Calvin Carter, CEO of Bottle Rocket, discusses how having an online presence is no longer enough to retain customers.
30-SECOND SUMMARY:
- Over the years, Netflix have trained the consumer into the habit of an on-demand, all-you-can-watch digital approach to viewing content at a very low price – displacing Blockbuster as a result.
- With the new Disney Plus model and the announcements of a 2020 launch year for both HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s streaming service, more and more options are becoming available to customers and speculation is rising as to whether pricing adjustments are needed in order to keep brand agnostic customers.
- Connected Customers want to do business with you when they want and on their terms (whilst being respected). And they want a personalized experience that feels like it was designed just for them.
- In today’s fast-moving business environment, it takes more than just a digital presence to earn retention. You have to constantly innovate and actively identify and act upon opportunities for improvement or risk your customers choosing to go elsewhere.
- As new features come online, it is also desirable to rework your experience to highlight them – or guide users to the most popular areas. Brands must also think about the plethora of ways their users might be interacting with their brand and how they can integrate other opportunities into the brand ecosystem, including voice assistant.
- If brands do not embrace or commit to digital change and look for areas of improvement, we can expect 40 percent more to disappear in the next ten years. Those that center their experience around users will stay competitive, by winning the pocketbook, and most importantly, the hearts of the Connected Customers.
Digital disruption presents the most significant challenges and opportunities any of us have faced in business. When assessing the implications, it comes as no surprise that new digital business models are the main reason why just over half (52 percent) of the Fortune 500 have gone bankrupt or ceased trading since 2000.
NETFLIX
Streaming service Netflix is a great example of disruptive innovation. Over the years, they have trained the consumer into the habit of an on-demand, all-you-can-watch digital approach to viewing content at a very low price – displacing Blockbuster as a result.
The all-inclusive simple pricing options, absorbing content, and ease of use on just about every platform out there has contributed to its global success. The advent of mobile also favored services like Netflix.
Netflix however, has lost US paid subscribers (approximately 130,000) for the first time in eight years and has missed projections of 5 million international subscribers by 2.3 million. Netflix’s price for consumers went up from $10.99 to $12.99, which may have accounted for the substantial decline.
In addition, the media provider has come up against greater competitive pressures recently than ever before in its existence.
With the new Disney Plus model and the announcements of a 2020 launch year for both HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s streaming service, more and more options are becoming available to customers and speculation is rising as to whether pricing adjustments are needed in order to keep brand agnostic customers.
Each new service is a contender for a share of customer wallets and with giants like Amazon in the race, Netflix will need to do more to build deeper connections and re-attract lost audiences. But it’s not all about providing the cheapest service.
CONNECTED CUSTOMERS
This year the customer experience is set to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, and there is a significant return on investment for businesses that deliver a tech-enabled experience that surprises and delights.
Indeed, 67 percent of consumers say they’ll pay more for a better experience. Those who favor these digital experiences first and foremost are a new type of customer – we call them Connect Customers. This term refers to those customers that prefer to primarily interact with brands through digital means such as web sites, apps or Alexa skills.
And what do these Connected Customers want? They desire simple and seamless experiences that are both efficient and fun. They want to do business with you when they want and on their terms (whilst being respected). And they want a personalized experience that feels like it was designed just for them.
Over time, these Connected Customers have grown accustomed to superior online services, and they will judge the last best experience they had to every other experience.
Moreover, a vast percentage of the population falls into this category and not only from young savvy people newly entering the marketplace – 40 percent of baby boomers, 57 percent of Gen Xers and 78 percent of millennials all say that a company needs to provide a great digital experience to keep their attention.
MOVING FORWARD
In today’s fast-moving business environment, it takes more than just a digital presence to earn retention. You have to constantly innovate and actively identify and act upon opportunities for improvement or risk your customers choosing to go elsewhere.
Digital platform technology leaders including Apple and Google are constantly renovating their design guidelines and adding new innovations to their offerings, and it’s wise for brands to keep up accordingly.
As new features come online, it is also desirable to rework your experience to highlight them – or guide users to the most popular areas.
Brands must also think about the plethora of ways their users might be interacting with their brand and how they can integrate other opportunities into the brand ecosystem, including voice assistant.
If a customer has an Apple Watch, an iPhone and an Echo, how can Siri and Alexa work together to help improve the overall customer experience? It is essential that companies enter into a somewhat new space and investigate both the opportunities and challenges that voice search optimization brings.
Brands are now experiencing a shift where touch points are transforming to listening points, and organic voice search will be a key way for brands to gain visibility.
If brands do not embrace or commit to digital change and look for areas of improvement, we can expect 40 percent more to disappear in the next ten years. Those that center their experience around users will stay competitive, by winning the pocketbook, and most importantly, the hearts of the Connected Customers.
Calvin Carter, Bottle Rocket’s founder and CEO, built the company on the belief that exceptionally innovative technology redefines our lives. In March 2008, the day after Steve Jobs announced the iPhone was open to third-party developers and months before the App Store opened, Bottle Rocket was born. His visionary and entrepreneurial spirit would earn him the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2013. Calvin has pushed Bottle Rocket to become a renowned digital experience consultancy that connects future-focused brands and their customers through sophisticated yet simple experiences. With more than 450 award-winning, preeminent experiences to date and approximately 250 Rocketeers, Bottle Rocket continues to set new standards in connecting people to what they want and transforming how brands compete and win.
