “Warm handoffs” is a commonly used approach with today’s healthcare systems, but it’s no longer enough. It now has to be an integrated handoff. And you don’t have to be digital, Kaiser Permanente has always taken this approach.

Don’t Think About the Healthcare Experience as Care Points

Healthcare execs often say that success resides in delivering the right care, at the time, and at the right place. As patients self-navigate the U.S. healthcare system, the healthcare experience feels more like jumping from one experience to the next. As we learned in our patient experience study, the biggest disconnect between how patients experience healthcare and how executives rate their performance was around non-clinical aspects. University Health has already called out creating a seamless patient experience as a strategic priority with the digital care continuum as a critical enabler, and they intend to, offer programs and digital tools that allow patients to connect with their care team to manage episodic care or chronic diseases. Their orthopedic and pediatric cardiology specialties have utilized these tools for facilitating disease management and patient engagement. The next step for enterprises is to go beyond their specialty practices having a self-contained digital care continuum. Organizations need to view patients as people who often have multiple conditions and use health systems for a variety of care needs.

Start With the Holistic Patient Experience

It’s surprising how many large healthcare companies still don’t view patients as people. Patients with osteoporosis, heart disease and depression, are still seen as independent patients of rheumatology, cardiology, and psychiatry departments. The system is aware of the different conditions, but the experience -from treatment to bill payment to diagnostics- will differ. For pharma companies, that means three independent business units with separate brands providing drug treatments. Patients are seen as three unique conditions, not as a single, person.

Making this shift doesn’t happen overnight.  Prisma Health took its first step toward delivering a holistic patient experience by enlisting the help of PerfectService, a unified platform for clinical communication and collaboration that helps physicians, nurses and care team members improve patient care. You can’t deliver an integrated patient experience if your clinical teams can’t seamlessly collaborate on a single platform. Things like EHR systems have primarily been designed to store medical records and file claims, not optimize care coordination. Restructuring your technology footprint can go a long way to address this gap. And if you’re a digitally native healthcare provider, you’re likely already a step ahead.

Revolutionize
Experiences

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

The reality is that todays’ care continuum is still largely conceptual. ACOs are designed to own the full care continuum but they are a small fraction of the U.S. healthcare spend. Look at your own company’s claims data. For commercial plans, you’ll be fortunate if 25 percent of the claims are tied to a value-based care model, and don’t be surprised if it’s under 5 percent. We’re still very much living in a fee-for-service world. And while payers have visibility across the care continuum, they don’t often have full control. Providers typically focus on just one area; primary care, specialty service lines, post-acute care, etc. which is why understanding the emerging modern healthcare platforms is so critical. Whether it is the rapid expansion of digital natives like Teladoc Health, legacy players going through a transformation like Prisma Health, or the steady growth of Kaiser Permanente, it’s coming faster you think.

For more help in getting your healthcare organization ready for the new world of healthcare platforms, and winning with the new digital care continuums, connect with our healthcare team.

CONNECT WITH US

BLOG

The Experience Revolution: Three Essential Innovation Trends

How equity-centered design, digital project management and profitable waste can spark brand-new concepts.

While 2020 may go down in history as among the most challenging years, it’s been a surprisingly encouraging time for those working in experience and innovation. As the pandemic pushed stuck-at-home people into an almost entirely digital world, they had time to think about bigger questions–like social justice and community impact.

Without their usual in-person channels, companies scrambled into new realms of inventiveness, often accomplishing difficult tasks in days and weeks. Braced by this crash course in risk-taking, many are emerging with clear eyes and new energy.

Amid so many changes, we believe three trends will shape the months ahead. Smart companies are already using them as a springboard to a stronger purpose and uncommon growth.

Equity-Centered Design Goes Mainstream

The intersection of social responsibility and design isn’t new. But between Black Lives Matter protests and stark inequities, CX and innovation strategists spent much of 2020 asking each other hard questions. As a result, organizations are taking a closer at how their work perpetuates (and possibly amplifies) the deepening of privilege in a world full of unequal access, opportunities and outcomes.

That means enlarging definitions of human-centered design by expanding to community-focused thinking. And it requires stepping beyond the usual approach of designing for an individual, persona or archetype, making decisions based on empathy and inclusion.

“By thinking beyond the “average” person, companies often find innovations that benefit everyone.”

We expect more companies to strive to design for fairness, especially as it becomes clear that doing so can lead to growth. Tapping into previously ignored markets, such as the disabled, non-English speakers and older consumers, are important avenues for new customers. Microsoft’s Seeing AI app, for instance, was developed by a designer who is blind, recognizes facial expressions, reads documents and more for people with visual limitations. But by thinking beyond the “average” person, companies often find innovations that benefit everyone. Those include easier-to-navigate digital experiences, better audio services and more accessible product design.

Certainly, these innovations can prevent legal troubles down the line. But the best design thinking includes equity from the very beginning, not as a late-in-the-game modification from the compliance department.

Led by organizations like the Creative Reaction Lab and the Stanford DSchool, more practitioners recognize that good experiences must reflect diversity, equity and inclusion at every level. Often, that means including inspirational stories of people who have been shut out in the past. Fairness serves the triple bottom line—profits, people and the planet.

Digital Project Management Grows Up

By now, businesses are well aware that digital projects need continuous management, led by a professional community of digital natives. But increasingly, companies are switching from a project management perspective to one of product management. The former are things a company makes. The latter are businesses that must be managed.

That means viewing them through the lens of finance, governed by profit and loss. Companies like Google have always done this. But increasingly, legacy brands, including CapitalOne, are waking up to the reality that these digital efforts are core to an organization’s value chain. This isn’t a fad. It’s a fundamental way of organizing. Rather than evaluating their work as engineering projects delivered on time and on budget, these professionals are becoming mini-CEOs.

Mature Enterprises Learn to be Young Again, Warming Up to the Reality of Profitable Waste

Google, with its well-publicized history of rewarding failure and encouraging moonshots, has gotten more than its share of attention, especially for Google X. But older companies know they have to become young again if they want to keep pace with digital natives. And more of these legacy brands–including Philips, Verizon 5G, Citi and Nestle–are owning up to the reality that meaningful innovation can’t be predicted in advance. When businesses take only small chances, they can only achieve small wins.

Businesses are aware of this, of course. A study from Partners In Leadership found that 84 percent of executives agree that their company’s future depends on innovation. But only 37 partners in their organization are willing to take the necessary risks.

These forward-looking companies are, in effect, learning to plan for breakage. This new realism means recognizing that every success may have required ten flops. They’re developing more practical ways to encourage risks. And most importantly, they are looking for new ways to measure success and reward innovation.

Those that don’t do this will have to be content with small incremental wins while bolder competitors make meaningful gains.

Revolutionize
Experiences

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

Consistent with the notion that times of great struggle can bring great changes, we are seeing long-standing constructs in design and innovation evolve in new directions. Diversity, equity and inclusion are increasingly becoming requisite elements of product and service experience design methodologies and outcomes. The way in which successful digital product creation is positioned and prioritized within an enterprise is not only connected to project delivery but to strategic accountability and tangible business results.

And while ambiguity has long been something that designers and innovator leaders have needed to be comfortable with, they also need to be open to productive waste that leads to bigger and bolder outcomes in the end. The most successful companies will be those that embrace and apply these shifts in thoughtful and scalable ways.

To learn more about innovation-led transformation for your organization, contact us today.

CONNECT WITH US

REPORT

Reclaiming Interest: A Transformation Playbook for the Insurance Industry

Learn to transform your organization from the inside-out, adding the capabilities and talent needed right now.

Download

While insurance companies have made much progress in reinventing themselves for today’s customers, the results are clear: there’s still some way to go. As many turn their attention toward planning and formulating their strategies for the year ahead, this playbook from our Financial Services practice outlines the different levers to pull in order to speed up digital transformation efforts and customer experience initiatives.

In this playbook you will learn:

  • How insurers can transform their organizations from the inside out by effecting culture change and equipping the business with the right talent and capabilities to succeed in 2021.
  • How a customer-centric approach can help your business, how to get started and how to measure you efforts.
  • What the state of transformation is in the industry today and the reasons to hit the gas now.

Download the full report below.

Identify
Growth
Pathways

RELATED SERVICE

Download Reclaiming Interest: A Transformation Playbook for the Insurance Industry

*Fill in all required fields

Thank you for your interest in Prophet’s research!

DOWNLOAD NOW!

BLOG

Human or Abstract? Defining Your Conversational Brand Experience

Gender, name, visual identity and personality all factor into what a brand should sound like.

Consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with voice technology. Digital assistants, whether chatbots or voice agents, can bring brands to life in new ways, adding personality, differentiation, warmth – and even humor. They can turn static digital experiences into dynamic conversations, deepening the connection between brands and their customers.

The Conversational Brand: Strategy for a Digital-First World report by Altimeter, Prophet’s research arm, outlines the key decisions to consider to bring a conversational experience to life. The report seeks to answer the following questions:

  • What is the role of the conversational experience in the broader brand portfolio?
  • How closely linked should it be to the master brand?
  • What use cases will it deliver on?
  • What benefits will it bring to its users and to the company?

If the goal of the conversational experience is owned by one product or channel, it may look and talk very differently than if its role is to represent the master brand and provide a connective thread across different touchpoints.

Human or Abstract: That Is the Question

First, one must decide how to design the persona –either human-like or abstract. The main factor that should influence this decision is the strategic intent of the conversational experience: is the goal to humanize the brand? To create a deeper relationship with customers? To stand out in the market with a relatable character? If the answer to these questions is yes, then a human-like persona may be preferred. If, on the other hand, the goal of the experience is to automate repetitive tasks, to increase the speed of transactions, or to simplify processes in the background, then an abstract persona may be preferred.

In practice…

When AXA asked Prophet to create a conversational experience, we aligned on some clear strategic objectives: deepen customer engagement while humanizing the AXA brand as it was making the shift from payer to partner. A human-like avatar made the most sense, and so Emma was born. We built Emma to become an empathetic navigator, helping customers easily navigate the journey – from accessing services and making claims to reviewing health information and checking symptoms.

“The experience is futuristic and high-tech to create a futuristic and high-tech identity.”

Choosing a human conversational identity is an approach other companies are finding success with, as well. For example, Microsoft recently announced that it would turn Xiaoice, its highly empathetic chatbot, into her own entity, paving the way for new licenses and ventures.

Microsoft has described this virtual teenager as “sometimes sweet, sometimes sassy and always streetwise.” She’s fond of joking with users, even offering encouraging advice on life and love. With 660 million users worldwide, Xiaoice works on multiple chat services and is trained on data that Microsoft gleaned through the Bing search engine.

In addition to its abstract Google Assistant, Google is developing Meena, a human-like avatar that observers expect to deliver the best conversational AI yet.

But for some purposes, abstract identities offer more possibilities. For example, Bixby, Samsung’s digital assistant, is designed to help customers unlock their Samsung devices’ full potential. Bixby is an always-on feature. But instead of simply following commands, it’s built to have conversations. It encourages exploration and offers insightful curation, all the while making the everyday tasks feel easier.

In other words, it acts as a users’ bright sidekick, bringing together more information than a human could possibly manage. And while the technology is friendly, its features are best expressed through an abstract experience, not a human one. The experience is futuristic and high-tech to create a futuristic and high-tech identity. Even its name is not human, which allows it to appear and perform consistently in markets worldwide.

Developing Your Brand’s Conversational Identity

Once a company has decided what type of AI assistant it will create, there are still many decisions to make in developing its identity. For example, we established guidelines for the many ways Emma communicates with consumers, allowing personality to shine through in every interaction. She is curious, smart and thoughtful, determined to help users take care of their physical, financial and emotional well-being. Even her physical appearance is distinctive: She’s an approachable Pan-Asian woman with a little French flair.

Often, these seem like minor details. But digital assistants are functional, transactional touchpoints that benefit from small, purposeful doses of personality, including:

Gender

Users expect a gender even in abstract assistants. If it’s not immediately apparent, they’ll often ask. Both Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, for example, are positioned as vaguely female. And Samsung made this question a core part of the Bixby’s user experience, with devices prompting people to assign Bixby a voice that is either male or female.

Names

Even beyond suggesting gender, names are a key part of developing an identity. Some names sound young. Some sound formal. Choosing a too familiar name might at first make customers think they’re dealing with an actual human. And some names have specific class, geographic or even religious associations.

Visual Representation

Since users see these assistants while they are talking, aesthetic considerations are important. These questions go far beyond simple graphic design and are at the heart of strategic positioning. Should the assistant look like it is closely connected to the master brand? Should the visuals be able to translate into more extensive advertising efforts? Or can it take on new dimensions, possibly paving the way for new offers, markets and customers?

Personality

Customers will only respond to digital representations that are likable. Like in real human relationships, personality traits shape communication. Should it be bold? Curious? Serious? Funny? Thoughtful? Clever? A Gen Z customer expects a different type of conversation than a Baby Boomer does. Use cases also matter – customers probably won’t feel like joking if they’re sick or just lost their credit card.

But ultimately, the best choices all support the strategic foundation, turning digital assistants into brand allies. And built carefully, with thoughtful updates as more data is collected, they can spark growth and deepen digital connections.

Revolutionize
Experiences

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

When designing the conversational experience’s identity, merely finding an interesting avatar or mascot is not enough. It is crucial to consider the strategic imperatives to make the experience consistent with the master brand.

Interested in developing a powerful digital experience and virtual assistant for your brand? Contact us today.

CONNECT WITH US

BLOG

The Way Forward – Key Tips to Reimagine Your Business in Southeast Asia

The future lies in an agile operating model, diversified delivery models and reimagined stores.

his is the second article of our two-part series “Digital Transformation in Times of Turbulence” originally published on Brandberries.

“What’s next? The future of shopping will continue to be conducted largely from the home, while remote learning, gaming, cashless and proximity payments will all ramp up and become the norm.”

Thriving in the post-COVID-19 future will ultimately require changes in how companies think about staying relevant to consumers while managing increased operational complexity, as well as potential delays in the rebound of demand and customer traffic. Combined with sales migration toward online channels and the renewed focus on value, these changes could contribute to margin compression. Moreover, there are certain behaviors that are likely to shift fundamentally, requiring reconsideration of the consumer proposition and companies’ go-to-market strategy and operating model.

What’s the “New Possible”? Four Tips to Reimagine Your Business

New attitudes toward physical distance, health and remote working will create opportunities related to therapeutic properties and mental wellbeing. Companies will work to diversify supply chains while continuing to invest in digital tech and virtual experiences to maintain engagement. Based on our research, there are four tips to prepare for the Next Possible:

  1. Rethink Role of Physical Store
  2. Rethink and Diversify Delivery Model
  3. Double Down on Digital
  4. Embrace an Agile Operating Model

1. Rethink Role of Physical Store

Although digital shopping has accelerated, physical stores retain appeal. Consumers in SEA expressed the desire to return to physical stores, particularly to shop for apparel, mobile phones and domestic appliances. Clobbered by the crushing effects of the pandemic, thousands of retailers from Bangkok to Singapore have rushed to set up online shops on big e-commerce platforms to stay afloat this year. Now shopping malls across the region are going virtual for the first time. The pandemic has pushed retailers to move beyond the traditional view that physical locations are primarily for in-store customer engagement. Promising new models have begun to take hold.

New Replica Virtual Mall

In Singapore, Marina Square Shopping Mall — nestled among luxury hotels and popular tourist attractions — is taking more than 30 of its tenants online with Lazada, the Southeast Asian arm of Alibaba Group. It’s the first shopping center in the city-state to create a mini virtual replica of its physical mall. This follows similar moves by Siam Center, a landmark shopping mall in Bangkok built in the 1970s, which teamed up with Lazada to set up its virtual mall with about 40 tenants. In Indonesia, more than 100 tenants of three malls by developer Pakuwon Group are going live on Lazada. Lazada, which operates in six countries in Southeast Asia, launched its virtual mall called Lazmall in 2018, allowing brands to set up their own online stores.

Bring an In-Store Feel to the Digital Experience

The inability to engage customers in a physical environment has pushed some retailers to bring more of the in-store experience online. First, leading retailers have substituted in-store personalized interactions with offerings such as virtual appointments, where sales associates use videoconferencing platforms to offer personalized attention to customers. Similarly, retailers are using live streaming to engage with customers and increase revenue and loyalty by sharing experiential content. Second, retailers have been developing alternative engagement models to take the risk out of digital-purchasing decisions. In apparel and fashion, for example, one of the main impediments to online purchasing has historically been the inability for customers to see how items would look on them. Jewelry brand Kendra Scott is tackling that problem by launching a new platform, Virtual Try-On, which uses augmented reality (AR), machine-learning and computer-vision techniques. Shopify, which allows its merchants to add 3-D models to their product pages, found that conversion rates increased by 250 percent when consumers viewed 3-D products in AR.

2. Rethink and Diversify Delivery Model

COVID-19 has heightened the importance of safe delivery modes, including curbside pick-up and aggregator delivery. Retailers have scrambled to launch services to meet this demand. Retailers are also reassessing store formats to support third-party delivery services. Some groceries are creating “speed zones” near the front of the store and stocking them with the most popular items to enable delivery companies to accelerate pick, pack and delivery of orders.

New Partnership to Enhance Convenience

Many retailers have explored strategic partnerships to enhance convenience for customers and boost sales. These new ecosystems allow retailers to gain access to new capabilities and extend their brand reach to new customers. There will be higher expectations for offline experiences to create even higher value beyond what can now (mostly) be done online. Customers can order from food halls or PD Pasar Jaya (Wet market) through Whatsapp in Indonesia, and goods will be delivered via Gojek. The Singapore government also helps food and beverage owners go digital through the Food Delivery Booster Package. Aprindo, which groups about 150 local and national retail companies with a total of around 45,000 outlets across Indonesia, launched a novelty “Park & Pickup” feature. It allows customers to order their groceries via WhatsApp or the Hypermart online store and pick up their orders at the parking lot. There’s no need to get out of the car because staff will deliver the goods to the car.

3. Double down on Digital

As consumers use more digital channels, it is important for companies to ensure that their experiences at each touchpoint are consistent, generate delight and further enhance companies’ understanding of consumers. This requires brands and companies to not only be open to shifting their marketing messages but also invest in analytics capabilities and reallocate financial and talent resources as needed.

Dial up the Acquisition and Drive Traffic to Digital Assets

Retailers can partially offset diminished foot traffic in physical stores by boosting investments in online acquisition. With more investment in online marketing, winners are adapting their strategies to account for shifts in consumer behavior.

Extend Digital-Channel Presence and Engagement

Shelter-in-place orders have led companies to test new methods of customer engagement. Many retailers with established mobile apps have cited record downloads, while others sought to make up ground quickly. In addition, while building and nurturing online communities are not new ideas, they have gained significant momentum. Retailers are augmenting direct customer interactions with engagement in apps and other relevant channels. Nike, for example, activated its digital community by offering virtual workouts and saw an 80 percent increase in weekly active users of its app.

Ensure That the Digital Experience Is Truly ‘Zero Friction’

Customer expectations are rising for digital channels in terms of site loading speed, stability and delivery times. To keep pace, retailers should start by designing web pages that are optimized for digital shopping. For example, making the highest-selling (and ideally highest-margin) products easy to find helps to make the customer journey more seamless. The first page of Lazada listings receives nearly two-thirds of all product clicks. With more customers now engaging through mobile devices, retailers must ensure that all digital channels are integrated and offer consistent services (such as payment options) and experiences (such as shopping carts updated in real-time across devices).

4. Embrace an Agile Operating Model

The pace of change in the post-pandemic environment will force retailers to continually reassess their strategies. This approach requires more real-time insights on customers as well as a new agile operating model to harness these insights and put them into action. The next normal is still taking shape, and customer expectations will continue to shift in response. Retailers that focus on customer experience and respond with agility and innovation in their omnichannel experiences will fare better and strengthen their ties to customers.

Real-Time Behavioral Tracking

Before the pandemic, digital leaders were using data to optimize customer experience, gauge satisfaction, identify foot traffic trends and generate purchase recommendations. Winning retailers are moving beyond surveys as a mechanism for customer input and toward near-real-time tracking of consumer trends and behavior With the rise of digital in recent months, companies will have even more dynamic data at their fingertips, and they can use these data to extract immediate insights. For example, many retailers have seen an influx of new customers to physical stores (for essential retail) or digital channels. Winners will generate insights from these new customers and construct targeted retention plans, messages and offers to maintain the customer relationship in this era of brand switching and cost-consciousness. Social media is another channel that offers insights on rapidly changing consumer behaviors.

Agile Innovation and Test & Launch

By adopting agile practices alongside the generation of real-time consumer insights, retailers can more quickly re-calibrate their business model and offerings to meet consumer expectations. Retailers need to raise their metabolic rate—that is, the speed at which they process information and develop new offerings. The speed at which some retailers have been able to stand up new omnichannel models (for example, launching a new delivery business in three weeks) shows what a truly agile operating model can unleash. A rapid approach to tests and trials can enable retailers to launch offerings at scale more quickly and avoid losing share in the face of shifting consumer behavior.

—

This is the second article of our two-part series “Digital Transformation in Times of Turbulence”. Read the first part of our series here to learn more about the emerging consumer trends in the new normal in Southeast Asia.

Identify
Growth
Pathways

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

As the saying goes, “disrupt or be disrupted.”

For those who think and hope things will basically go back to the way they were: Stop. They won’t. All businesses, especially retailers, that do not start embracing digital as part of their business strategy may see themselves left behind as their businesses falter.

Finally, shoppers still appreciate the “touch and feel experience” of physical stores. As such stores need to reimagine end-to-end consumer engagement on digital channels and seamlessly link online and offline experiences to radically accelerate in-store omnichannel integration. Companies that are both digital and offline, rather than one or the other, will be better positioned in the days ahead—especially if they can use both to create a mutually reinforcing customer ecosystem.

Contact us to learn more about what levers you can pull to reimagine your business for uncommon growth in the post-COVID-19 era.

CONNECT WITH US

BLOG

The Human Need for Shared Spaces

The human need for shared spaces

As businesses welcome people back after months of fear and uncertainty, nearly all have been forced to think differently about their “shared spaces.” For all the anxiety about the details, (Are we opening too soon? Too slow?) there’s an undeniable joy, too. People want to be together.

“I don’t know when it will be safe to return,” wrote musician Dave Grohl, in a recent Atlantic Monthly essay about the return of live concerts. “But I do know that we will do it again, because we have to. It’s not a choice. We’re human…we need each other.”

Businesses know this is true. And in amazingly short order, they’re figuring out the safety protocols, redesigning experiences for physical distance and better sanitation. But the post-pandemic reopening is offering the opportunity for something much bigger: A complete reimagining of these spaces, a reset of their purpose, a shift to in their development and, most of all, a new standard for trust.

The smartest companies are asking how they can use this moment not just to reignite, but also to accelerate the transformation that was in front of them even before the crisis. Doing so requires a teardown of current thinking, with great sensitivity to the many ways the world has changed. These leaders aren’t waiting around for “the new normal.” They are looking ahead to what some are calling “New Possible.”

Purpose: Finding meaning in shared spaces

From retailers and restaurants, to hotels and hospitals, the best practices for sanitation, hygiene and crowd density become clearer every day. Many organizations are making customers and employees protection from illness their highest priority. But now that doors are opening, what’s missing is the bigger issue of purpose, and why these spaces exist at all.

Their function is obvious. Everyone knows what people do at airports, theaters and sushi bars. But that’s not the same as understanding purpose. These places exist to connect, inspire and nourish us, to feed our larger need to be with others. It’s what we feel in these spaces, not what we buy there. Companies need to take this moment to reimagine the potential of shared spaces to fill these deeper needs.

Office buildings are a good example. Initially designed as a place for productivity, architects typically devoted 70 percent to productivity-focused areas and 30 percent to collaboration spaces, such as conference rooms and teaming rooms. Now that we know people can be productive anywhere, offices need a new purpose and perhaps a different allocation of space. Are they centers for occasional collaboration? Are they places where coworkers can bond and support each other?

Service design: Empathy-driven innovation

Increasingly, companies are viewing shared spaces with an eye toward service design, which means treating space as a tool to make lives easier for those who use them. They’re developing new experience principles, and aligning those with overall business strategy.

That includes physical innovations to make layouts, interiors, materials, fixtures, furnishings and equipment work together to deliver effective yet safer interactions. New spaces will be easier for employees to sanitize, and built in a way that this cleanliness is evident to worried customers.

Digital tools in physical spaces play an enormous role. These include no-touch operations, such as motion actuation, facial recognition, voice activation and gestural interfaces. Mobile devices are emerging as a critical component, allowing for seamless experiences within a physical space, developing “sensing” capabilities and user-data capture to track behaviors for better and safer operations.

Some of these innovations are small, obvious and even quick, like foot-activated doors. Others require major mind shifts and soon, new buildings. As health experts learn more about air quality and its role in disease transmission, for example, heating, ventilation and air conditioning are no longer architectural afterthoughts. They’ll become key considerations in new design.

Trust: Re-earning confidence

When it comes to shared spaces, nothing is as important as trust. People need to feel that they can count on the companies they deal with to keep them safe when they venture out–including protecting them from people who might be less concerned with physical distancing than they are.

Foundationally, people build relationships with brands through trust. In recent years, that’s focused on brand quality. But today, trust is measured by how the company did or did not respond to the crisis, or how it is restarting. People are asking: Do I trust this airline to keep me safe? This shoe store?

This won’t be easy, especially since many companies have already broken this trust, and continue to do so. Those that can regain customer confidence by offering safety and consistency will find themselves more relevant than their competitors.

Creating a culture of care

All three of these–purpose, service design and trust–require companies to lead with radical empathy, creating spaces where humans feel safe, respected and happy.

It calls for a culture of care. This need for empathy is profound, based on the knowledge that even as many people long to be back in shared spaces so they can feel more human, many are also frightened.

Cultural care becomes a key ingredient. Germ control and crowd management may be essential, but if handled too aggressively, they can seem hostile and unfriendly. And that can interfere with the elements of hospitality, warmth and sanctuary people crave in public spaces.

With that in mind, companies can approach every decision about physical space through these three lenses:

START: What new functions, services or physical elements should the space contain that are not part of the current design?

STOP: What functions, services or physical elements of the current model should no longer be part of the experience?

CONTINUE: What functions, services or physical elements of the current model should be kept as part of the experience?

Revolutionize
Experiences

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

Companies must remember that what matters is the experiences people have in these spaces. People will remember what companies do, not what they say, no matter how many “We’re in this together” signs they hang. The old saying “actions speak louder than words” is truer than ever.

Are you interesting in redesigning your shared spaces so your business can achieve uncommon growth tomorrow and into the future?

CONNECT WITH US

Brand Equity – Brand Value_1_A

REPORT

Post-COVID Shared Spaces: From Response to Reimagination

Shared spaces need to be reimagined. Here’s how to deliver thoughtful experiences and services.

Download

COVID-19 has changed our perceptions of physical spaces. It has caused an upheaval in how we work, shop, interact with one another and so much more. But as society re-opens, we need to move past the short-term “fixes” that many essential businesses introduced during the onset of the crisis and think about the long-term implications of what comes next.

Businesses and brands need to understand what are and what will be, the drivers of customer behavior in this next period so that they can reimagine their experiences and services to deliver against them. Without question, digitally-enabled experiences will play a major part of the “new possible” and brands need to respond and prepare their organizations today.

Read our guide to learn:

  • What does the “new possible” look like and how to accelerate transformation
  • Where to start and what are the steps required to develop the right strategy and new experience principles
  • What are the next generation experiences that will define how to operate effectively in this new environment

Download the report below.

Revolutionize
Experiences

RELATED SERVICE

Download Post-COVID Shared Spaces: From Response to Reimagination

*Fill in all required fields

Thank you for your interest in Prophet’s research!

DOWNLOAD NOW!

BLOG

Five Enablers Accelerating Digital Transformation Today

Partnerships, 5G and contactless delivery can speed the pace of change.

The post-COVID-19 era provides a unique opportunity for companies to reimagine their businesses and accelerate digital transformation. In Asia in particular, companies were already prioritizing digital transformation companies – COVID-19 has sparked an acceleration and scaling of digital efforts as consumer behaviors evolve. According to a recent Prophet survey, acceleration of overall digital transformation is the second most impacted area for companies by COVID-19, following business continuity and employee safety.

In this article, we have identified five major enablers of digital transformation that businesses should consider and capture.

1. Accelerating 5G: Fueling Innovations & Greater Connectivity

The new normal has catalyzed the need for smarter and more integrated solutions, all of which demand greater connectivity enabled by 5G. The effects on businesses are far-reaching, changing the way we approach manufacturing, logistics, public security, healthcare, entertainment and more. We have seen many industries tapping into 5G to accelerate automation. For example, mining companies across Asia have deployed intelligent unmanned mining trucks to maintain productivity and safety during COVID-19.

5G also unlocks the potential for a seamless and immersive shopping experience, making the shopper’s journey more efficient and entertaining. Chinese e-commerce player JD (京东) accelerated the implementation of its automated logistics and delivery system during the pandemic. Packages were automatically sorted in their smart warehouses and delivered to shoppers via robots and drones 24 hours a day. Alibaba’s Tmall (天猫) launched a 3D virtual shopping experience at the 618 Shopping Festival. Over 100 brands have participated in the initiative, among which, IKEA has created a 1:1 virtual showroom, bringing its 3,000 sq m Shanghai store to consumers’ mobile phones.

As 5G is being more widely deployed in China and across Asia, companies have an opportunity to reimagine their businesses from both an operational and a customer experience standpoint.

2. Virtual Business: Digitally Enabled Selling and Customer Servicing

Consumers have become comfortable with going online to fulfill needs that are traditionally served in person. Seizing this opportunity, companies have to re-design their end-to-end customer experience to enable digital engagement from discovery and purchase to after-sales service to capture and retain these new ‘digital natives.’

Retail companies have to upskill their sales employees as they adapt and migrate their sales force online. Cosmo Lady (都市丽人), one of China’s largest underwear and lingerie companies, transformed its employees into a WeChat salesforce with the aim of achieving closer proximity to consumers.

Financial institutions are also evolving their traditional way of interacting with customers through digital tools. In May 2020, Citibank HK introduced its industry-first remote video insurance application service, where financial advisors can recommend and sell insurance products through virtual meetings.

Coming out of the COVID-19 crisis, many companies have an opportunity to rethink their selling and customer service processes to be far more digital and in tune with customers’ new expectations.

3. Unexpected Partnerships: Creating New Value for Consumers

Companies across industries have shown tremendous resourcefulness during the pandemic in creating new solutions through partnerships. To create new and integrated customer experiences, they looked beyond ancillary partnerships to combine capabilities, resources and technologies in innovative ways.

Global FMCG giants are exploring partnerships across industries to create new offerings, especially when traditional channels are faltering. In India, P&G partnered with Swiggy, a food delivery app, to deliver essential household products to consumers, in the absence of a delivery supply chain.

Companies are also sharing their consumer ecosystem as a new media platform to amplify their reach to a broader audience. Back in March this year, H&M granted the Red Cross access to its official Instagram account to spread health and safety messages to the brand’s 120 million followers, compared to the health organization’s 300,000 followers.

Companies that are constantly seeking out new ways to create value through various resources and capabilities will be the leaders of tomorrow.

4. Data Exchange Unlocked: Mainstream Acceptance

Big data has been an invaluable tool for companies to identify and respond to consumer needs in creative and agile ways. While privacy concerns have always been a sensitive issue, the pandemic has made consumers become more comfortable with sharing data and having it tracked across platforms, in exchange for safety, health, transparency and efficiency. The many success stories of government-led, data-driven contact-tracing programs implemented in South Korea, Singapore and China, have shifted consumers’ perceptions and opened up their minds to what is acceptable.

But there is a caveat. Consumers now hold even higher expectations for the value they get in return from the data they share. Therefore, companies must find ways to deliver greater value in exchange for more data. For example, gaming hardware company Razer is giving out free surgical face masks to every adult Singaporean. In exchange, consumers are required to download the Razer Pay app and register their personal info for verification.

In the world of finance, global financial institutions are creating new, appealing offers in exchange for customers’ personal data. DBS Bank in Singapore launched a 30-day free COVID-19 relief insurance for its customers. To enjoy the free coverage, customers needed to provide information about their demographics, finance and health. DBS saw 52,000 sign-ups within a day, showing that customers are willing to share data in exchange for the desired value.

Thinking of the post-COVID-19 era, companies need to reconsider how they access and collect data and whether value they provide in exchange makes it worthwhile and acceptable to customers.

5. Contactless Economy: A New Mindset Towards Customer Experience

For years, advances in digital technology have been raising the expectations for convenience. But in a post-COVID-19 world, convenience is no longer simply about speed or being frictionless, it is also about being contactless – eliminating the need for any human contact or interaction.

Prominent service providers in Southeast Asia like Gojek and Grab, have become a critical node for the e-commerce business during COVID-19 as consumers opt for contactless delivery due to health and safety concerns. Hotels and restaurants that were previously shielded away from a direct-to-consumer delivery service are now partnering with Gojek and Grab to sustain their business.

The new normal consumers have embraced the contactless experience and are expecting more value beyond safety and hygiene. To respond to these needs, global retailers are investing in technology to deliver superior experiences. To address the frequent issue of buying the wrong shoe size online, Nike introduced the app Nike Fit for customers to find the right size by scanning their feet, eliminating the need to go to a physical store.

There is a new mandate for businesses to adopt a ‘contactless mindset’ and to rethink their operations and customer experiences, even after the pandemic is over.

“The post-COVID-19 era provides a unique opportunity for companies to reimagine their businesses and accelerate digital transformation.”

Identify
Growth
Pathways

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

There is no doubt that businesses will have to stay digitally agile in this new normal. By understanding these important enablers that have come to shape digital transformation, business leaders can identify new opportunities and map out their next growth moves.

What to do next to spark uncommon growth in the new normal? Stay tuned for the final part of our series, in which we will discuss the distinct patterns emerging across industries and the unique opportunities for businesses to accelerate their digital transformation agenda.

Download the full PDF report here, or read the first part of the series, where we explored the new consumer perspectives and habits to have emerged in the post-COVID-19 era.

Connect to learn more about what levers you can pull to reimagine your business for uncommon growth in the post-COVID-19 era.

CONNECT WITH US

BLOG

4 Ways Financial Services Companies are Supporting Customers Through COVID-19

Look for new and empathetic ways to offer guidance and provide relief.

COVID-19 is undeniably reshaping how we live and work. 

Financial services companies may be better positioned than some other industries to weather this storm, but they – and the customers they serve – are nonetheless grappling with a variety of major shifts. 

COVID-19 is not only impacting the way consumers and businesses interact with their financial services providers, but it is also impacting what they need from their financial services providers. For instance:

  • More businesses are seeking small business loans in response to the stimulus package. 
  • More consumers need mobile banking solutions for items they previously would have visited for in-branch.
  • Increasingly, employers need to find the best way to keep their employees updated about potentially changing benefits. 

As the effects of the COVID-19 crisis continue to unfold, we’re seeing four themes emerge.

Here’s how financial services and insurance companies are responding to the crisis today:

1. Providing an empathetic approach to addressing customers’ rapidly evolving needs, even “from a distance” 

Banks, credit card companies, and insurance providers are working to provide easy access to information in a time of high uncertainty. 

Banks that have previously been leaders in offering online banking – like Capital One and PNC – have been encouraging customers now more than ever to service their banking needs online with digital tools and services by reminding them how to check balances, pay bills, and transfer money online. They have also been expanding systems to ensure that they are able to handle an increase in inbound digital servicing. And, where possible, companies are deploying additional digital tools, including options to request payment deferrals and online chat services to enable customers to avoid longer than usual hold times at call centers.

“Companies are deploying additional digital tools, including options to request payment deferrals and online chat services to enable customers to avoid longer than usual hold times at call centers.”

Financial services and insurance companies are also empowering call service representatives to take action and address customers’ concerns directly without additional approvals. To deploy these new working norms, companies are launching additional training for customer service representatives who are bombarded by anxious customers. The trainings are focused on leading with empathy while being empowered to offer additional forms of financial relief.

2. Finding new ways to guide customers through a time of crisis

Some financial services companies are helping customers address their evolving financial situations through either an increase in available information or planning tools that enable customers to better navigate their financial picture given the uncertainty of the crisis. Examples of this response include Vanguard holding live webcasts and using a dedicated section of their website to educate customers on how to navigate market volatility, and HSBC is using its financial expertise to help customers manage their emergency finances with access to an Emergency Savings Fund Calculator tool.

3. Providing direct financial relief to customers or easing the pressure of monthly payments

Financial institutions including American Express, Chase, Discover, and many others have reported offering financial assistance or deferring payments in order to address the evolving financial situation caused by COVID-19. Furthermore, most companies are offering additional forms of relief that may be made available to customers who reach out and explain how COVID-19 has personally affected their personal financial situation or has caused hardship for their business. Depending on the provider, forms of relief include:

  • Waiving interest fees, late fees, or minimum payments for a period of time.
  • Not reporting payment deferrals such as late payments to credit bureaus.
  • Delaying due dates for some borrowers on cards, auto loans and mortgages.
  • Increasing spending limits for certain cardholders on a case-by-case basis.

In addition to providing payment deferral options, the top ten sellers of personal car insurance have pledged to give back more than $7 billion in reduced premiums through programs like Allstate’s ‘Shelter-in-Place Payback’ and Statefarm’s ‘Good Neighbor Relief Program.’

4. Giving philanthropic donations to support organizations that are providing direct aid to addressing the crisis

Many financial services and insurance companies have also already provided philanthropic donations focused on addressing issues of hunger and food insecurity, or to provide direct relief to community development organizations where the majority of their employees are located. Beyond giving donations to local communities and to support basic needs, some financial services companies have also provided additional donations to support broader communities including Bank of America’s pledge to support an initiative with Khan Academy to offer free online learning for Pre-K – Grade 12 students throughout this crisis. While USAA has committed that a portion of its donations will be designated to non-profits focused specifically on helping members of the military.

Revolutionize
Experiences

RELATED SERVICE

FINAL THOUGHTS

In the medium-term, we expect to see financial services and insurance companies begin to launch preliminary, near-term strategic responses. Given the continuously evolving nature of this ongoing situation, longer-term strategies will emerge as the pandemic slows and economies emerge with a clearer view of the new current state.

For many companies, the near-term and long-term strategies will require an accelerated digital transformation in order to meet changing customer needs and experience expectations. Companies will need to build smarter, faster and more flexible organizations to create new business models that operate at the pace of ever-changing markets in order to build and sustain crucial brand relevance.

If you need help figuring out what path to take now, in the next 6-8 months, or beyond, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re happy to have a conversation. Also, if you have any questions you’d like answered by our experts, drop them into the comments below or reach out directly here.

CONNECT WITH US

Your network connection is offline.

caret-downcloseexternal-iconfacebook-logohamburgerinstagramlinkedinpauseplaythreads-icontwitterwechat-qrcodesina-weibowechatxing