Written on May 4, 2018.

A different kind of gift.

Quick poll – are you more likely to redeem a coupon received from a brand randomly or one that comes personalized from a friend who has effectively vetted that brand’s product or service?

No prizes for getting that one right! Most would agree that a gift from a friend is way more likely to be accepted and redeemed than one from a faceless corporation or brand.

How can brands take advantage of this? And what benefits could they accrue?
Research with customers suggests the following:

• Inviting a current, satisfied customer to send a gift is more effective than asking people at random to buy gifts.
• The receiver is more likely to pay attention to the gift when received from a trusted source – namely, abovementioned friend.
• Gift will likely be sent to people with a profile that matches what the business wants to attract in the first place, primarily because it was sent by an existing customer who is likely to send it to “people like me”.

The result is a trifecta of ‘wins’. The business gets new traffic/footfalls, the sender feels good about sending out a gift easily and the receiver gets the warm fuzzy feeling by having someone send them something. Which means they come into the business with a positive predisposition.

Know’N’act is pushing the envelope with a smart, personalized gifting capability that businesses can take advantage of.

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Written on April 17, 2018.

I’m no Steve Jobs…and you shouldn’t try to be one either.

Not a blinding moment of self-awareness, but a recognition of what most of us are capable of and what separates us from one of the true visionaries of our times – aka Steve Jobs.

I’m referring specifically to Steve’s legendary ability to predict or intuit what customers would like. I’d go one step farther – I’d say that Steve was one of the few people who could actually shape and sway the opinion and likes of hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe. No easy feat at a time when tastes are unpredictable and notoriously fickle.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, we’re not quite gifted with the same ability and will do well to do things the traditional way – i.e. listen really closely to our customers and design/morph our products based on what they tell us. This is exactly how we are building our product at know’N’act and enabling our customers to do the same in turn.

Our customers told us early on that just feedback was not enough, so we added the ability to act on the feedback.

Our customers said they wanted to make it easier for people to share feedback so we introduced massive flexibility in our product on the front end. From URLs, QR codes, NFC, Short codes/text to our most recent initiative – dedicated tablets.

Our customers asked us to help drive more revenue and we introduced features such as couponing, personalized gifts and more.

Our customers wanted to leverage social media to amplify their happy customers and we implemented deep integration with Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor and Yelp.

No – we’re not gifted like Steve Jobs, but we do know how to listen and we do that really well. And build amazing products that our customers ask for, and then thank us for!

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Written on March 24, 2018.

Feedback is only the beginning….

And if it doesn’t lead somewhere, it’s pretty much a waste of time and resources.

Heresy? Especially coming from the founder of a feedback-related company (www.knownact.com) it may seem like it. But I opine carefully – I’m obviously not advocating that you shouldn’t capture customer feedback. I am suggesting however, that don’t treat it as a “check box” item that you need to get done. Feedback needs to lead somewhere and in our opinion it needs to lead to actions in real-time, right there and right then.

This action can take several forms – but the end goal is to build a deeper relationship with the customer that helps prevent attrition and promotes long term customer lifetime value. The only way to do this is to do it fast; when the customer is still experiencing your product or service and has a strong opinion about it. Timeliness is important, as is context and relevance of how you respond to the customers’ input.

This can make the difference between a customer who takes to Twitter or Yelp to rant about your service and one who is super appreciative of how customer oriented you are and becomes an ambassador for your friend.

We think you’ll prefer the latter kind of customers!

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Written on March 10, 2018.

How easy are you?

To elaborate, how easy do you make it for your customers to tell you exactly what they think about your product or service?

Businesses have attempted to capture insights from their customers’ experiences for decades with mixed results. The volume of engagement is typically a function of a couple of factors:

1. Why should the customer care? i.e. “what’s in it for me?”
2. How easy is it to engage? Do you adequately tell them what you want them to do and do you make the process the lowest friction possible?

The first is a function of what the business is willing to offer in return. From an intangible “service guarantee” to a more tangible reward such as what is available via sweepstakes and similar.

The second needs closer scrutiny, particularly now when personal smart devices have made access to social media so much easier. At know’N’act we believe that it’s good to cast a wide net and provide multiple ways for your customers to engage. This ranges from customers’ own devices – whether on a mobile website or via a native app on the phone, to the option of providing a dedicated tablet like device that customers can use with less effort.

We also recommend that you use that digital real estate to offer other features that are relevant and interesting to that customer. Maybe your menu, or sign up for your loyalty program, or perhaps an easy way to send a gift to their friend?

Lots of possibilities…get in touch if we can help you explore what we can do for your business.

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Written on October 29, 2017.

When is customer feedback enough?

Well, truth be told, almost all the time.

While this might seem heretical, coming from someone who runs a customer engagement system company, let me explain.

Most popular systems out there that organizations are using today to capture customer feedback do a good job of collecting customer feedback through different mechanisms. They also do a fair job of analyzing that feedback to provide insights that are useful in the aggregate and as a trailing indicator of how your operation is doing. They can even provide useful abilities to address specific issues at a location perhaps, which can contribute to better customer satisfaction. Again, in the aggregate.

However, this is SO twentieth century in our opinion. With the ubiquity of intelligent devices, is there any reason you shouldn’t:

• Capture feedback and identify issues at the individual level
• Be able to address issues at the micro level – in real time, by location, by specific customer?
• Capitalize on what you just learnt about that customer and engage with that customer right there and then to promote your brand value, increase loyalty and revenue?

 

Bottomline – every individual piece of feedback from a customer or partner is an opportunity for deeper engagement, in the moment, with full context and no latency. This is where you can leverage the power of the cloud, mobility and location-awareness to truly differentiate how your business engages with your customers.

And of course, this is precisely the need that know’N’act is built to serve, from the ground up.

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