We’ve talked about “customer experience” on our blog many times. The concept of “experience” isn’t new to us, or you, as marketers and service-industry folks. But, here are some recurring themes that we see crop up more and more in the evolution of customer experience.
The Demand for More Personalization
It’s likely that you’re drowning in customer data. The abundance of demographic, sales, fulfillment, behavior, and preference data available to businesses is exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. Businesses who figure out how to organize customer data into a single contact view are in a better position to create a great customer experience. However, with disparate systems collecting the data, it takes a lot of work to marry all of your insights back to a single customer.
Now is the time to tackle this challenge. As consumers become more and more familiar and comfortable with big brands’ highly-personalized marketing and sales approaches, they are going to expect the same from every brand that they interact with. Companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Google are defining customer expectations. They deliver consistent, personalized, and predictive service and products.
Collecting all of the information that you have on your customer in one central location can prepare you to provide personalized wine, packages, and offers.
The more that you can tailor your service, communications, allocations, and offers to the unique expectations and preferences of your customers, the more they will trust you and the stronger their loyalty will become.
A good first step to centralizing your data is to clean up the customer data you currently have. Make sure that you have accurate and complete contact and preference data for your customers. Then, take a look at all of the systems you use and consider how you can improve the connection between those systems to bring your data together.
Continued Evolution in Digital and Technology
Technology is ubiquitous in business at this point. It’s not going anywhere, and the investment in it is showing no signs of slowing down. Sometimes businesses approach technology adoption as if there’s an end-point. It’s helpful if you recognize that there’s no finish line. Software—its capabilities and how your company uses it—is forever evolving. Don’t be surprised when you find yourself investing time and money in technology this year, and the next year, and the next!
As you adopt new software systems and institute them at your winery, there are a couple of things that you should consider to get the most out of your investment of time and money.
FIRST—NO ONE SYSTEM SOLVES ALL BUSINESS PROBLEMS.
Each winery is different. Their tasting room, club configuration, allocation program, fulfillment process, accounting system, and compliance approach are all unique. The unique needs of this industry is likely why there are hundreds of software platforms that serve wineries.
The solution here is to find systems that work for your business and play nicely with other platforms. This can be accomplished by adopting software that has open APIs and webhooks that allow you to send information back and forth between platforms and use logic to trigger actions across systems.
SECOND—SOFTWARE SHOULD MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER.
With systems that work for you, your business should have the ability to quickly leverage automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to handle several areas of your business. One of the members of our development team recently wrote an article on the topic of technology in the industry. There are a variety of ways that you can leverage the data you’re collecting and the systems you’ve implemented to support personalization, operations, sales, etc.
A few simple examples are:
Customizing product offers, allocations, and add-ons in your eCommerce experience
Automating email communications with your customers and leads
Using live chat and personalization on your website to handle reservations, common questions, and customization
If your software is working together, smartly, you will experience huge benefits like better data organization, more personalization, and ultimately more customer satisfaction and sales. Just know that these benefits don’t happen overnight and they aren’t easy to come by. Continue to invest in your technology and embrace the evolution.
Reach out to our team if you have and questions on personalization and the continued evolution in technology.