Every marketing specialist wants to offer the ultimate user experience (UX) to connect customers to his company. However, the expectations of customers are high, very high. Customers want a smooth way of working without unnecessary questions or detours through the most obvious channel. And that’s exactly where a company can sometimes hit its digital limits.
However, as a company you can go one step further than just offering good customer experience. Companies that pursue a customer intimacy strategy know very well the needs of their customers and try to meet them as much as possible, even when their customers have needs that do not directly match their own core business. The customer’s interests come first, not the product.
We describe in this blog how automation used in the right way can make customers more loyal.
Analyzing the customer journey
As a customer or prospect, we have certainly encountered this before: we receive a PDF to print out and complete. Or we have to fill in our company information on a website of a company where we have been a customer for many years. Or we fill in data that are not even being used or we get no response on our request for a long time. And so on…
The cause can often be found in business applications that do not communicate with each other. In the flow something goes wrong and therefore important information in the customer journey is not used. By clearly mapping the existing and well-functioning technology, the missing link quickly emerges. It is often sufficient to find a technical solution to automate the entire process. Usually, software is used to connect existing applications and thus substantially improve the user experience.
Find out below how some companies even go one step further to retain their customers.
The customer takes the lead
It takes guts to set the needs of the customer above the short-term interests of the own company. For example, Coteng was commissioned by Axalta – the largest car paint company in the world – to build inventory management software for the body shops. The latter did not find good software that met their specific needs. The fact that the body shops can also order paint via the system is a nice bonus, but this was not the main requirement.
Axalta also had a webshop built to make available to all their European dealers. On the webshop you can find the Axalta products and the surprising possibility to add those of the competitors. If Axalta would not make this decision, the customers could only partially use the new tool. The fact that Axalta offers a ready-made webshop that allows the products of the competition to be imported is unique in the sector.
They clearly understand that they are better off embracing the competitors and making sure to be the best themselves instead of fending them off. Banning competitors is passé: starting from one’s own strengths as a company is so much more powerful. The customer will ultimately decide for himself.
It is clear that a thorough analysis of the different steps in the customer journey gives a first insight into the possible gaps in the automation flow. Add to this a clear view of the needs of the customer and all ingredients are there to take the customer experience to a higher level. If all these elements are poured into a tool to increase the B2B relationship with the customer, we even dare to speak of customer intimacy. Or how smart automation in the customer journey can lead to more loyal customers.
Interested to talk to our experts on how customer intimacy delivers more to your company? Contact us at info@coteng.com or +32 3 326 43 13