Episode 2: Butcher Shop as Math House – Connecting with Tomorrow's Digital Consumer, Today

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WILSON RAJ: In a socially distant market the use of digital, mobile, and immersive technology isn't just an option. It's an imperative. Consumers are looking for experiences that provide relevance, convenience, and safety, from the increased use of telemedicine to contactless payments and checkout. I'm Wilson Raj, and welcome to Reimagine Marketing Podcast, "Episode Number Two, Connecting with Tomorrow's Digital Consumer Today."

Hi, everyone, and welcome to this podcast. I am joined by my special guest, Bernard Marr, who is a best-selling author, futurist, and expert in digital transformation strategies and technologies. Hello, Bernard.

BERNARD MARR: Thank you so much for having me, Wilson. It's really good to be with you again. We did some webinars together recently, and I'm really looking forward to doing this podcast with you.

WILSON RAJ: Absolutely, and I think the last webcast that we did was around this topic around the digital consumer and what has happened in the last year, the effects of the pandemic, economic disruptions, and then how are consumers responding to that, and then how brands are responding back. So we had a great webcast just recently, and this is really an extension of that because there are so many great points and things that you were sharing that we felt, hey, we got to get this out to the audience.

BERNARD MARR: Great. No, I'm looking forward to it.

WILSON RAJ: To get things started, I think it'd be great to talk a little bit about, again, sort of your journey. This topic is certainly not new. You've addressed it many times, but tell us a little bit about your journey up to this point as an author. And I think I'm more interested in the futurist part.

BERNARD MARR: Yeah, so I started my career at Cambridge University. I grew up in Germany, then came over to Cambridge to finish my degree. And they then offered me a job, which I thought was a great place to start your career, so I joined the faculty there.

And then I moved from Cambridge to Cranfield School of Management, where I did lots of research and also consulting work on business strategy, on technologies, on digital transformation, and how companies use data. And I've literally never done anything else. I've always been in this space, initially helping companies to use data more effectively.

Then it moved into analytics into big data, into AI. Then I broadened this out into all major technologies because AI impact everything, and then I started to write for Forbes on all future technology trends. And this is how I started.

WILSON RAJ: Fantastic. And this is something I ask pretty much all my guests on the show, at least. Do you have a favorite quote or a saying? You probably have a lot of them yourself. Something that you use as a principle when you talk to customers and clients and think about current technology and future scenarios.

BERNARD MARR: For me, the key thing when I talk to my customers is that they have to start with their customers, and they have to make sure that they really think about how they're adding value to their customers. And then they need to translate this into their business strategy, and then they need to make sure that their digital transformation is in line with their business strategy. And then their data strategy is in line with all of this. So for me, it starts with the customer, and if you always remember this, then you will be a successful business.

WILSON RAJ: All right, so there you have it. Starting with the customer, not with anything else. I think that's a huge, salient point. So to get on to our topic today, the first part we're going to talk about is really the dynamics of this new digital consumer, or we can call him or her the "tech-infused buyer." And some of the content we're going to talk about was taken from a very recent Experience 2030 pulse report that surveyed in excess of 600 respondents globally around their consumer behaviors and how brands were responding during the COVID-19 pandemic, so pretty much the latter half of last year. And some interesting stats came out.

For example, we found there's a faster, a greater, a deeper adoption of these immersive technologies. Almost 70% of consumers said they expect to use augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality to experience products and services in the coming year, so there's an uptick there. And then about 60% said they would visit a remote location or venue using these very same technologies. In other words, less in-live events. So the question is, how are consumers adapting to this new digital reality, and how is this affecting personalization from a brand standpoint?

BERNARD MARR: Very good question. So for me, we've all experienced this now that we simply had to adapt to talk to all of this because of the pandemic. Because suddenly, from one day to the other, everyone was stuck at home. We had to work from home, shop from home, bank from home, have more home-based entertainment, and more digital events.

So I think we've adopted incredibly well to all of this as a population of this world, and for me, what we are now seeing is that lots of things have shifted to digital first. And we've obviously all started to upgrade our systems at home. Initially, people were struggling. They might not have had the cameras, the microphones, the networks at home and all of this in place. Nowadays, we can do this.

WILSON RAJ: Right.

BERNARD MARR: And for me, personalization has simply become an expectation of consumers, of me. I get really frustrated when I speak to a company I'm dealing with and think they should really understand me as a customer. Let's take my bank or an insurance company. And when they don't, I get really annoyed. And I think there are lots of companies still struggling with this.

I was working with a telecom company, for example, and when we started working with them, they had lots of silos. So they couldn't even see their customers holistically because if you think about this, you might have a broadband subscription. You might have an entertainment package. You have a mobile phone subscription as a family.

You might have multiple of these, and they were seeing all of these as individual customers. So to get this holistic view was initially really difficult, and if you don't have this, you then also haven't got this holistic understanding of your customers, which then inhibits everything. And you can't really do any of this personalization.

WILSON RAJ: Right, and I think when we had some previous conversations, there were some great personal examples that you showed around how organizations today are stepping up in this more holistic view, to your point, using data and these immersive technologies, but also really surprising the consumer. And we saw this acceleration of these things literally in the last year, so what are some of the things that stood out to you personally, some brand experiences, for example, that speak to what you said earlier?

BERNARD MARR: Yes, there are so many different examples, and for me, some of the companies that have started to use extended reality, I think, are great examples. Companies like Dulux, a paint manufacturer that is now enabling all of us to check out what our wall will actually look like with the different shades of greens and reds and whatever we might want to paint our walls with. I think I've definitely been there in the past where you head to the DIY shop.

You buy lots of samples. You put them on your wall, and then you choose one. And then when you end up painting the entire wall, you realize, actually, this wasn't really the color I was hoping for.

WILSON RAJ: Absolutely.

BERNARD MARR: And for me, there are companies that do this really well, companies like Amazon, for example, that have really, reimagined themselves and have thought about, OK, how do we build customer relationships? I think when you first asked me about the mantra and some of my favorite quotes, I think what companies need to do, they need to think about how they solve customer problems, not how they sell products. And this, for me, is what companies like Apple are doing really well.

And then they need to think about how do they engage with those companies, so especially building a subscription model, where you can continuously engage with them. And where offline is online, and online is offline. So if I walk into an Apple shop, which I can't do at the moment, but in the past, they know me digitally. I can pay digitally. They understand who I am as a customer.

At the same time, even at the beginning of this customer journey, I can browse their latest products, and I can even use augmented reality to put the latest iPhone right into my kitchen. I can walk around and zoom in, zoom out. And for me, they are some of the key things that they're engaging with me. They're building this continuous relationship and where I have this seamless experience from augmented reality to virtual reality to websites or physical stores, and they all seem to work in harmony, which I think is a great example.

WILSON RAJ: I think the big point you bring that is you talk about the continuity of experience more so than the consistency of experience. So the Dulux example is basically, that's something that you're trying before you're buying, right? You've gone through all that purchase awareness, and you've cut all the way down to, all right. Let me put this on the wall with augmented reality.

And I think IKEA is another one. I read just recently where they have also partnered with an AR, an augmented reality, vendor where you can actually use their app on Instagram to be able to project what a shelving unit would look like. And I've put together IKEA products, and boy, it takes sometimes months for me.

But here, it actually projects on a wall what a unit would look like. The space, you can even envision putting things up there. And then if you like it, like the arrangement, you can move it around. You can just press a button, and boom, those pieces, those units are exactly shipped to you. It's just frictionless.

BERNARD MARR: Yeah, and this is a great example for me. For me, it's absolutely vital that we think about how do we make this whole customer experience better. So in the past, if you-- and IKEA is a good example because I don't particularly like walking through an IKEA building. Because you get channeled. It should really take 10 minutes. It takes 30 minutes because they want to see everything.

WILSON RAJ: And you always end up at the meatball section, right?

BERNARD MARR: Exactly. And for me, there's still a challenge because sometimes, you look at furniture, and you still don't know. OK, I've seen this in the shop now. It looks nicely set up, but what will this actually look like in my setting? And this is where, actually, VR and AR supercedes what we can do in the physical world, where you can actually place it into your room.

And we see the same in try before you buy in makeup. L'Oreal is now allowing you to try on different makeup shades. Where you can try on hats. You can try on jewelry. And for me, this is a real differentiator if companies get this right, this whole virtual channel using augmented and virtual reality to help customers experience the product before they even buy it.

WILSON RAJ: Right. Now, before we shift to the evolved strategies from a brand perspective, just one thought I just wanted to see what you think. So have consumer behavior-- today, has it been forced into a sort of this kind of digital or physically distant model?

Is this something that's temporary maybe for this year into next year, or is that something you think that we'll carry on? Or at some point, it'll just go away? I'm just curious as to what you think this digital physical balance would look like.

BERNARD MARR: So I very firmly believe that our world has changed forever, and I believe that this will last. I believe that many things will never come back, and if I just think about some of the clients I have, some of the biggest companies around the world, many of them are now selling their real estate, their headquarters because they realize people can work from home. And if we are working from home, we can do everything else from home, so what we will see in the future is this digital first and then maybe a hybrid model where it is appropriate.

For me, what is key is that companies need to think, what is actually the value of what we've had before? And is digital better?

And if you think about this whole idea of try before you buy, one of the examples I often talk about is buying glasses. So I've taken my daughter, who wears glasses, to the optician many, many times to have her annual eye check, and then what usually happens is that at the end of the check, you then end up in a showroom. And there, you then select your next pair of glasses.

But she now is a teenager. She wants some cool glasses, and the shop usually doesn't have what she's looking for. So she ends up buying something that is the closest to what she would really like. And obviously, now during the pandemic, you don't want to go into any shop to try on anything.

And there are companies like Warby Parker that do this really well, that are offering a virtual interface. You can use your smartphone. You can use your computer, and you try on glasses virtually.

And not just this, they will use artificial intelligence to scan your face and see, OK, you're a teenager. You are female. Your head is shaped in this way, and then they will recommend glasses to you.

And I think in an ideal world, you would have this when you go to a physical shop. You have someone that really understands what would suit me and then make recommendations, but the reality that I've experienced over my lifetime is very different, that the optician usually or the salesperson sits behind a counter and says, just try on all of them and see which ones you like. So actually, the new digital first experience is better. I have a better experience, a better recommendation, better choice, and it streamlines the entire process.

WILSON RAJ: That's fantastic. And I think you really highlighted some of the key capabilities some of these successful brands, like Dulux or IKEA and Warby Parker are using. They're using or they're adopting technologies such as not just AR and VR, but they're using artificial intelligence, such as Elements. They're machine learning computer vision in that example, and they're optimizing that.

And actually, this pulse report showed that these technologies, the adoption of this is accelerating. Literally, they've been shortened from a three-year span or a four-year span to an 18 to 24-months span. So the acceleration, this integrated technology investments so that brands are now rethinking operation models.

And it's not just these technologies. They're also looking at, as you mentioned, automated subscription, chatbots, 5G, distributed ledgers, blockchain, and so on. So the adoption of technology is so fast. So what are some of the things that brands, now shifting from the consumer now to the brand side, what do they need to think about to put this in a way that's not just a tech stack, but something that adds value to this new digital consumer that we've been talking about?

BERNARD MARR: Yes, so for me, the key here is that you actually start with the customer. So the biggest mistake you can make is you look at all this really exciting technology, saying, oh, virtual reality. Oh, artificial intelligence, 5G, let's put all of this in place, and hopefully, we will have a successful business. This will never work unless we start with the customer in mind and really think, how do we add value? How do we solve their problems?

And for me, Amazon is a great example because as a business, they've always done this. One of their strategic mantras is to be customer-obsessed, and they actually have created this really nice process. So whenever they think about digital transformation, they are starting with a press release that will outline how this digital transformation has made the customer experience better. And this is their starting point, and then they go backwards and say, OK, how can we now use technology to actually implement this and make this better?

So for me, it has to start with value creation, really thinking about how I'm adding value, how I'm making the journey for my customers easier and better. And then once you've done this, you can then think about, OK, how do we establish a better relationship with our customers? This is also something really important, having this continuous engagement.

And companies like Body Shop here in the UK, they've done this really well. So they're a cosmetics company, and they have now started a direct channel that is very successful. So something that companies like Avon have done initially, but they are now building this. So they have this continuous dialogue with their customers. They have this ability to understand what customers actually want and how their behaviors are shifting.

And we've seen this in other companies, like Netflix, have had this for a very long time. They have all the insights about what consumers actually are consuming, what they're interested in, and this is why Disney was so keen to start Disney Plus because they didn't really have this. They didn't have the intelligence and the understanding of what customers want.

They can produce a great film. They can then put this out on their channels, but all the organizations, the cinemas, the streaming services that are then showing this, they're getting all the data back, saying, obviously, they're not just watching Disney films. They're also watching all these other films. So this consumer understanding was lacking, and this is what Disney is now doing well. So for me, start with value, then build relationships, and then use that understanding of your customers to drive insights to get the data and the insights that can help you to reshape your customer value proposition.

WILSON RAJ: You know, Bernard, what you talked about, starting with the customer, the value, the relationship, and then it's really this virtuous cycle. And to me, I've seen examples like this, and the term for me is this customer experience. But it's really becoming more as relevant as a service. Just like you have software as a service, basically, the customer is just expecting organizations to anticipate their needs and act on their behalf in a continuous manner, using AI to eliminate navigation here, or complex navigation, or anticipate needs, and then making smart decisions. And the one other example I've had some experience with is an online insurer, Lemonade. It's a small company. It used to be a startup in New York.

And they're using the things, Bernard, that you talked about, AI, data, forecasting, a chatbot that reviews an insurance claim, and then it checks it against the customer policy. It runs about 15 to 20 anti-fraud algorithms on it. It approves the claim, sends the wiring instructions to the customer's bank, and then lets the customer know like, hey, you've got the money in the bank. All this within 3 and 1/2 seconds.

I mean, that is truly a great example of relevance as a service, and again, all the examples that you talked about, I think the new operating model is this notion of relevance as a service. Now along with that, Bernard, I think the fundamental thing here is the data. Are brands overlooking-- are there types of data that is left uncaptured or underutilized that could really drive some of this virtuous cycle of value and engagement and relation that you've been talking about?

BERNARD MARR: Absolutely, and there's lots of untapped data out there. But this also comes with a big warning here from me because what I don't want companies to do is to fall into the trap of collecting everything just in case. Sometimes, when you listen to analytics companies and data vendors and storage vendors, they tell you, collect everything because at some point it could become useful. I think this is a really dangerous route to go along because what you want to do is you want to really figure out what data do I actually need.

And so for me, with lots of my clients, we approach this almost from a data minimization perspective where we say, let's figure out the 20% of the data that we really need that will drive 80% of our value. So when I worked with Shell, the global energy company, on their data strategy, what we then made sure is that for every bit of data they were now putting into their cloud, we said, OK. Well, let's make a business case for this. Why do we need this? What's the value of having this data?

And for me, there are too many organizations that fall into the trap of simply dumping everything they could possibly measure and collect in terms of data, and dump this into a big data lake, and then hope that at some point, this would become useful. So at the same time, there are huge untapped sources of data, so we now have data on almost anything. I remember working with a local butcher's shop here in London, and when we started working with them, the founder, the dad, who set up the business 50 odd years ago was very skeptical, saying, hey, we don't need data. We don't need AI. We have some real world challenges here that we need to face.

And so I said, OK, what are some of your real world challenges? And he said, OK. Recently, the library closed down. Now a supermarket has moved in, and I now have some real competition here. And I don't even know what I'm competing on here. Am I competing against them on price, on something else?

So I said, OK. They're all really good questions. Let's figure out how we can start answering some of these questions. So they needed to understand footfall conversion ratios, what marketing messages would work and didn't work, and what we did is we installed a little device in the shopping window, a little Euclid device that picks up our mobile phone signals. Because we all carry smartphones, and these smartphones always look for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, you have this little device that simply counts how many smartphones come past that try to connect to Bluetooth. And therefore, you have a very accurate footfall.

What we then did is once they had this information, they could then experiment with new marketing messages, saying, OK. Let's put a sign out for a week saying we beat the supermarket on all beef and then see what the impact is. The next week, let's try something different.

Let's say, OK. Come in for this family recipe that has been passed on through generations on lamb, and not only this, you get all the other ingredients, as well. You get the recipe card, and it is all locally sourced. And what was interesting is-- and of course, yes. Those messages really worked, so what this butcher realized once they had the data is actually, it was not about price.

It was really about engaging the community. It was about locally produced meat. It was about their tradition.

And so this really gave them a new focus. So for me, it's absolutely important to understand the question first and then collect the data and find the data. And there's so much data out there, but we shouldn't fall into the trap of just collecting data for the sake of it.

WILSON RAJ: Wow. Bernard, I think this is one of the coolest examples I've heard. I mean, this is a family owned butcher, and they're using data in such an immersive way, the foot traffic, the digital devices are passing by, to be able to really understand and test their messages and their value and some of the offerings they're doing.

BERNARD MARR: What is interesting, Wilson, is that this device cost $100, and they simply subscribe to a little software as a service subscription. And when they started realizing how useful this is, they then also started to think, OK. What other data can we use? What other questions have we got?

And they are now pulling in some weather data that the government makes available for free, and they can now use this to predict demand. So they know a week before the weather is going to be good at the weekend, so let's make some more sausages and burgers to get ready for barbecues and so on. So they've become a really data-driven company throughout this process, which is nice.

WILSON RAJ: It is. It's a spectacular example. I think, for them, they didn't start with all data. They started with some core data and then started incrementally adding because they were asking bigger questions, either related questions or adjacent questions.

And then from there, it's like, OK, to answer this question, I need this sort of data. I need weather data. I need traffic data, for example, and so on. So I think this operating model is something that I think all brands, all enterprises-- I mean, if this family-owned butcher shop can do something like that and be a math house and use that data in very creative ways, then I think the opportunity is available for everyone, as well.

So as we pivot to just a couple more elements, one of the things that the pulse report also talked about was around the convergence for the consumer around not just personalization, but also trust and loyalty. How does that factor in? So we've been talking all about immersion and value. There's also a trust factor because of all this data that's connected and collected. So what are some of the guidance you would have for CX professionals around balancing the personalization of privacy?

BERNARD MARR: So trust, for me, is vitally important. I've talked about the importance of building relationships and engaging with your customers, and you can't do this unless you have trust. It's a bit like in our real world, where we make friends, and over time, we build those relationships. And these are usually built on trust.

And companies that are building trust are the ones that are able to offer customers some real value and where customers really understand, OK. This company is actually on my side. So VitalityHealth, for me, is a really good example. They are a health insurance company, and what they do is they want you to be healthier. When you join them, you want to be healthier, so they are saying this is a win-win relationship.

So when you join them, they send you an Apple Watch. So you can track your own activity levels. They can track how active you are. You can then link your online shopping account to them to demonstrate that you're buying healthy food, and then you earn rewards.

So you then say, OK. I'm healthier. I then pay less for my health insurance, for example. I get benefits for this.

Or in the financial services world, where I've done some work with the Royal Bank of Scotland, for example, that wanted to develop better relationships with their customers. And I think in the past, financial services firms have always used data against their customers. So they offer them a great deal on a new financial product, and then they know that after six months or after a year, this will drop to almost zero interest rate. But we're not going to tell our customers this for a long time, and we will then earn lots of money.

So what they said is that you can't have this engagement and relationship if we are exploiting our customers, so what they now do is they actually tell their customers, OK. Your banking product, the interest rate will drop to zero in six months time, in three months time. Do you want us to find you a better product? They will now tell you when you're paying twice for, let's say, travel insurance, because as a premium customer, you get travel insurance included. And this, for me, is how you build trust, really delivering some value to your customers.

WILSON RAJ: Yeah. It's not it's not exploitative. It's not optimizing your sales numbers by selling this stuff, by saying, hey, you know what? You can save money if you do these things with us. That is a switching of that script to build that trust and obviously, to make sure that trust and data protection is part and parcel of this new customer experience.

BERNARD MARR: 100%.

WILSON RAJ: All right. This has been a great conversation, and we're going to head into the home stretch here. As we think about the ability to deliver these products and services and experience in this new era, as a futurist, I mean, you've probably seen this, and you've shared some of the ideas. What are the key one, two trends that you see will be coming up this year and into the next?

BERNARD MARR: OK. I've written a book about the 25 biggest technology trends that will define this fourth industrial revolution, but if I look across all these 25, the key ones are that data is now becoming a core asset for organizations, helping them to understand their customers and everything else. Once they have the data, they can then use AI to automate their business, using things like chatbots and machine vision. They can also augment and automate some of the analysis of the data.

Then 5G is a huge enabler that will transform so many business models. I feel 5G is not really recognized across businesses of how transformative it will be. Then this whole as a service revolution, so more subscription based businesses that are delivered via the cloud, and then extended reality, so augmented and virtual reality that will transform our customer experiences. They are, for me, the key trends that I am watching very closely and that are helping my clients to understand and prepare for.

WILSON RAJ: Excellent. In fact, the pulse report did surface some of these key areas around the data uptake, the acceleration of automation and smart technologies, such as AI, within the brand to do exactly those things. So that's a key part. Now, you've been speaking a lot at different events and so on, so what is the one thing that you would have CMOs or customer experience leaders focus on in response to the pandemic after-effects? If you've got to give them advice on one thing, what would that be?

BERNARD MARR: Yeah, so for me, there are two key words here. One is humility, and the other one is courage. So for me, what businesses and business leaders need to do is they need to really understand and listen and learn to what is going on around them.

So we've gone through this. We're still going through this pandemic, so really understanding what customers are dealing with, how this is transforming their world, and then having the courage to actually respond to this in a really authentic manner and where you try to experiment and try out new technology that will then help you engage with those customers better. So they are, for me, the key things, humility and courage.

WILSON RAJ: Fantastic. I think those are absolutely key principles to live by, whether you're in a state of disruption or even if things are going well. Bernard, where can they find more information? You reference a book that you have. Where else can they find more information to learn about some of the things that you're doing with regard to digital transformation and customer experience?

BERNARD MARR: There's so much content out there. There are literally thousands of articles and case studies on all of this on my website at bernardmarr.com. I have a YouTube channel where I talk about all of these technology trends. I have a podcast on the future of business and technology that people can subscribe to, and they can find me on social media, on LinkedIn where I share all my content, on Twitter, on Instagram. So there are plenty of ways to stay in touch, and I would love anyone listening to connect with me.

WILSON RAJ: Wow, those were some powerful points you made there, Bernard. It's critical to create a customer strategy that is both tech-focused and human-driven, but I think your points around having humility and the courage to be able to execute on the strategies is probably the force that really drives everything. So there we have it. I would like to thank our listeners for joining us on today's episode. Subscribe to our Reimagine Marketing Podcast via your favorite platforms so you won't miss future episodes.

We'll put all the resources that we mentioned, the Experience 2030 pulse report, the resources that Bernard mentioned, into the show notes. And I would like you all to join me in the next episode, "Episode Number Three, Experience 2030, the Future of Customer Experience," where we'll talk more about these macro trends that impact customers today and how brands can respond to them in real time. Thank you, and have a great day.

BERNARD MARR: Thank you so much.

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Episode 3: Experience 2030 – Future-Proof Your Customer Strategy

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Welcome to the Reimagine Marketing podcast. My name is Wilson Raj, and today's episode is "Experience 2030, Future-proof Your Customer Strategy. What will the future of customer experience look like? How will technologies like AI, smart devices, drones, virtual and augmented reality change the way consumers and brands relate to each other? This episode and some of the subsequent ones will feature "Experience 2030," an ambitious global survey on the future of marketing and customer experience.

I'm joined by Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founding partner of Futurum Research, who worked with us in this global research. The genesis of this research was, of course, at a marketing event. We had a good time in Boston last year at a MarTech conference. And again, all the topics were very salient in terms of AI and IoT and the future of customer experience. And there were all these technology vendors there. And I remember, after the event, we were sitting down by a-- wasn't it a trash can, Daniel?

DANIEL NEWMAN: Yeah, it's the trash can story.

WILSON RAJ: It was a trash can. And that goes to show, one person's garbage is someone else's treasure. But while sitting around that trash can and just musing about the conference and what we felt about it, the idea popped into our head as, wow, what would the future of customer experience look like? And what would be the implications for both consumers and brands? And remember, that set off a spark in your eyes, as I think that you were on the same track, right, Daniel?

DANIEL NEWMAN: Absolutely. And for everyone out there, I'm Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founder at Futurum Research. I'm a seven-times best-selling author, including my newest book, Human/Machine. But for the longest time, I focused on everything from the new rules of customer engagement to future-proofing your organization to, now, the relationship that's being created between humans and machines, as things like AI and analytics and IoT proliferate to change the way we experience the world.

And yeah, Wilson, I do think you tell the story very well. And for people to try to imagine it, there's a MarTech conference. It's like many conferences that take place at a small conference center or hotel. You walk in, and you're thinking, it's a tech conference. This thing should be awesome. There should be big displays everywhere. You should be seeing analytics flashing before your eyes, people wandering around with virtual and augmented-reality glasses. But that's not what tech conferences look like today, right? You and I are--

WILSON RAJ: Not at all.

DANIEL NEWMAN: --planted eating lunch, trying to find a beverage, some coffee, in two chairs that look like they came straight out of any banquet hall, next to a garbage can. And we're just like, it can't look like this forever. The future is going to have to be different.

And as we sat there, we started saying, I wonder if we could take a lot of data, ask a lot of questions-- not just of brands, like a lot of researchers do, but of consumers and brands. And we can couple all this together to come back and say, what is the world going to look like in 10 years?
And that's bold. And as an analyst, I can tell you that's bold, because predicting 2020 or 2021-- that doesn't take a lot of risk. I actually write those posts. You can go on Forbes and read my Digital Transformation Trends post. And you'll see I'm pretty sound at figuring out, 80% of the time, what's going to happen in the next 12 to 24 months. There's a lot of indicators. The data is pretty clear and widely available.
But going out over that horizon, Wilson-- that's what I thought was exciting. And I think you and I sat there. And by the time we left that conversation, we said, oh, yeah. We've got to figure out how to do this. But just figuring out how to do it and then even coming to the conclusion to work together-- that was only the beginning of what's been really a year of building to where we are today.

WILSON RAJ: Absolutely, Daniel. And I think the spark for this was certainly that there had been a lot of prognostications around the future of experience. We've read it in all the media, in all great publications, a lot of good research papers talking about the future of experience. And to some degree, now, the word "robotics", or "automation", or those kinds of things come in.

But I think the question we were trying to delve into was, do consumers really care? Where are they on this journey on the future of customer experience? Are they leading it? Are they lagging? And the other question that we were also interested in is-- as we unfolded the research and went about the questions and surveys and so on-- was, are brands in line with those expectations? Now, we know that consumer expectations are always sky high. They're always ahead of the brand. But to what degree are brands lagging? Or are they on par?

DANIEL NEWMAN: Yeah, and I think the question that even builds off of that, Wilson, is, how similar are perceptions? Because some of the most interesting data that we'll share throughout this series-- and of course, we would love to have you download-- check out the landing page at sas.com/experience2030, because there's a ton of data.
And in these episodes, we will share some key data points and talk about what it all means. But we will only get to the tip of the iceberg of all the data that we found here. But not only, what do brands see and what do consumers see? But what do they see the same, and what do they see differently?

We are in an analytics, AI, machine learning-powered world. But yet, a lot of companies still make decisions on gut. They still make decisions on what has worked in the past. They still are guilty of those seven words that are the biggest risk of any company-- "we've always done it that way." And the data shows that this still happens.

So the data gives us this window into the future, this exciting window of what customers think they're going to want. And then it tells what brands think that the customers think they're going to want. And then there's these perceptions.
So throughout this series, we're going to dive in to topics like customer loyalty. And when you talk about loyalty, we're not just talking about loyalty programs, but we're talking about being loyalty brands. And we talk about immersive technologies. And what are those technologies? What are those technologies that are really going to change the way people are experiencing companies? We've mentioned some of those already.

Another area we're going to talk about is privacy and trust. And this is an area that all of us knew was going to be near and dear to our hearts, because we're all struggling with this. Do we want to give all of our data for a great experience? And it's fascinating to see how people's answers really differ here.
So we're going to dive in to all these things, Wilson. But let me ask you this. Before we get into the show and start telling everybody what we found, what was maybe something that really surprised you? Or even better, what did you expect? Let's tell everybody what we expected ahead of this research. And then when we dive in to the actual episodes, we'll tell them what we found.

WILSON RAJ: Sure. I think my expectation, given a lot of the things we're reading around consumer adoption of technologies, is that there'll be more of a comfort level with technologies such as AR, such as VR, moving to the future. But then an interesting point there was around, there's still a little bit of hesitation, even into the future, around how those technologies could be construed as being very intrusive. But then, of course, a caveat to that is that there's still a need for personalization and relevance at all points of experience with the customer journey.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Yeah, I think you hit it on the head. And what I was really surprised by was, people seemed more aware of where they expect things to go. I expected people to be somewhat unsure or uncertain. Asking people to see 5 or 10 years ahead is a big task, and without all the data at their disposal for them to say, hey, when might we adopt a smart speaker? Or, when will I have multiple devices or be using sensors that will be extended the way I use my mobile device?

All these things-- people are thinking about it. And I think it wasn't necessarily expected. So when I came into it, I didn't know if the data was going to indicate that we had a whole lot of guessing and prognosticating to do, or could we really discern some of the very real trends that are going to emerge? And this data, this project, even had the outcome of a 10-year roadmap.

Now, of course, this 10-year roadmap, where Futurum Research, on our end, actually tried to lay out, in each year, one major milestone that's going to take place. And you're going to have to download the report to see that. But we look all the way out over the next 10 years, everything from where a drone might fit in to topics like blockchain and their impact on trust. So we cover so much ground.

But overall, in the end, what we really hope for everybody out there is that you enjoy the data, you find insights that help you steer your business in the direction that you want to take it, and that you find it actionable. And that this actionable data becomes your roadmap, your playbook-- which we will have an episode on the playbook-- for the future of experience in your business powered by analytics, powered by AI, powered by machine learning, and powered by all of the ways you take those technological topics, and you implement them into your digital transformation to drive the future of your business.

WILSON RAJ: This is a great spot to wrap up this fun, interesting discussion. Thanks for listening, everyone. Join us in the next episode, where we'll explore how immersive technologies can help marketers create more contextual and real-time engagement for your customers.

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Episode 4: Experience 2030 – Immersive Technology > Bridging the Customer Experience Divide

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WILSON RAJ: Consumers are dipping their toes in immersive technology, whether they even realize it or not. From Snapchat and Instagram filters, to heads up driving displays, to augmented reality shopping experiences. It's all creating entirely new ways for brands to engage with their consumers.

Hi, I'm Wilson Raj. And welcome to Reimagine Marketing podcast. Today's episode is Immersive Technology, Bridging the Customer Experience Divide. I'm joined by Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founding partner of Future in Research and we're excited to talk about this topic.

When we think about immersive technologies, ultimately it really draws down to one huge thing, contextual and in real time. That's immersive. The technologies around it are really cool as the research, by the way, you can find that on sas.com/experience2030. And we're talking about augmented reality, virtual reality, beacons. I mean everything that envelops today's modern consumer and also into the future. But ultimately, Daniel, when we net it out, when we look at these findings, and we look past the data and look at what consumers are really asking for, they want it to be contextual, situational. And they want it to be in real time.

And we need to talk about that, too. Because real time is not always every time, right? It's more about the right time.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Yeah. And let's talk about what consumers are saying. WILSON RAJ: Yeah.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Because the start here, is most organizations are in some phase of digital transformation. Many organizations still are combing through what that even means. But when you ask consumers about technology, 48% of our 2000 consumer respondents said they have too much technology in their lives already.

Well, if we're progressing towards more technology, this means we need to apply the technology better, because otherwise it's fatiguing the customers. 42% are saying they've spent too much money on tech that hasn't really helped them. So this is a gap. This means that consumers are making investments in devices and in hardware and in compute and in tools and technologies that aren't actually making their lives better.

So immersive technologies can form the heart of customer experience. But that comes down to the technology being applied correctly. Now a little context on this, the long and short is, 360 degree view of customer has been and will be the epitome of what marketers are trying to get at.

WILSON RAJ: And that term, 360, I think that is something that we heard, at least my career , 20 years ago, in a different tech company. And it still resonates today. And I think moving into the future, that's still going to be the mantra, around the 360 view. Now the question is, can we really get a 360 view, now?

Humbly, I would say probably not. Not a full 360. But we can certainly get close to that amount. And another data point here, that was interesting, is that consumers, they want to be enveloped, maybe to give us that 360 view. And they want a 360 view. So for example, with regards to AR and VR devices in their home today, 61% of consumers reported that they had no AR and VR devices today.

However, by 2025, 60% of them will expect to use these technologies as part of an event or a brand experience. So consumers are looking for a 360 view now. The question is, can us brands do something about that, in terms of what we talked about earlier, from the right context and interacting them at the right time.

DANIEL NEWMAN: And it's such a big question. I can still remember the first time I put a Gear VR on my head with a S7 Samsung. And I experienced the World Cup, the 20-- I think it was back in, was it 2014, the first time I tried it? And then it was really, really rough.

And then it was in 2018, it had completely hit the next phase. And I can only imagine, by the next time in 2022, when the lighter devices, the faster connectivity, we're going to feel like we're standing in the middle of the stadium. And that is where we are going.

But from where we have been, it has been a process. And it has taken some time for us to, ultimately, get to where we want to go, Wilson. It may be interesting though, to just kind of go piece by piece and talk about what the different technologies are.

Now as a reference of time, you know we're in the early part of October in 2019. One major company that's well known for having a lot of customer data is Amazon. And they recently launched 14 new hardware pieces, Amazon Echo. Everything from a oven, a smart oven, that can tell you, and you can watch what food is cooking at home, to a ring that you can put on your finger that has a haptic sensor that lets when you're getting alerts on a device, and then can connect to the earbuds that they've now built, to read your messages in your ear.

Now people can say, oh, they want to be a competitor of a hardware tech company. To me, it's the enablers of that 360 journey. Now there's all kinds of implications here. Do people want that much connectivity? Do they want their data being shared? Do they want their smart assistant in their pocket all the time?

But to get to 360, we've got to get to people's data outside of the home and in the home, outside of work and at work. And that's kind of the direction we're seeing go here. So as we go from, like I would say, the least to most immersive here, I would say, the first immersion is having technologies that are capturing all of our data inside and out, which is going to get us closest, Wilson, to that 360.

So you're seeing companies start to do it. They're starting to build tools and technologies that can start to-- what are we buying? Where are we buying it from? Where are we shopping? Where are we eating? What are we doing? Where have we been?

That's a good start. But to get the rest of the journey, people have to really participate and they have to stay connected all the way through the day.

WILSON RAJ: That's absolutely right. And I think even that starting point, which I think we could safely call that the notion, whether it's real time marketing or real time predictive analytics or real time intelligence, whatever you want to call it, that notion of real time is really key. And I think we need to parse that a little bit more. Because it goes beyond just the ability to market or to establish a connection in real time.

I think one way to look at this, especially today, and especially as we move into the future, is to differentiate between customer facing real time and what we call operational marketing real time. So a customer facing processes will be things that-- how we executing on your strategies. And that's where the data and analytics capabilities can allow customer experience leaders to create value for their consumers and prospects throughout the journey.

Now real time operational processes will be really more about the real time capture of data, analysis of that data, and then decisioning of that data to be used, either at that point of need, which is now, or it could be sometime later. So I think it's a misnomer to call those things real time, because data capture is always done in real time, to your point, Daniel.

But then the execution has to be algorithmically done so that it is executed at the appropriate moment, along those touch points and across those media devices, whether it's an oven or a ear bud or a smart TV or an Amazon Echo. And I think that therein lies that opportunity, to be able to hinge and connect all those things together for that immersive experience.

DANIEL NEWMAN: So we'll call that immersive technology one, which is the bot, the AI, the smart speaker, voice assistant, that we're going to see entrenched in our daily lives at home. But also we're going to start to see more of that kind of technology being used in the workplace. There's no question about it.

Whether it's Microsoft assistant on your Windows machine or it's Siri on your iPhone, we're not just using that for personal. We're using that to schedule meetings and appointments and to help us find documents on our computer, which is all immersive technologies. But then there's the next one, and you mentioned a little bit about this, which is those augmented virtual mixed and extended reality experiences. Different companies use different vernacular.

But 54% of brands are investing in this. So companies, certainly, are seeing the point. I still remember, there's one wine company that, you hold up your camera in front of it and it makes the labels go augmented reality. So you're seeing basic things. You're seeing Pokemon Go getting people chasing coins all over town. These are small immersive experiences.

I mentioned the first time I tried it for soccer, to watch soccer content, and how much that's evolved. But companies are starting to think about, how do we create more immersion? And this can also be in the workplace. This could be on the manufacturing floor. How do we help employees? Which is all part of experience, to develop and build new products more quickly with instructions.

So we're seeing AR and VR being rolled in, into the experiences. And you've kind of covered this one, so let's talk another thing. What about automation, Wilson? Automation of processes, automation of engagement. What do you think automation is going to do to the future of customer experience?

WILSON RAJ: I think automation is, from a technology perspective, in a hierarchy, is going to be a necessity. When we look at things such as AR and VR, and to your point, lots of brands are using it. You know, Home Depot, you can have AR to be able to look at your room and look at paint swatches and place furniture. And so the immersion there is all about creating value and is experiential, not just experience.

And I think when you're dealing with that level of data sets from AR, VR, from IoT, from sensors and beacons, that data set becomes unimaginably large. And therefore, some element of automation, in terms of automating aggregation of those, all those data sets, automating, using machine learning or artificial intelligence, in some cases, using computer vision or natural language processing, whatever the case may be as it accrues to those experiential senses, needs to occur to be able to handle that volume of data. And then to be able to orchestrate and synthesize that the right interactions in the right order.

And then after that, to be able to automatically refine those interactions on the fly. So automation now, becomes a key thing. And with automation comes automated decisioning. So we have things such as robotic process automation, RPA. The other things such as what we call intelligent process automation, which is something that we're talking about here, that systematically automates decisions and actions and data and analytics, to the point where all the heavy lifting is done by machines.

But then the human can then exert some level of judgment or creativity or emotional coding to be able to make that experience, not just immersive, but emotionally engaging, as well.

DANIEL NEWMAN: And we're looking at a future, by 2030, where brands believe that 2/3 of customer engagements will be done on digital devices. And it will be completed using smart machines. So basically, we're going to a world of human machine relationships, where 2/3 of customer engagements, 2/3, 66%. I know, I reiterate it. But I think that's important. In just 10 years, it's more likely than not, that when you're talking to a brand, you will be, at least in the very beginning, talking to a machine.

And some of us are probably already feeling that now, to some extent, with some of the chat bots. The difference is automation improves, as AI machine learning proliferates, is going to be the quality of the response. Right now, a lot of it's programmatic. They can only answer a handful of things. If you think about turns in a conversation, each question resets the bot to the beginning again.

But in the future, conversational AI is going to dominate the type of engagements that humans and brands have, where you'll have multi term conversations. It'll be just like talking to another human being where it understands feelings. It can identify locations. It can tie together multiple activities, weather, in planning of your day, for instance.

So we're going to see a lot of that continue to grow. We talked about real time analytics. One more area that's going to be immersive, but may be somewhat ubiquitous to a lot of people, is going to be Edge. So there's a huge amount of investment, I believe it's about 86% of companies that we talked to, said that they're spending significant resources to distribute computing to the Edge.

This is going to enable autonomous vehicles. This is going to enable smart cities. This is going to enable a next level retail shopping experience. So this is a pretty big one, Wilson. The Edge, while not necessarily another device, or not necessarily, in terms of what humans are feeling, that real time processing that you talked about and that ability for real time data to turn into a real time analytic, to turn into a real time experience, is really going to be heavily leveraging Edge computing.

WILSON RAJ: And that absolutely confirms that future of experience, where it is going to be more immersive. And you can't have immersive experiences without an ecosystem. So it's no longer just a brand, a consumer to brand experience. It's consumer to multiple brands, over multiple devices, yet across multiple interfaces, all the way to the Edge.

And so you know, let's say, if you take a financial, a bank, they're not just doing the core banking needs, in terms of helping someone save money or spend money or borrow money or lend money. The person wants to be able to, say, plan a vacation. So from an Edge perspective, they will be interfacing with different providers, different media outlets, and different players to be able to plan, pay for that vacation, and then go on that trip.

Transportation is involved. So the bank now it has to look at it, and say hey, I'm not just a bank. I'm working in an ecosystem. So I have to be able to move to the edges so that I'm able to be part of that experience all the way through, whatever that journey is.

And that again, takes a lot of compute power, in terms of that data that is going to be amassed. And AI and machine learning is going to play a pivotal role in terms of managing that data set, applying a almost human like intelligence to that, and then orchestrating decisions on the fly.

DANIEL NEWMAN: I think the summation of all of this around immersive technologies, Wilson, is there's so much interdependence that exists between all of these technologies. So AR and VR will expand as, not only hardware becomes more accessible and pricing becomes more affordable, but also with the growth of speed and connectivity. 5G and Wi-Fi six, which will turn into 6G and Wi-Fi seven likely by 2030, when this is turning the corner.

You are going to see Edge grow, which is going to power autonomous vehicles, but you're going to need IoT to advance and that 5G technology to continue to become more dependable and reliable before autonomous vehicles reach their point. Real time analytics, all these things, again, tie together.

So immersive really comes down to the immersion, not just of the consumer and the technology, but all of the technologies into one another. And I want to wrap this up with just a couple of interesting data points that came from the survey. By 2025, Wilson mentioned, 60% of consumers believe they will be using AR or VR as part of their consumption.

But let's jump ahead another five years. By 2030, 80% of consumers are expecting drones to be part of their brand experiences. The same 8 out of 10 consumers expect to be leveraging smart assistance in their lives. And that will completely shape the way that they are engaging with organizations and brands.

So this is just a start. But people aren't only expecting to talk to smart assistants, they're expecting the drones to be delivering their packages to their doorstep. They're expecting to be immersed in technologies that are going to be wearables, they're going to wear over their eyes. And I've said for a long time, that brands really could stand to benefit by putting technologies in front of consumers and actually reinstate our posture vertically.

Meaning, we've spent a lot of time over the last decade looking down at our devices. And I do see a huge opportunity, when we immerse people in reality, using digital as a extenuation of their experience rather than the experience itself.

WILSON RAJ: Great discussion, Daniel. Thank you. That's all the time we have for today's episode. Join us in the next episode, where we'll talk about how brands can move beyond traditional loyalty programs to become loyalty companies.

Now you've enjoyed today's show. Please head over to sas.com/experience2030 to gain access to our free resources and more content.

Episode 5: Experience 2030 – Loyalty in the Digital Age

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WILSON RAJ: Loyalty begins before a customer becomes a customer. Brands that succeed in the coming decade will be the ones that transform themselves into loyalty companies, and not just have loyalty programs.

Hello, I'm Wilson Raj. And welcome to the Reimagine Marketing podcast. Today's episode is Loyalty in the Digital Age. I'm joined by Daniel Newman, principal analyst and founding partner of Futurum Research. And we're going to talk about how brands can build, sustain, and strengthen this elusive brand loyalty.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Wilson, we all know what and a good loyalty program looks like. And we know the importance of a good loyalty program. You and I, for instance, we're travelers. Our work has us all over the world. You were just in South America. I make multiple trips-- six continents in the last year. I'm a One World flyer. I've memorized my American Airlines rewards. I'd read it out, but no one would care. But the fact is, I know it. And it's because these companies have built programs to earn loyalty.

But as a whole, there's some industries, whether it's your airlines, whether it's your favorite cup of coffee, or maybe where you like to eat out for your quick take meal all the time, where a program is the difference between success and we'll say failure in terms of building a customer program that keeps people coming back.
But in a lot of industries, it's not programmatic. It's not having a rewards card, it's not an app. But it really comes down to doing so much more as it pertains to building customer loyalty.

Wilson, welcome back to this show. Big topic, excited to talk about it?

WILSON RAJ: Absolutely, I think you and I, between the two of us, we probably have, like, 20 loyalty cards, right, as it relates to hotel rewards, and airline travel, and car rental? And I think therein lies the opportunity but also the challenge.
Because loyalty programs, by and large while some are better than others, is predicated on one thing and one thing only. It's all about transactions. It's all about how much we bought, how much we flew, how much we stayed in different hotels, how much we purchased.

And so that is something I think I'm excited talk about this research, is going to the future, just basing loyalty programs on the volume of transactions or whatever those metrics may be for different industries isn't going to cut it. In fact, I think we would be bold enough to say that loyalty programs are dead. Long live loyalty. And so let's unpack that a little bit more.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Absolutely. And I think we could start with some data. Because, well, we talked to 4,000-plus respondents. And in case you haven't tuned in to any of our earlier episodes, this is a global study. 4,000-plus, 2,000 brands, 2,000 consumers. You can get the full report at SAS.com/experience2030. There's so much info. Let's unpack it.

42% of consumers say three or fewer brands provide a high level of customer satisfaction. Now, to give a little more context, it's three or fewer consistently provide that, of brands that people engage with. Overall, people don't find, Wilson, that they get a great experience.

And so when you say brands, they're talking about every experience in their day. They're talking about where they eat. But they're also talking about B2B relationships that they might have through work. Three or fewer, when people on average engage with hundreds of brands. It's a very significant data point. And as I've said in some past episodes, it's an opportunity.

But it's also somewhat alarming. Because when you go up to, say, six or 10 brands that consistently create a great experience-- 12%, Wilson. People only have a few brands in their mind that really consistently create great experiences.
And I want to give you one more data point. But there was a study that came out a few years ago that said something like 89% of companies in the year 2017 intended to compete and differentiate themselves on customer experience.

So all these companies that, a few years back now-- we're looking into 2030 and this is a few years ago, said that they were going to differentiate and compete on customer experience. But our survey panel doesn't agree. Our survey panel does not feel. So this is a perception gap right here.

WILSON RAJ: It's absolutely a perception gap where brands are putting a lot of effort into building customer journeys, into personalizing and making them really real-time and contextual, while there's still that value around special recognition, right, or rewards from a consumer perspective?

And I think there was another stat in there that also caught my attention, around that 50% of the brands consider quality as the highest rated factor that drives consumer loyalty. So the quality of the products or services offered in terms of not just the price, but the quality. And I think the touchpoints have to be considered as drivers of loyalty. Brands have to close that perception gap.

So not just again, we talked about earlier as an end loyalty program, but around the journey itself as they're interacting, how can they build loyalty and efficacy in terms of that brand affinity? That is really the challenge. I think from a data perspective, there's a lot that can be done.

Brands can help consumers what I call save attention. That means do the thinking for them. Outsource, deploy, use AI or hidden intelligence to make recommendations and free up that attention that is so crucial to brand affinity.

The other one is they could shorten these journeys by incrementally improving each step of the journey, removing any kind of barriers or any kind of pain points, and then defining those expectations on the fly in terms of quality and expectation. So those things can be done on an incremental basis and not just to have an end loyalty program in mind.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Yeah, I think there's so much about continuous improvement that's going to be key for experience and experience creation heading into the next five and 10 years. I think a lot of companies want to solve it overnight. But a lot of it does start with things like getting your data in order, having the right set of data, start building the right analytics, incorporating machine learning. And we'll talk more about that when we dive into the tech.

But from a loyalty standpoint, one of the areas we really focused on was the attributes that create customer loyalty. So we looked at today, what drives loyalty. And then it's Experience 2030, so we asked well, what about five and 10 years out, what's going to drive loyalty? And just to kind of give a top three today, the top three is pricing, which is a little scary because so many companies believe that you can overcome pricing by providing more quality. But quality comes in second. So right now it's still special pricing at 39%, with high quality products coming in at 35%, and speed-- and you can ask Amazon, who has made massive investments to get to same day delivery in so many instances-- that came in third at 31%. So that's today.

Now let's just jettison into the future. People seem to think pricing will be surpassed, usurped by quality. So well, 39% say low price is number one today, 56% say quality in the future. So maybe brands are onto the right track by moving towards a quality model. Pricing then falls in behind at 53%.

And then there's a big drop off. But in third at 24% comes to special recommendations and upgrades. So companies personalizing experiences seems to be shooting up. Now, I would actually suggest put my analyst and futurist hat on and say that number will be higher. That's the difference of people who can't quite see what's going to happen and what will happen. But they're on the right track. They get the fact that getting more personalized, getting more specialized is going to make a difference. When you saw this top 10 list, sort of, how did you react?

WILSON RAJ: You know, I'm in the same-- putting the SAS hat on, I would say that the third component around contextualisation, around personalization, rising to the top will become the key impetus for building loyalty. As we talked about earlier, you know, the early activators of loyalty, they're still around rewards, based on transaction, right, points, amount spent, miles flown, et cetera.

But as we move into five years from now, 10 years from now, the quality is always a given, right? That's your brand promise. But more and more as we talk about loyalty being embedded into the customer journey, it is really about adding two more dimensions to the reward and transaction.

The second element that we added is value. What value, what incremental value along the journey, whether even before you become a customer all the way until you become a brand ambassador, and all points in-between, what value are you offering them in terms of ease, convenience? There could be an emotional component to the brand, whatever that may be.

And then the third element is recognition. Are you recognizing me not just as an individual, but also my lifetime value to the organization? And I think when you add the rewards, the recognition, and the value components along the customer journey, then that journey becomes a pivotal enabler for loyalty.

So I think the key thing here to remember is that loyalty starts even before you become a customer. So when I'm trying out things on your site, when I'm checking out something on your shopping cart for the first time, wow, that is an opportunity to build loyalty by the experiences that are being provided through that interaction.
DANIEL NEWMAN: Absolutely. And one of the things that we keep coming back to, because of how we designed the survey to have brands and consumers, is this perception and reality gap. And so I started off the show talking about it's not about brands and consumers having a lack of alignment. But to some extent, there is some lacking alignment that needs to be discussed.

So I earlier provided those top three being today, the low cost, high quality, and immediacy of availability. Well, those were at 39%, 35%, and 31% respectively, by the consumers. Well, brands seem to think quality is number one, with 58% believing it's that, then at 50% being cost, and 45% saying availability. So it's interesting. Because they actually had the same top three. So it means they're able to put their consumer hat on and they're sort of empathic to the customer and what the consumer is thinking.

However, they're overrating how one thing can be a differentiator. And clearly, how I see this, Wilson, is that consumers actually probably weigh three or four or five factors into loyalty, whereas brands might feel like it's one or two. And that's why such a high percentage is being attributed to a single attribute.

So for instance, we see 39% at number one being the low cost by consumers right now, with 20% being the 10th item, which was consistency of brand and image. Well, the brands just overrated each of them. And their number one was high quality at 58%, and offers, adds information different than consumers expressed interest but relevant-- so that would be recommendation engines, for instance-- at 40%.

So consumers are putting a number of items together to get to maybe that 100% if you add them in aggregate. And brands are putting everything-- they're seeing them at 40% and 50% rankings for their importance. And so it comes back to a thing of the alignment is they see similar, but they're overestimating. And I think that's an opportunity for brands to realize it's not going to be one or two things, it really does come down to how you do each thing correctly. And with technology, everything from recommendation engines, to corporate social responsibility, to app-based notifications, to just being available to pick up the phone, these are all things that aggregate to create loyalty.

WILSON RAJ: Absolutely. It is a cumulative effect, right? Just as you can't-- the loyalty program itself enough-- to be a loyalty company, you have to be cumulative. There's just absolutely no way around it. In other words, all your business functions, whether it's marketing, sales, service, support, there could be mid-office operations, has to be gelled in to that notion of loyalty.

How am I rewarding? How am I building value for the consumer? And how am I recognizing them along those points? And I think from a data perspective, this is where it's exciting from SAS, because we see a lot of our customers using data along the journey to build those points.

So a good example of that multifaceted loyalty engine would be Orlando Magic. Now, for them of course, for sports franchises like that, the season ticket holder is the epitome of the loyal customer, right? Because I bought a season's worth of tickets and I'm guaranteed-- well, at least from a revenue perspective, right, I spent that money.

But they go beyond that. For them, it's an immersive experience from the time you leave the home to go to a Orlando Magic game, you sign into the mobile app and you're getting pre-game data about your favorite players in real-time. As you near the venue, the app directs you to your parking spot and then gives you turn-by-turn signals to your seat where now you can actually order what you had the last time, you know, a hot dog or a burger. And then you could even-- while you're enjoying your food and watching the game, you could call the mascot to do a selfie with you.

Now, along all those points, what Orlando is building is experiential loyalty, not transactional loyalty. And that's what five years from now, 10 years from now, is going to be that difference. And so they're building fan experience. I think to me, a good reminder for our audience today is hey, we all want to make-- not just make it a customer experience, but make it a fan experience of your brand.

DANIEL NEWMAN: I think the owners in marketing leadership at the Orlando Magic have spent a little time experiencing the magic of Disney, not so far away.

WILSON RAJ: Yeah.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Because so much of what you're saying makes me think about the princess that shows up at the dinner of your seven-year-old daughter, and the eyes light up. And I say, that child will grow up someday, and have a family, and return to Disney. And it will be a moment like that, that immersive experience.

And it happens in other places too, Wilson. It happens-- I talk about Starbucks all the time. They really do understand how to do immersive experience. From end-to-end, their stores, starting with their whole third place concept, it's a place where people come, and they settle in, and they work. And the baristas are very personable.

They're also well-compensated and cared for because that translates into better experience, because they get tuition reimbursement and they feel like they're part of a company where they can grow. And they pass that along to the consumer.

But then it actually continues to expand to the app, right? Where the app is very well-designed. It tells you what you've ordered, it tells you-- you've got your little stars, and you can get your items after you spend so much. It connects to your pay systems, whatever your preferred method of payment is.

And it just makes that whole-- from the time I decide I want a cup of coffee to the time I get my cup of coffee-- experience so seamless. So you have your loyalty program. But the loyalty really is in the fact that they're getting to know you, they're delivering relevant information to you. Each time you go into the store, it's consistent. That journey, each shopping journey is similar, and familiar, and makes people feel good.

So it can be the Orlando Magic at a stadium. It could be your favorite theme park. But it could also be something as simple as your everyday cup of coffee. And one of the things specific that I thought Starbucks does so well is the utilization of technology. And that kind of brings us to the last part of our loyalty section, was what are the technology features that drive consumer loyalty? Wilson. What were some of your takes on some of the tech data that came back from the survey?

WILSON RAJ: You know, I think all the examples that you mentioned in terms of Starbucks, and Disney, Orlando Magic, and Carnival, even the cruise lines, they're using the same sort of point of presence, beacons, et cetera to be able to harness a more immersive experience for folks on the cruise, right, whether they're on the ship or off the ship.

And I think a couple of things, coming in from a technology perspective, number one is a sort of a customer data platform. And I use that term very openly. To me, I'm not going to a specific CDP definition. But there is a customer identity capability in terms of trying to identify folks on a one-to-one basis in terms of not just all the transactions I've done, but also with Wi-Fi, with beacons, you know, location-based services in terms of where they are physically, where they are digitally on a journey. So having an ability to be able to collate and coalesce all those different data points that speak to my customer state is absolutely crucial.

And number two, there has to be obviously an application of analytics. So all the things that we talked about, whether it's Disney, or Starbucks, or Orlando Magic, these brands are using advanced analytics, generally powered by machine learning or AI to be able to do those recommendation engines.

Now, if you look at Amazon, which is another good example, they have about 20-plus, maybe 21, 25 data science systems. So you have recommendation engines, which are connected to pricing systems, which are then connected to content, which are then connected to inventory, and so on.

And any time there is a signal in one of these systems, let's say from a consumer demand, it sets off a chain of events that then orchestrates the right pricing, the right inventory, the right content recommendations, delivery options to that specific signal. So again, the application of analytics along the customer journey, not just broad customer journey, but specific points, and articulating that and orchestrating that from an experience perspective is something else from a technology perspective that really weaves everything together.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Yeah, and it was interesting to see what consumers and brands look at when it comes to driving loyalty around technology. Consumers are quite simple in this. The number one thing-- real-time product order tracking. That's what they want, 31% said that. Ironically, brands didn't have that in their top five.

So either a, the brands have skipped to the future and they're not even thinking about the blocking and tackling, pardon the sports analogy, or they just don't rate that as highly. But I can say as a consumer, even as a business buyer, the first thing I think about after I procure anything is, when do I get it?

WILSON RAJ: Right.

DANIEL NEWMAN: So that, to me, is either, like I said, almost a survey faux pas where they just missed that answer, or it's a little bit of a wake up, like hey, do the basics first. Because the first thing that the brands were focused on was mobile, mobile apps, having a mobile app experience. And that was number two for the consumer. So they weren't wrong there. But start with the basics.

Some of the other areas that were interesting was high-speed access to site. We've heard those stats probably over time. And if you're a marketer, or an experienced designer, or a business owner, you've probably heard things like consumers only spend a few seconds waiting for a site to load. Or if an app is slow or difficult, they bail. So that certainly ranks very, very highly.

Brands are very driven by things like tracking offline. And you're starting to see that with the proliferation of IoT. Consumers don't have that high up on their list. And that kind of goes back to our Trust episode, which I hope you'll take some time to tune into, which is another area that Wilson and I cover and that's covered throughout this study. So that's kind of like that today.

But let's just flip for a minute and look into the future. So when we asked people to start thinking ahead, this kind of shows maybe not so much even a gap, but where brands are probably spending a little more time thinking to the future and individuals are spending a little less time. Individuals, consumers are saying from 2025 to 2030, they're now becoming very interested in that mobile experience.

Well, I think brands are like, we're past that. Now they're starting to think about ordering from your smart speaker in your home. They're thinking about 5G and how important it's going to be that, when you're in the subway underground, that you're still getting one gigabyte per second speed so that you can shop and buy an experience.

So consumers, I think are-- this is where they really need brands to start tying in and helping them see the journey and experience it themselves. Because consumers don't have always the full picture. If you're talking about over 2,000 consumers, not all are tech savvy. Not all of them necessarily are focused on what might be next. And that's where CMOs, and chief digital officers, and analytics leaders need to start to sort of paint the picture for consumers so they can see the future.

And this became very, very clear because topics like automation, artificial intelligence, 5G, and smart speakers-- only smart speakers really made it onto the list for consumers. But those were all on the lists for building loyalty through technology in 2025 to 2030.

WILSON RAJ: I think this is a good example of where now this time the brands are over indexing on technology. Because through this research, we have seen how consumers are adopting technology typically generally at a faster pace than marketers are adopting marketing technologies, right?

But here's where there's an over-index, and then leaving the fundamentals behind in terms of, again, you know, how easy it is, how handy is the experience, how enjoyable is the experience. These are all hallmarks of loyalty. And I think if brands would just to fixate on a couple of the key things, what makes a moment of truth is really-- there are three elements, right? There's informational-- I want to know something, I want to know how to get a price quote, I want to know how to return something. So that's all these informational elements that are baked in throughout the journey.

There are transactional moments where they want to do something. They want to actually order something or they want to exchange as an action. And the last one is they need help. So they want to do something, they want to know something, and they need help with something.

Now, when brands wrap all those things up into a nice emotional experience, right, which is really the brand promise, then you have something that can always be building loyalty throughout. And again, this is where that data that could be used in analytics can be used to inform the intelligence to power those experiences.

DANIEL NEWMAN: Yeah, there's so much to loyalty. And it's such an important topic for the customer experience of the future. As we head into the next 10 years, attention spans continue to get shorter. The options become greater. The world has been opened up. Everybody can pretty much access all goods, products, services, supplies.

Disruptive forces are coming out of nowhere. And this is going to increase the need for brands to basically pay attention to customer experience and to building loyalty for their customers. Is it overshooting on technology? I think it's making it easy, is what it comes down to. If the technology makes it easy, people are going to adopt it. If technology feels like it's a lift, if it feels like you're asking me to do more work in order to embrace the new technology, then it's not going to drive things forward for loyalty programs.

But that's going to be really a key activity of the brands over the next five, 10 years, to make technology transparent, utilize it in ways that consumers are having that better experience but don't really realize it. And we see this every day. We mentioned our examples throughout this show when we talked about the Magic, when we talked about at Starbucks. Most people haven't thought about all the technology that has gone into making these great experiences great. But the results have been happier customers.

So loyalty really starts with the basic building blocks of what do consumers want, how do we make it possible to deliver in the most seamless way possible? But don't underestimate the importance of the aggregate of several different attributes. And that's probably my one other big tip here. Don't put too much weight into just quality or just pricing. Put effort into everything. And understand that your experiences are being weighed across the board. Your company's social corporate-- corporate social responsibility statements to having immediate availability are all weighing in on what makes loyalty for a customer.

Wilson, I'm going to give you the last word here on the topic of loyalty before we bring this one to an end.

WILSON RAJ: I think at the end of the day, especially into the future, loyalty will be a cross-team game. So it's not just the marketing department or the loyalty group, for that matter, or even support and service. It is going to be an all-team game. It's going to be full collaboration. There has to be full data transfer and transparency between all these groups to be able to build loyalty into moments of truth. And that's where the battle will be won.

And thank you, everyone, for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's show, head over to SAS.com/experience2030 to access more free resources and great content.
Join us in the next episode, where we'll address the issue of Digital Trust and how brands can offer the perfect blend of trust and technology. Until then this is Wilson Raj, signing off.

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