Google is announcing a partnership with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which was launched by The Poynter Institute in 2015. The nonpartisan entity seeks to promote fact-checking best practices, which other organizations adopt and abide by. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Facebook’s News Feed has been largely pay-to-play for Pages for years. Now the social network is exploring whether to make it completely so. [Source: Marketing Land]
Twitter plans to open an Advertising Transparency Center so that anyone can see all of the ad campaigns currently running on the social network, including those that didn’t originally appear as regular tweets. Additionally, the company has agreed to have the independent Media Rating Council (MRC) audit its ad measurements so that brands can be assured of what they are buying. [Source: Marketing Land]
WhatsApp group calling is on its way, going by the code spotted in the latest beta version for the iPhone app. [Source: NDTV Gadgets 360]
Google added booking buttons to some local panel results. Now, Google is opening that up to more local businesses by integrating with their “scheduling partners” directly from the Google My Business console. [Source: Search Engine Land]
After launching a test of their live guest option with a small group of users back in August, Instagram has now announced that the functionality will be rolled out to everyone. [Source: Social Media Today]
LinkedIn has been in the middle of a long-term makeover of its social tools, as it looks to drive more usage. Now comes the latest chapter in that story: the site is unveiling a new smart reply feature in its messaging app, which gives users prompts with different phrases to use while they are chatting to keep the conversation flowing. [Source: TechCrunch]
Google’s focus on local search the past couple of years has some expecting local search traffic to play a heightened role for brick-and-mortar retailers this coming holiday. Google is now teeing up some new shopping features and reporting capabilities ahead of the holiday shopping season. [Source: Search Engine Land]
After some super HD videos started popping up on the social network, Facebook now confirms that it’s testing 4K video uploads and viewing using the 2160p UHD-1 Ultra-High-Definition Television standard. Some Pages and profiles can now post 4K videos to Facebook, as well as watch them. [Source: Techcrunch]
The mobile-first index has started to slowly roll out, at least for a “few sites”. There is no reason to panic about the rollout because Google is still testing it and will be rolling it out incredibly slowly. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Expert Opinion:
- Build Consumer empathy – to truly impact the overall customer experience
A study by Bain & Co., discovered that (all things being equal) companies which excel at customer experience grow revenues 4-8% above their own competition.
But you already knew that… & so did your competing brand!
Needless to say, in today’s disruptive times, your experience online is enhanced & interrupted by the various digital channels you interact with. For ordinary customers who do not possess your keen sense of technology, that experience can make or break their belief in the brand & the platform. Hence, improving customer experience in this disruptive world has become very important to sustain and gain customer loyalty in today’s competitive environment.
Customer journey is a complex process involving various touchpoints and interactions. All Marketers strive to provide superior services to the consumers in order to offer a delightful experience. With all the brands trying their best to improve their customer experience and looking at ways to provide best of the best services seamlessly, the new age marketers need to adopt a complete, holistic view of the customer journey and work on providing exceptional experiences to their users.
While as an individual, you might possess empathy as a value, it is necessary to translate it into your digital processes – in order to give scale to your differentiator. Some ways of doing this are:
- Solve for the entire journey
Understand and study the common journey paths. Identify the problem areas and work collaboratively with teams to solve the issues
- Study your customer’s behavior
You need to believe that if the customer has chosen to give you disproportionate time & attention, there is something on your platform, that can be developed into an inherent strength area. Study the various triggers across the customer journey that encourage the users to take a specific action. Re-evaluate the journey from customer’s perspective and make any changes required to offer a seamless experience
- Check all ‘handover’ points
Collaborate across teams and align every process keeping in mind the overall customer experience. This way brands can create consistent and high-quality interactions with customers across all channels and also continue improving the process whenever and wherever required
- Wear the Customer’s hat
Study customer data across all touchpoints and make it accessible to all the relevant departments. A detailed analysis of this data can provide useful insights to work on, sometimes helping build just one new differentiator, eventually enhancing the overall customer experience
By 2020, Customer Experience will overtake price & product as the key brand differentiator (Ref. The Walker Study)
Digital penetration is also creating a lot of standardization of technology as well as proliferation of business attributes like product specs, prices etc. A lot of leading brands are following a holistic approach to dramatically improve the customer experience. Brands should understand their current performance, identify key problem areas and make improvements in the processes wherever required on an on-going basis. Through this, marketers can surely gain a competitive advantage and succeed by providing superior customer experience. Try & recall the last time you made someone feel special or were able to make someone’s task seem easier than it really was. That is the sort of technological & emotional involvement that needs to go into building your customer experience ecosystem.
Brands which do this well, will gain disproportionately over the next 2-3 years. The others will simply watch their market shares erode away. The choice – as always – remains with us!
