Data-Driven Customer Experience Transformation with Mohamed Zaki
IN CLEAR FOCUS: Professor Mohamed Zaki of Cambridge University discusses his new book “Data-Driven Customer Experience Transformation.” Mohamed explores the shift from product-centric to customer-centric business models, distinguishing customer satisfaction from delight, and leveraging AI and data analytics to predict customer behavior. Mohamed also shares his insights on omnichannel experiences, personalization strategies, and real-world case studies, including Caterpillar’s CX transformation. < Episode Transcript Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS … Professor Mohamed Zaki: One of the key things is the interpersonal relation with the customer, which is coming from where we see now a lot of the tech firms are going, it’s personalization. So we saw this with all these new tech firms, what made them successful on their platform, they understood every customer, what they really care about, what they need, what they prefer, and they offer that to them back. Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising produced weekly by BigEye, a strategy-led full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, BigEye’s Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. Recent research from Kantar reveals a striking insight. Customer experiences contribute more to brand perceptions than advertising. In fact, while paid media delivers 25% of brand building impact, direct customer experience and word of mouth account for around half of all brand perceptions. Our guest today is uniquely positioned to help us understand this data point. Professor Mohamed Zaki is based at the Institute for Manufacturing in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, where he serves as Deputy Director of the Cambridge Service Alliance. This research centre brings together the world’s leading firms and academics to address digital transformation challenges. Mohamed has consulted and lectured for over 50 organizations, including Manchester United, Caterpillar, and IKEA. He’s also the course leader for the Data-Driven Design for Customer Experience online course at Cambridge University Press and Assessment, and co-founder of Customer Experience Insights Limited, which developed the 360CX AI platform for customer engagement decision-making. He serves in advisory roles for several companies, most recently as AI Innovation Advisor at Tactful AI. His new book, published by Kogan Page, is “Data-Driven Customer Experience Transformation: Optimize your omnichannel approach,” which is also our selection for the BigeyeBook Club this month. To discuss some of his book’s key ideas and frameworks, I’m delighted that Mohamed is joining us today from Northamptonshire in the UK. Mohamed, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS! Professor Mohamed Zaki: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here with you, Adrian. Adrian Tennant: What inspired you to write “Data-Driven Customer Experience Transformation”? Professor Mohamed Zaki: So I work most of my career helping organizations around this area in particular for a while. So most of my research helping firms to understand how they can leverage data and AI to design better experience, but also as well to manage it in particular. What makes me drive to drive the book is actually the fast pace of the era that we’re living at the moment, especially the digital transformation that’s happening with many firms. When I’ve been asking a lot of practitioners, they were struggling a little bit with the right tools and frameworks that enable them to design the future of services and experience for the firms. But more important is leveraging this new emerging technology like AI and data to enable them to understand their customers better. And this is particularly problematic in enterprise firms or established firms, not the digital-born organization. You can see digital-born organizations, they’re quite starting as a startup, nimble, their tools and softwares and solutions is quite up to date. So that’s allowed them to become more data-driven, if you like, organization. Think about ChadGPT, for example. This is an example of a data-driven business organization, which has managed to do a better experience for users when we are interacting with a machine, in this case, a conversational AI. There will be a lot of attempts before, but they were the most successful one, and that came from the statistics. Many users daily joining their platform now, and this is because of the experience they had with this conversational AI capability. So I guess to answer your question in particular, there is need for a lot of practitioners now with fresh thinking, fresh tools that go beyond the traditional ones that exist for a while, like design thinking, journey mappings, and emotion mapping. So I thought, let’s leverage some of my engagements and interactions with a lot of firms, and most of the tools I’ve been developing through my research in this book to communicate and disseminate, and hopefully this is helpful for people. Adrian Tennant: In your book’s introduction, you highlight how we’re living in an experience-driven economy, where even beloved brands risk losing market share due to a single negative customer experience. Mohamed, what’s driving this shift? Professor Mohamed Zaki: This just came a lot as well from a lot of facts and figures that a lot of big practitioner firms, we’ve been surveying customers to understand, you know, the new generation of customers, what they think about the brand they are engaging with. And you can see the new wave of customers, let’s say this way, needs not the standard ways of services or the transactional strategy that we used to have with established firms. They need personalized experience, they need the speed, they need care about some of their issues and problems. Hence, this is a discussion in the book, to deliver a quality product or a service is not at the moment making your biggest competitive advantage. You have to have a quality product, of course, and quality service here, offer it to your customers. But what differentiate you versus your competitors is the customers really feel that they have a great experience and seamless experience with your brand. So we saw a lot of statistics,
What’s Right with America With Honorable Paul Johnson and Larry Aldrich
IN CLEAR FOCUS: Honorable Paul Johnson and Larry Aldrich, authors of “What’s Right with America,” challenge fear-driven narratives dominating media. They discuss how optimism drives innovation, the power of individual agency over collective thinking, and the economic strengths of the United States. The conversation explores marketing lessons from their data-driven approach to countering pessimism, the importance of entrepreneurship, and how brands can tap into shared American values rather than divisions. < Episode Transcript Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS … Larry Aldrich: You simply can’t solve problems from a position of fear and negativity. You have to be optimistic. You have to believe you can solve them. Paul Johnson: The single greatest thing that our country ever did was, from the very beginning, it empowered the individual over itself. Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising produced weekly by Bigeye, a strategy-led, full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Bigeye’s Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. In today’s polarized media landscape, marketers and brands face unprecedented challenges when communicating with consumers. As society appears more divided, many brands struggle to position themselves authentically without alienating segments of their audience. This challenge raises important questions about how brands can navigate these complex waters while staying true to their values and connecting with consumers in meaningful ways. Our guests today offer a unique perspective on America’s foundation, its values, and how understanding what’s right with America might provide insights for brands and marketers. Honorable Paul Johnson is a former State Department official, CEO and co-founder of Redirect Health, former mayor of Phoenix, and host of The Optimistic American podcast. Joining him is Larry Aldrich, a former federal antitrust prosecutor, former CEO of University Physicians Healthcare and two Gannett newspapers, and founder of Tucson Ventures. Together, they’ve authored a new book titled “What’s Right with America … And How We Can Keep It That Way!” Published by Post Hill Press, the book examines America’s core strengths and values, challenging the prevailing pessimism that dominates so much of today’s discourse. To discuss how their insights might inform marketing strategies in a polarized world, I’m delighted that Paul and Larry are joining us today from Arizona. Paul and Larry, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS. Larry Aldrich: Thank you. Paul Johnson: Thanks for having us, Adrian. Adrian Tennant: Larry, your book, “What’s Right with America,” comes at a time when many perceive the country as deeply divided. What inspired you to write this book? Larry Aldrich: So I would say Paul, specifically. I don’t really kind of suck up when talking to Paul, but Paul is the inspiration for the book. He and I are running buddies, and I knew about his podcast, The Optimistic American. And one day I said, “You know, you might want to market this a little differently. You might want to write a book.” And he goes, “Well, I’ve written books.” And he said, “If you want to write a book with me …” meaning “you want to take the first crack at it.” And I said, “Sure. I’ve always been thinking about writing a book. So here we go.” So that really was the inspiration, specifically. Generally, I think I tire very much from the negativity. And I get caught up in it like everybody else, and you just kind of find yourself just spiraling down. And again, the inspiration of Paul just spending much of his time on a podcast talking about optimism and what makes America great, those two things intersected for me to be quite interested to write the book with Paul. Adrian Tennant: Paul, when we were preparing for this podcast, you mentioned how fear-driven narratives dominate media channels on both sides of the political divide. Now, as someone who’s worked in both politics and business, how do you see this affecting the broader cultural conversation? Paul Johnson: Well, I don’t think there’s any doubt that it’s had a big effect. I do want to say one thing about Larry. I appreciate Larry giving me so much credit. But Larry was a publisher. He worked for the Justice Department. He has an incredible understanding of the Constitution. And I have known him for a long time. And his fundamentals and his belief in the foundations of America are almost unshakable. It’s one of the things that I’ve loved about him. And he contributed and wrote a ton on that inside this book, that I enjoyed myself. You know, what we see that’s happening, and that is counter to my instincts, is a huge amount of pessimism that exists in America today. The pessimism is being driven really by both sides, and there are a wide variety of reasons for it. But there’s political advantage, and it’s profitable to be negative. But consequently, the American brand is being hit on a regular basis. If you were trying to figure out how to market into that, my guess is the first instinct would be you have to be negative as well. But as we know about branding, anytime you’re talking about branding, sometimes being counter to the existing culture is what actually gets you noticed. We’re hoping that is what happens. Although I can’t tell you how many times Larry and I have been up on podcasts and seen comments from people saying, “What’s right with America? Are you guys morons?” That there’s not much right with it. And here’s what I would say to that. “You’re wrong. You know, take a look at the data. Start with that.” You know, today, again, on the right and the left, we, you know, we can listen to the Bernie Sanders talk about inequality that exists because of income levels. We can also hear both sides talk about things like the need for tariffs because the United States has been hollowed out and our industry has been destroyed.
Bigeye’s 2023 US Pet Owners Study
Results from Bigeye’s new 2023 US Pet Owners Study reveal 97 percent consider their pets to be family members. What are the implications for pet care marketing?
Everything You Need to Know About Living in Austin, Texas
Learn everything you wanted to know about what makes Austin, Texas weird from the people that call it home. Download our Austin, TX research report to review all of the details. Introduction The capital city of Texas, Austin is the 11th-most populous city in the United States and the seat of Travis County. Located nearly in the center of the state, Austin is about three hours south of Dallas; three hours west of Houston; and about 90 minutes north of San Antonio. Experiencing a population growth of 34.1% between 2007 and 2017, the Austin region is one of the fastest-growing in the country Austin has been the fastest-growing major metro in the country for nine straight years, from 2010 to 2019. The metro population jumped to an estimated 2.2 million people as of July 1, 2019, according to the United States Census Bureau. That is an increase of 2.8% from the prior year, bigger than any other metro with at least 1 million residents. That’s 169 people added every day, on average. With a vibrant, well-educated, and youthful population of 2.2 million in the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), the median age in Austin is 34.7 years. Of Austin’s population aged over 25, 44.8% have a Bachelor’s Degree. Leading the US in tech salary growth, it’s the number four city tech workers would consider moving to. Austin’s laid-back, take-it-or-leave-it kind of attitude matches well with its fun and “weird” culture, celebrated on bumper stickers and T-shirts with the slogan, “Keep Austin Weird.” “Everyone is welcome and has a place somewhere here. And it just makes it such a unique place because you just never know who you’re gonna meet or what experience you’re going to have just ‘cause there’s so many different things.” Jamie E, 38 Austin Neighborhoods Downtown Austin is popular with younger residents with middle to upper household incomes. These Austinites love the convenience of being just blocks from shopping on Congress Avenue, live music venues on 6th Street, and even some great parks, hiking, and biking along the Colorado River. Across the Colorado River from Downtown Austin sits South Austin, where young, artsy types congregate. Barton Heights offers great family areas, while Travis Heights and Bouldin Creek attract mainly hip, liberal Austinites. North and Northwest Austin include Round Rock, Cedar Park, and Leander, which attract a lot of families. The Leander is an award-winning school district, and Apple and Dell have large operations in the area. North Austin also has some great luxury apartments. These fast-growing Austin neighborhoods are popular with families. West Austin has some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, such as Westlake Hills and Steiner Ranch. The commute into town is a bit longer than in other areas of Austin, but residents are closer to Lake Travis and the great outdoors. Neighborhoods Oak Hill and Circle C Ranch are further south. Although East Austin used to be considered the poorest part of the city, the area is now mostly a hipster neighborhood with many sleek, modern developments. Southeast Austin is home to a lot of University of Texas students, likely because of the large numbers of apartments and other rental properties in the area. “I am in a tiny house in East Austin. With three dogs – I have two Huskies and a mix. You’d be surprised the people who to live in the tiny houses where I’m at.” Shelly S, 42 Doing Business in Austin The Austin region offers businesses deep talent, education, quality healthcare, telecommunications, and a modern, international airport. The major employers include: Amazon, AMD, Apple, Charles Schwab, Dell, General Motors, IBM, Intel, National Instruments, Samsung, Tesla, VISA, and Whole Foods. Key Industries include: Advanced Manufacturing Clean Technology Creative & Digital Media Technology Data Management Financial Services and Insurance Life Sciences Space Technology The growth isn’t slowing down any time soon. The new Tesla Gigafactory, set to be located in eastern Travis County, will be one of the world’s largest and most advanced automotive plants and will bring an estimated $1 billion in capital investment to the region. In addition to being home to tech giants, Austin has a thriving startup scene. Austin area startups attracted $2.2 billion across 263 venture deals in 2019. Startups account for a larger share of businesses in Austin than in nearly all major US metros and Austin ranks 6th for new businesses per 1,000 population. “A couple of my friends work at Google and Facebook and they’re always saying so many people are moving in. I would say those apartment complexes are definitely to cater to people like that. Cause it’s like the new hub.” Madison P, 28 The Cost of Living in Austin Texas consistently ranks as one of the nation’s most favorable business climates based on its low tax burden and competitive regulatory environment. Texas features no personal or corporate income tax, and overall the state has one of the lowest state and local tax burdens in the US. According to Austin’s Chamber of Commerce, the cost of living is 2% lower than the national average. Austin Apartment Costs Renters will generally find more expensive prices in Austin than most similar cities. The median two-bedroom rent of $1,450 is above the national average of $1,193. The city’s median one-bedroom rent is $1,175. While rents in Austin fell moderately over the past year (-0.6%), many cities nationwide saw slight increases (+0.2%). According to RENTCafé, these 5 Austin neighborhoods offer a good selection of rental apartments, unique dining, shopping, atmosphere, walkability, and a sense of community: Downtown Austin (average rent $2,200/mo) Central Austin ($2,100/mo) Clarksville, between downtown and the MoPac Expressway ($2,100/mo) Zilker, South Austin ($1,400/mo) Travis Heights, South Austin ($1,400/mo) What Austin Renters Want No two renters are the same but many Austin renters are consistently seeking features and amenities. Here are the top things tenants report looking for in a property: Convenient Location – People want to live, work, and play in a geographically convenient circle. If your multifamily property is located
Know Your Audience with Persona Development
You may think that you already know your target marketing audience, but without persona development, you may be shooting in the dark. It’s marketing 101: The first step to effective branding and advertising is knowing your audience. And there is no better way to fully understand your audience than a well-crafted buyer persona. Forbes Magazine Councils Member and contributing writer Jon Simpson defines buyer personas as “semi-fictional characters that personify your ideal customer” and called them “imperative to having accurate audience insights.” Many business leaders deem the development of buyer personas superfluous, overconfident in their natural ability to connect with existing and prospective customers. But without comprehensive and effective persona development, critical misjudgments can easily occur. And these misjudgments can make the ultimate difference between success and failure. The benefits of persona development It is essential for brand strategy experts and content marketers to draft and refine effective buyer personas. No matter how busy they happen to be and how anxious they are to get on to the content creation stages of marketing campaign development process, they absolutely must make time for this key preparatory measure. Persona development gives direction and focus to all of your marketing efforts by providing a single audience template that everyone in your organization can use when developing overall marketing strategy and spearheading specific advertising efforts. As the independent content marketing resource Content Marketing Institute puts it, “Documenting your personas, even if done quickly, is key to keeping everybody focused on the same audience.” Persona development is particularly useful for companies with multiple stakeholders and/or team members who hold decidedly different opinions when it comes to marketing and branding strategies. By determining buyer personas that epitomize target audiences as a whole, companies can not only structure a unified marketing vision, but make all narratives involving company brand and products/services far more compelling, memorable, and ultimately effective. From your official website and social media pages to your traditional and digital advertising efforts, all elements of your marketing outreach can (and probably will be) refined and optimized to meet the specific wants and needs of your audience as you identify them. However, by creating clearly defined buyer personas ahead of time, you can avoid the tremendous amount of time and monetary expense that go hand in hand with major redesign and redevelopment. How to develop an effective buyer persona Although even a rudimentary buyer persona is better than no buyer persona at all, it goes without saying that putting more forethought and care into the persona development process will inevitably yield better results. For this reason, organizations that are serious about marketing and branding success typically employ the help of a specialized persona development agency when engaging in this process. The Content Marketing Institute breaks the development of an effective buyer persona into five practical steps. Keep in mind that each of these steps is an involved process in and of itself, requiring significant data gathering and analysis using modalities that range from general market research to customer/prospective customer interviews and surveys. Step 1: Visualize the ideal customer. Through extensive research, analysis, and projection, develop a single fictional customer who represents your target audience as a whole. For optimum results, go far beyond basic demographics such as gender and income level to examine the details of this customer’s professional and personal life. Step 2: Consider the customer’s applicable wants and needs. What are the common objectives and responsibilities of your ideal customer? What obstacles might stand in his or her way? Step 3: Characterize that customer’s role in relation to the purchase of products and/or services. What form does your ideal customer’s buying process take? What questions is that customer likely to ask before making a purchase? Step 4: Consider the customer’s communication preferences. What media channels does your ideal customer use on a regular basis? Where does he or she go to get information? Step 5: Marry your buyer persona insights to your strategic company goals. A great way to do this is to craft one or more engagement scenarios that take buyer personas through various prospective consumer interactions with your company. For more information If you want to learn more about the benefits of persona development and/or get professional assistance with the persona development process, contact a skilled and knowledgeable representative of Bigeye today. If you are looking for a persona development agency with a vision, we’d love to show you what we have to offer.
Why Knowing Your Audience Is the Key to Marketing Segmentation
Only 2% of visitors convert their first visit to most sites. But using marketing segmentation to retarget that remaining 98% can boost conversions by 70%, according to Invespcro. And it’s much easier to accomplish than you think. Establish a relationship with your customers using audience analysis Understanding who you are talking to is the foundation of strong marketing segmentation. Initiate a relationship with your target audience by acknowledging that you understand who they are, empathize with their needs, and have products and services that can solve their pain points. Start by pulling quantitative information about your site traffic such as socio-economic demographics and referring sources, then layer on the behavioral information you can glean from third-party data outlets such as social media and lead forms. This information will allow you to paint a picture of who your customers are, where they spend their time online, and what they need, so you can use this data to create a flawless marketing experience. Translating this data into actionable insights is the most technically challenging part of the marketing segmentation journey, so we recommend partnering with a trusted digital marketing agency like BIGEYE to get you started. When all else fails, ask: Using choice-based marketing segmentation If you are a small business owner or just beginning to flesh out your marketing segmentation strategy, let your visitors simply tell you who your target market is by having them self-identify. As an example, you may feature a drop-down menu on your landing page that allows visitors to share what industry they are in to receive personalized content or encourage them to opt-in through gated content and lead forms. Once your audience has identified themselves, you can accurately speak to them and provide meaningful content without doing as much upfront audience segmentation work. Build marketing segmentation campaigns that fit your audience’s needs Once you know who you are speaking to, begin creating content that is specific, timely, and relevant to your audiences. Use marketing segmentation tools such a retargeted display ads, search, and social media campaigns to ensure your brand stays top of mind and relevant. While hyper-personalization is important, it’s equally important to recognize that site visitors may flow in and out of different personas and audience types as they move through the customer journey or as their individual needs evolve. Work with an agency to find the right blend of targeted content and universally relevant information or use A/B testing to validate you have the right mix. Qualitative research such as interviews and focus groups might also help you understand whether your content is hitting the right tone for the right individuals at every stage of the marketing experience. Contact us today to explore how BIGEYE has transformed brands like yours using these powerful tools and receive a free consultation and audit about how to get started.
Why Automobile Companies Must Understand Mom Marketing
It’s a movie cliche we’ve seen a million times: a woman goes to purchase a car, but gets swindled by a sleazy salesman because she supposedly doesn’t know her way around a car. Regardless of whether this was ever an accurate depiction of women’s role in the automobile purchasing process, this is certainly not the case today. To draw on another cliche: the times, they are a-changin’! So, automobile marketers need to embrace mom marketing. A new report from Cars.com shows that 73% of moms consider themselves to be the sole decision-maker in the vehicle shopping process. And, it makes sense — after all, if you’re going to have to haul Sammy and Stella from soccer practice to swim team to ukulele lessons, then it’s important to make sure you’re able to do it safely and comfortably. In the era of smartphones, tablets and lightweight laptops, it’s easy to research a car from anywhere with an Internet connection. And, granted that I can spend close to an hour trying to find a good restaurant on Yelp, I can also spend far more time trying to find the right vehicle to meet my needs. However, the team at our Orlando ad agency has noticed that when you see TV ads for new cars, they’re nearly always marketed toward men. But if moms have so much influence on the car purchasing process, doesn’t it make sense to try to court them through marketing, too? In viewing a compilation of Superbowl car commercials, I noticed that not one of them featured a female driver. Whether this is more of a response to the automobile marketing landscape or simply just the Superbowl demographic, it still seems strange. After all, of the 111.5 million people who watched the Superbowl, 50 million were female. Yet for some reason, these car companies don’t seem to care as much about attracting moms. It’s interesting because moms tend to have a lot of say in most major purchases across the spectrum – we’re not just talking about cleaning supplies these days. The purchasing power of millennial moms is estimated at $170 billion. And, if moms are making the car-buying decisions, then why are these companies trying so hard to sell to dad? Car companies that decide to market to women would have an upper hand in trying to lure their business, since as it stands right now, there is so little competition in that space. And, we’re not talking about trying to sell women on light pink minivans with extra compartments to keep makeup. Women need cars to be useful and practical. Moms tend to be more concerned with safety and durability, and with all the new safety features the car companies are introducing these days, there’s no reason they shouldn’t think about moms in the marketing process. They also care about gas mileage because lugging children around can put a lot of miles on a car. Focusing on these benefits is a terrific start in helping reach the mom market. [quote]Women make up more than half of the world’s population, and drive at least half the cars on the road.[/quote]Car companies are already installing the features that make moms happy. As such, the team at our Orlando marketing agency thinks these companies should spend more of their dollars trying to reach moms, who more than ever, are in the driver’s seat in making automobile purchasing decisions. Contact our team of mom marketing experts today to uncover ways to reach this powerful target audience!