It is vital to engage with customers

Mark Eggleton

Sep 26, 2022 – 10.00am

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With many Australians embracing the sheer convenience of online retail during the pandemic, businesses took it upon themselves to press fast-forward on their digital transformation plans.

Digital debate: roundtable participants consider the implications of a rapidly changing online space. Jeremy Piper

Out went clunky online offerings and in came frictionless e-commerce portals where one click meant things arriving at our homes within a matter of days, even hours. Yet, while the online experience became near seamless, the human factor suddenly became an afterthought as companies rushed to dispatch goods from the warehouse with less regard for how they were being delivered.

So, while that “final mile” increased cost efficiencies for businesses pivoting to online, it didn’t do much for customer service because the only human that consumers were interacting with was not an employee of the company with whom they were placing an order. Moreover, when they rang to complain, they would often get an automated answer, or maybe there was no number to call.

Interestingly, consumers sick of convoluted online chats with an AI bot or automated calls that tell them nothing, are starting to fight back, and many companies are taking note. For example, Telstra decided to bring all its call centres back onshore. In fact, former Telstra CEO Andy Penn announced before his recent departure that the telco had moved all consumer and small business call centres to Australia, after customers demanded the change.

As a consequence, Telstra customers could expect to “speak to locals from all over Australia”, Penn said, because “what we heard loud and clear was you wanted a change in the way we answered our calls”. Furthermore, Telstra had hired an additional 2000 people to “create a better customer experience”.

This focus on creating better customer experiences was discussed at the recent Digital Commerce Surge roundtable in Sydney co-hosted by The Australian Financial Review and Visa.

Co-founder of local fintech and loyalty platform Upstreet, Sabine Tejerina, said one trend she had noted is leading businesses beginning to think for their customers. This went well beyond artificial intelligence-powered personalisation where a consumer received a form letter with their name at the top because “that game is over”.

Sabine Tejerina, Upstreet co-founder. Jeremy Piper

“What I now want is the company to think for me and make that purchasing process a lot more helpful, a lot more real,” Tejerina said.

According to Tejerina, another way customers could become more loyal to a brand was through ownership. There was a lot of misunderstanding of how to create customer loyalty, she said. Most companies might give you a discount or points, or you might join some sort of tiered loyalty program, but none of those created actual long-term loyalty.

Research showed that if you gave customers shares, “they’re then invested in your company, and if they’re invested they do a couple of things: they spend more money, they’re buying more frequently and they’re also willing to pay more money for the exact same product”.

“And the best part is that they’re more forgiving of the company,” Tejerina said. “So, when there is a problem, they’re more willing to give you the feedback and tell you why there’s a problem.”

She cited Swiss retailer Coop which has 90,000 employees who are all part owners of the company. Two million of Coop’s customers are also shareholders, and the combination of employee and customer ownership means they’re focused on delivering an “amazing customer experience”.

“They must go beyond what is happening digitally and, if there’s a human data point, they need to make sure that those human data points are also an amazing experience,” Tejerina said.

“If you want loyalty, you need alignment, and whether that is your employee or your customer, it’s aligning their incentives to their efforts.”

Anthony Jones, Visa’s head of innovation and partnerships for Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific, agreed that this was a solid idea because “if you are giving out shares in your organisation, you are keeping the brand under one roof”.

He pointed to the potential of using blockchain infrastructure to create digital assets such as movies, music or even luxury items to build loyalty, and suggested non-fungible tokens (NFTs) would create an element of scarcity akin to “that special edition that you used to hunt around for in record shops”.

“For example, albums are now being released on NFTs and we’ve seen that with Kings of Leon. Their latest album was released as an NFT in limited numbers, and on top of getting all the tracks, you then got exclusive artwork and first rights to the sale of tickets for their next shows,” Jones said.

As the NFT could potentially be resold as part of a broader ownership structure, with a royalty being paid to the original manufacturer, a viable secondary market could be created.

Moreover, a person could use their NFT as a part of their identity online, giving them access to a community, or even to real-world or metaverse events.

“For artists and even luxury goods manufacturers, for example, it’s a way to start building out some really great user experiences that build loyalty and audience engagement.”