It's My Birthday! 4 Ways Brands Can Learn From My Tory Burch Experience

Facebook has my birthday so I assume every other retailer and their first born also has it available to make my day extra special. If they can re-target and follow me with Instagram ads using beacons after I walked into their store, then the possibilities are endless!

My birthday was just a few days ago, on December 7th. I began to receive birthday offers from stores on December 1st. Perfect timing! It made me think about how brands can take advantage of this opportunity to gain a new loyal customer or enhance the budding relationship.

“A study by Germany-based customer engagement company Hybris, conducted by Forrester Consulting, shows a gap between consumers’ expectations of personalized marketing and what marketers are delivering. The study shows that while 66 percent of marketers rate their personalization efforts as “very good” or “excellent,” only 31 percent of consumers say companies are consistently delivering personalized, cross-channel experiences.”

Based on this study and what I have experienced, I agree. Retargeting on Facebook and Instagram is standard compared to an overall personalization strategy that can deliver a birthday experience that is relevant to you, your purchase history, consistent across channels, and accessible to your employees.

Compete on experience instead of racing to the bottom of price. A birthday is the best time to make a difference. When someone is passionate about your brand and has a connection, they don’t look for the low price, they get value in other ways — like the birthday gift you send them via snail mail. I will pay more for a good quality brand that I trust.

Here is what brands need to get right in order to win the race to the top of experience. Kudos to Tory Burch for getting it right!

The Right Timing

One of the offers I received was for $10 off within the next two weeks for a service. Come on! Give me some breathing room - especially for a service that doesn’t even need to be that frequent. That offer is definitely a bigger win for the brand, not me.

I received my Tory Burch birthday email gift on December 1st with NO EXPIRATION DATE. Perfect timing!

The Right Offer

I recently attended the ‘Connect Shopper’ webinar hosted by Salesforce which highlights

“79% like it when they receive complementary product offers or promotions based on their purchasing histories from a retailer, indicating a desire for more personalized shopping experiences.”

In the offer content, demonstrate your personalization skills and highlight some recommendations, while also leaving the door open to purchase anything. I am a fan of the discount on total purchase as was presented in the Tory Burch offer.

The Chosen Channel

It isn’t about one channel - it is about the unified journey across all channels. As you can see from my Tory Burch birthday gift, she provides me specific instructions on how to use at the store or online. 

It is a myth that Millennials are so-called e-commerce shoppers - 23% do research in-person - higher than both Generation X and Baby Boomers! In fact, they research on every channel which means you have an opportunity to grab their attention and enhance the overall journey across all channels.

If you are communicating on several channels, save your reputation and make sure it is uniform. Another stat from the ‘Connected Shopper’ report shows 47% of shoppers feel annoyed when they receive an offer via a separate channel for the same product that they purchased in store.

If you really want to go the extra mile with the birthday gift, send it snail mail. Last year, I received a merchandise birthday and Christmas gift from Tory Burch in the mail. Apparently, I didn’t shop as much this year…

The Right Tools

Make Sure Your Employees Have Access To Information! Salesforce is a great example of a tool that provides the ability to connect to your shoppers in the right way and seamlessly across channels.

I don’t know what tools Tory Burch is using; however, I was amazed by the experience on my visit during my birthday trip to the Hamptons. I was thrilled when I saw there was a Tory Sport store in East Hampton. Since the brand is fairly new and there are only a few physical stores, we just had to stop to complete my collection of golf dresses. I am right there with the 66% who prefer to touch and feel stuff in the store. My boyfriend told me to pick out something for my birthday.

Upon checkout, I remembered that I received the birthday email; however, I was having trouble locating it. While I would expect a certain level of service at my normal Tory Burch store in NYC, I was in a different store and brand - anything goes.

Since I am a fanatic about customer experience and technology, I notice when disjointed online and offline systems cause employees pain. I was not optimistic that the systems in place would enable me to use my offer. I was pleasantly surprised when the associate was able to locate MY PERSONALIZED BIRTHDAY email and code!

The Tory Burch experience is a perfect example of how brands have an opportunity to create an advocate and loyal customer through personalization. I don't purchase Tory Burch products at department stores or other distribution channels because the experience I receive direct at Tory Burch is best.

Remember that personalization is delivered by the STORE instead of the BRAND you purchase.

The distribution model adds a whole different challenge to a brand's ability to deliver a unified customer experience. I will leave that for a future discussion.

If you are not in B2C, this can still apply to you. Recognizing your main contacts birthday at the business or the company anniversary is a great complimentary strategy for B2B businesses.

What are the best offers you have received on your birthday?

Yours Truly,

Randa Green

www.thepukkapanda.com

How Platforms Influence Our Decisions

March is the first nudity free issue of Playboy on stands. According to this article on CNN, Platforms were a key driver to that business decision.

“Every single disruptive business that's emerged in the last five years -- Uber, Airbnb, Twitch.tv --exploits a major business weakness -- the failure of the old guard to innovate in response to changing consumer and customer behavior. These disruptors aren't killing businesses; it's the stodgy, rigid and stubborn companies that are killing themselves.

Once you understand the disruption that's taken place in the media and publishing world and the power of social networks as a publishing platform, you'll understand that Playboy simply had no choice. Nudity was sinking its Web and magazine business.” CNN.

While physical malls and department stores have been our one stop shop for many years, cloud platforms and the endless amount of complementary integrations benefit all of us.

Limit Choices Through Platforms

In a previous post, I shared how people have a problem making choices when presented with more than 6 options. Think of the best method to limit your customer choices and position your brand across the different platform options for both businesses and consumers.

Business

For businesses, the platform is often the primary place users login daily like their cloud based CRM application. In the SaaS world, Salesforce is one of the most popular integrations. The Salesforce ecosystem and AppExchange is a great opportunity for new and established businesses to attract customers.

At ShoreTel, we have a Salesforce integration for our Connect Platform which serves both Cloud and Premises deployment models.  Businesses that use Salesforce to drive productivity with Marketing, Sales, and Service often make decisions for their phone and contact center based on the Salesforce integrations so their teams can be even more productive.

Google is another example of a platform that is a huge influence for new business development efforts and decisions for productivity tools.

For content consumption, LinkedIn is one of the top platforms used for business news. 

Business leaders need to consider the strategic opportunity available with existing and emerging platforms, and how to keep a consistent experience across the different communication channels.

Consumer

For consumers, the platform is the preferred application or website to visit. Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are the biggest social applications.

It is no surprise that influencers drive a ton of adoption. Instagram is one of the top drivers of traffic and provides an endless opportunity to creative marketing minds - from individuals to multi-million dollar businesses. The below graphic shows the power of Instagram and presence of different brands.

As a loyal user of Instagram, I enjoy following influencers and brands to compliment my love of fashion. Next time I buy something, can I claim the platform made me do it? After all, without Instagram, I would never have known about some of the brands.

Both

All platforms continue to add features that make it easier for businesses to grab the user’s attention and close the sale! They have us hooked. Just like you can easily add freemium apps that charge you later when you want more features from Salesforce  App Exchange and Google Apps, you can buy directly from our favorite personal platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.

Feedly is one of my personal favorite platforms for content consumption for business and personal purposes. I can quickly read articles relevant to my career or interests in fashion in a quick and simple format. Once, I found the app Pocket, it changed my whole relationship with Feedly as they work so swiftly together.

Pocket saves the articles locally so I am able to read them during my Brooklyn to Manhattan subway commute. A consistent experience and proper integration across platforms is important to attract users to your brand. For example, I don’t read any Forbes articles since it doesn’t work with Pocket. Forbes has a quote entry page that somehow conflicts with Pocket.

These are just a small few examples to show the power of platforms. In future posts, I will go into more detail of a select few platforms and how they impact the customer experience. They are all part of the omni-channel family of communication and customer journey.

Which platforms have you or your business hooked? What drives you to use them? Have you chosen brands specifically due to the platform?

Watch for my next post on the Evolution of Customer Experience starting from the platform.

Three Tips To Master Customer Experience With Your Sharing or Outsource Strategy

In my last post, I shared an intro on how the shared economy is an extension of outsourcing. Rather than outsource anything that is not your core business, the shared economy is essentially outsourcing your core business - you better do it well.

Here are three quick tips on how to master the shared and outsource strategy.

Process

Process design, management, and continual improvement is the only way you can provide a consistent experience at scale. Design your processes to be fool-proof. Include exceptions, reference links, a contact center number to call with questions, and quality assurance.

It doesn’t have to be fancy to start. In fact, it is best to nail down the process first with paper before implementing complex systems or apps.

Trust

Establish mutual trust, respect, understand expectations, and form a good relationship with the people that participate in your shared platform. Without trust, relationships can crumble - both personal and business.

I personally feel that face to face meetings and social gatherings make the biggest impact on trust. Get to know the people in the business. Understand their perspective. It makes a huge difference.

Learn more about perspective training in previous posts on my blog: Walk In Their Shoes and Motivate Winning Teams. 

A few people from a partner company came to NYC from India the other week to collaborate for a project. While we had several meetings over the phone, the time we had in one week was amazing. We had the opportunity to work in the same time zone, enjoy lunch, and learn about one another.

Schedule a shared community gathering. The value to both your shared community and business will be priceless. Partner conferences are common - do the same for your shared community to establish trust.

Knowledge

You can have processes galore and trust the people. In the end, knowledge is the power to support your product or service. In a shared economy or outsource business model, you must have the framework and knowledge sources to train the people to properly support the product. Misguided expectations cause a ton of pain and cost your business money.

Build a single source of knowledge articles for everyone to reference - with a continuous feedback loop for people to contribute information when necessary. Create a training platform with a curriculum that re-enforces your processes, re-affirms trust, and aligns with your values. Without a shared place for knowledge, process will fall apart, and ultimately ruin trust with customers.

Training is one of the reasons Shyp, an on-demand delivery service app, will begin hiring the delivery drivers versus contracting. While it is likely not appropriate for all, it will be interesting to see which companies embrace the approach.

Here is another great article about the shift in contract workers to employees.Several of the business drivers are based on the worker to consumer ratio. What is right for one business may not be right for the other business. 

In my next post, I will share my perspectives; as business operations leader , a shared community member of Closet Collective, and as a customer using a shared platform.

Do you agree with the three key tips? I would love to hear your comments perspective.

Yours Truly

The Pukka Panda

The Sharing Economy: The Method To Outsource Your Core Business

I have been in the UCaaS industry for 12 years in both customer service operations and product.

The pitch for Cloud.

"Let us manage your phone system in the cloud while you focus on your business."

Other words, outsource anything that is NOT CORE to your business. You 'Share' with others in the Cloud.

The sharing economy takes it to the next level - it is the opposite - you leverage external resources TO SUPPORT YOUR CORE business model. Physical services can not leverage the cloud to reduce costs; therefore, a ‘Shared’ community driven by apps in the cloud is the perfect opportunity.

Uber, Handy, and Lyft are just a  few of the  businesses built on the sharing economy, which is expected to hit 335 billion by 2025. Whether your business is backed with millions from VC, labeled as a ‘Unicorn’ with a valuation in thebillion dollar range, or a new startup with a small piece of the market - it is your brand and your responsibility to create a consistent experience.

You must carefully plan the desired outsource or sharing resource strategy to support the best customer experience - or it will fail.  The competition is fierce, and the bar set high by the best brands. You can win with the right strategy and focus.

Some companies like Shyp, for example, are already starting to hire contractors to overcome challenges like training (hint: one of the key areas of success I highlight in my next post). It will be interesting to watch how these businesses adapt their sharing and outsource percentage of business over time.

As a business operations leader, a member of a shared community, and a consumer that is keen to a great experience, my next post will highlight three quick tips that are key to success in the sharing economy, followed by comments from each perspective.

Yours Truly,

The Pukka Panda

I would love your feedback. Please comment with your thoughts.

Authentic Personality - The Best Way To Win & Keep Customers

For those of you that have seen Pretty Woman, it is clear that the first shopping scene is not how we win new customers or keep existing ones in any business type.

When you receive poor customer service...

A few weeks ago, while shopping, I was shocked with the lack of personality and rude nature of the store associates. While it was not exactly like the scene from Pretty Woman, it quickly reminded me of the importance of personal connections to your choice with whom you do business and interact.

Do you choose to continue giving them your business...

In a previous post, I shared three ways to create customer advocates. A company or brand can have an amazing effortless experience and quality product; however, when it does not score well in the personal connection category, it is a show stopper.

I typically choose to shop at a few of my favorite brands since I know the product quality, prefer the setup of the stores, and they fit well into my personal style. An authentic personality in interactions with favorite brands and business relations is key.

Or, do business with brands and people you enjoy... 

One of my favorite stores is Alice & Olivia. From the very first time I entered the store a few years ago, I was welcomed with smiles and authentic personalities. They grabbed my attention, kept me in the store with their friendliness, and it didn’t hurt that I felt as if the brand was made for me. While I love the brand, I am also specifically loyal to that same store I entered over three years ago. Personal connection is strong!

People choose to do business with brands and people they like. Your sales and account management teams are critical to the success and personal relationships with customers. That is not enough in the agile nature of the workforce. To maintain a strong loyalty bond, you need to keep employees engaged and happy, while you also provide a consistent message to customers via all communication channels (web, mobile, chat, phone, etc). It is equally important to create a good connection from both the brand and the individuals which communicate directly with those same customers.

Here are a few tips that come to mind which create an authentic personal connection that will help your company attract and keep customers. These tips may be altered to align with the applicable communication channel.

• Be Approachable

• Smile Bright

• Show Your Personality

• Be Free Of Judgments

Whether you use technology automation or human connection as your source of personal connection, delight your customers and include positive communication, tone, with personality to match your brand.

I know what I prefer. What about you?

Take a moment to think of the brands in your personal and professional life that you talk about most. How do they connect with your personally?

Yours Truly,

THE PUKKA PANDA