PARKS BLACKWELL: We forget all of those different data points are actually a person having an engagement
with a brand and how important and powerful those touch-points can be.
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PARKS: Hi, I'm Parks Blackwell.
I'm with PMG and I'm the Vice President of client development and marketing.
TIM: Hi, I'm Tim Maleeny.
I'm the CSO for Havas North America.
Today, we're going to be discussing how the idea of the customer journey has shifted under
recent times from an agency perspective.
PARKS: I think having a robust strategy is critical at this point.
As we move into 2021 with IDFA changes and platform changes and data privacy, your owned
customer, first-party data is really the most valuable tool that you have in your toolbox.
2020 basically forced everyone and everything online, whether you were ready or not.
I think the transition to online, might've been a bit of a slow burn for the last few years.
You could feel brands watching their businesses change, shift in front of them, and working
to adjust plans on more of a quarterly and annual basis.
I see it this way: COVID hasn't necessarily changed behaviors.
It has just accelerated behaviors and forced brands to reevaluate.
TIM: I couldn't agree more.
I think your comment about accelerating what was already happening is very, very true.
I think that old truism of people voting with their wallets is even more true now because
the online world has opened up so completely to people who might've been slow to adopt it.
They’ve had no choice.
What got underestimated before, because there were different outlets, I could go to the
store; I'm giving up on you online; I'll pick up the phone.
A lot of those got broken and a lot of the stumbles along the customer journey went from
being pain points to being really, really frustrating.
And that's how you lose customers.
And if you get that right, that’s how you gain customers and that's how you increase sales.
I think a lot of companies were taking a casual or "we'll get there eventually"
approach to the customer journey and trying to optimize individual parts of it based on
where the revenue was coming from, and not thinking about it as a coherent journey.
They weren't thinking of it as a human path.
PARKS: I think that's great Tim.
Building the strategy around the customer journey and the data points that you do have.
TIM: Yes, when you think about the changing privacy laws, when you look at what's happened in
Europe, having first-party data and knowing how to use that is absolutely critical but
it's often been used in a more tracking and stalking way, as opposed to ‘how do I make
this customer experience that much better?’
And as you get in the opt-in world, that’s where having that brand and that relationship
with the customer, where they see that email, they see that contact on their phone as a welcome friend.
“Oh, I like that brand. There it is again, what do they have to tell me today?”
Really thinking through that.
The where, when and how you show up to be helpful to be welcome.
Will give you access to that data in such a way that you can optimize the experience.
PARKS: Absolutely. The data that we have, that consumers have raised their hands and said, “of course, I trust you.”
It's the most important and most probably effective tool that we have to both shape
the current relationship we have with consumers, but to also build new relationships.
I think to your point, once you get that data, what do you do with it is a challenge that
most marketers are facing right now.
And we have to ask many more questions of our database now.
We have to segment and cohort properly in a way that allows us to get under the hood
of what's really driving a customer decision and how can we encourage them to be more engaged
with the brand.
We put the control back in the marketers hands if we can segment the data properly to really
understand what was driving those consumer behaviors.
What stands out now to me is how complex each customer's needs are, each consumer.
And recognizing as well that COVID ushered us into what I call an instant gratification
loop that is almost like a drug for consumers.
TIM: I love the idea of the instant gratification loop.
There's an awful lack of common sense and even empathy in the building of a lot of customer
journeys, which are often coming at it from the old notion of CX, which was “let's track somebody digitally.”
And then there's a beginning and an end as opposed to a continuous relationship and a
continuous loop with someone in the real world, in the digital world and in the context of their lives.
And if you look at the actual customer journey for most purchases and most engagement, it's
this spiraling rat’s nest of indecision changing their minds, redirect, comparing.
The customer journey is not a static thing.
It's not about optimization right here in the moment.
It's very much about using your data in such a way that things get better and better, and
this continuous improvement loop is there.
Really the end game should be to build a seamless experience.
PARKS: One of the challenges we've run up against with many of the brands we work with is sort
of the ability to evaluate that data.
We are all obsessed with data because we know it gives us information, but we have to be able to use it the right way.
We created what we call a gap technology. It's not meant to replace anything.
It sits in the middle and basically stitches all of your disparate data sets together to
give you a better view of your CDP, your 1P, data.
It stitches your site analytics, performance and media data.
All of that, not just to give you a dashboard, but to your point, Tim, to truly give you
a view of what does all of this mean?
And then how do I build comms, creative and true strategy on top of it to enable a more
powerful marketing engine?
That is not only driving revenue, which everyone needs and everyone wants, but enriching that consumer experience.
TIM: I love that, Parks.
And one of the most recent studies showed that about 80% of brands believe that they're
delivering a good to great customer experience and 8% of their customers think they're delivering a good to great customer experience.
So when you go from 80% “I'm doing a great job” to 8%. That's an incredible gap and there's a lot of work to be done to close that.
Havas, just launched a global CX network is a cross-office, cross-region group, specifically
to share knowledge and best practices in this arena to make sure that those customer journeys
are done right and done to the maximum effect to create meaning as you go along it as
a consumer, and you can bond with the brand
and have that continuous loop.
PARKS: What we're working to do is take a step back and look at the data set that exists and really
ensure that we're capturing as much as we can to help inform what the messaging, what
the creative, and what that real relationship on an audience and persona level and one-to-one
level can really be.
TIM: And I'm pretty sure most people don't wake up saying, “Oh my God, you know,
I can't wait to hear from brand X.”
How do you show up and why are you a pleasant addition to their lives and experience?
As an agency, you know, we've invested heavily in tech and data and research capabilities.
If you can't work with a client's data, if you can’t help them the manage their own
data, if you don't understand the tech platforms, you have no business building that customer
journey. That's so, so critical.
PARKS: Absolutely.
It's really about the signals that they're giving you, because those signals are their intent.
Those signals are what's really at the heart of what they're looking for.
And if we use that correctly, we have every chance in the world to be effective and to
build a customer for life.
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