Prioritise customer relationships over customer satisfaction

Many companies are currently focusing on digital acceleration with the ultimate goal of creating an optimal, seamless customer experience across all channels. We look to automating and personalising marketing and removing friction from the entire process to achieve this.

That is great for the consumer. However, every company is currently looking for ways to be distinctive using technology. Improving ROI and freeing up employees through automation are great strategic choices, but these best practices become bland practices when everyone applies them. And that doesn't help you to stand out. Humanity and creativity are increasingly absent from the process, when you are acquiring a place in the minds and hearts of your target group.

Opportunity

In practice, we see that the focus is often only on improving the customer experience and increasing satisfaction. But that's different from building a long-term relationship with your customer. With more and more digital experiences, and fewer and fewer physical interactions, people are looking for exchanges that feel human: 'human2human'. Experiences that invite participation, offer interaction and engagement, that allow you to choose what you want to receive and what you don't... There are huge opportunities to be distinctive for organisations that look beyond customer satisfaction and pay attention to the quality of the relationship with their customer throughout the entire customer journey.

"Customers who feel a genuine emotional connection are 52% more valuable to brands than customers who are 'very satisfied'."
Harvard Business Review

Next up: Customer self-service enters the next phase - don’t get left behind