When a keen Chobani superfan emailed the company last year asking if the yoghurt brand could be involved in her wedding, Chobani’s customer loyalty team went into overdrive. Cue flowers in yoghurt tubs, tiny pots of Chobani and branded balloons – all with just five days notice.

“In an era when everything is digital and automated, the human connection is very important,” says Maria Voronina, Chobani Australia’s Marketing Manager – Innovation and New Platforms.

Consumers who contact Chobani receive a handwritten note and perhaps a small gift or advance notice that a discounted flavour is returning. This personal touch is one reason why Chobani became Australia’s fastest-growing yoghurt brand, notching up double-digit annual sales increases for eight consecutive years after launching in Australia in 2011.

By 2017, Chobani had the largest share of the Australian yoghurt market. Eager to build on this success, the business signed up to 麻豆原创’s Qualtrics Experience Management Platform the same year.

With Qualtrics XM, Chobani is able to launch user feedback surveys in seconds and capture responses at every stage of the product lifecycle optimise offerings and services, while segmentation helps Chobani meet the unique and diverse needs of Australian consumers.

“We’d grown rapidly, we were continuously innovating but a lot of our data was outsourced, it took forever and it was expensive,” say Voronina. “We were the new kid on the block. We wanted to stay number one.”

Chobani was already a trailblazer in launching limited-edition yoghurts, such as ghost-shaped packaging for Halloween, and Chobani Flip, with a separate mix such as chocolate or nuts. But it needed a faster way to keep innovating.

“We may design a new product with 20 flavour options; we need to narrow down what is most appealing. Setting up a survey with Qualtrics takes about 30 seconds,” explains Voronina.

Rapid feedback also helps with marketing. When Chobani launched FiTX – a high-protein, no-added-sugar product – in 2019, the company knew the high-protein factor would appeal to a different market segment than its no-added-sugar offering. Chobani adjusted its launch communication strategy accordingly.

“We’re now equipped with tools that help out innovation and out brand tacking,” says Voronina. “It’s like a health check – we constantly monitor the live data.”

The post A Taste For Customer Connection appeared first on 麻豆原创 Australia & New Zealand News Center.

The first challenge is technical, since most banks have a myriad of systems containing customer data. A key challenge lies in orchestrating customer data across these disparate systems, reconciling datasets to ensure accuracy across the organisation and enabling customers with self-service controls. Imagine the overhead of customers contacting a call centre to execute CDR requests. Furthermore, data insights cannot be actionable if they鈥檙e unreliable, so financial service providers need to take a most holistic approach to how they orchestrate and govern consumer data.

The second key challenge comes from an institution鈥檚 own staff and their confidence in how their day-to-day roles comply with consumer data rights 鈥� particularly with marketers. Customer-facing teams that aren鈥檛 confident about the compliancy of their consumer data will fear the implications of misusing customer data, which impacts their ability to connect with and service customers.

The third challenge is to be prepared for the future. As technology evolves, expect continuous changes in data usage, data sources, and data rights. These evolutions are frightening because however any bank solves for today鈥檚 requirements, ideally the same capability must also be agile enough to support the removal and addition of data sources, features, and connectivity over time.

As consumer data rights evolve 鈥� potentially with updates to legislation and further scrutiny 鈥� banks will need to respond to customer expectations, compliance requirements, and market-service levels. The agenda will be forced by legacy free nimble neo-banks, fintechs, and potentially digitally savvy market leaders, so consumer data confidence solutions must be mindful of how to respond to future change.

Financial industry shortcomings
Financial services organisations are generally highly regulated, highly visible, and often reactive to the changes and trends of customer experience and legislation. I鈥檝e yet to observe any visionary industry innovation. Most banks are investing in digital and there is some added convenience, but mostly it is just traditional banking via a digital channel. Professionals from outside the industry could easily observe the barriers between banks and customers in terms of relationship building, potentially offering straight-forward solutions the financial sector is yet to see.

For example, have you tried to subscribe to product updates, or a bank鈥檚 blog, or even a simple and informative market update? You can鈥檛 do it unless you do a full application and identity check to actually open an account.

For example, download an app for any bank that you do not have a product with. Can you sign up for the app without opening a product? No. It鈥檚 quite uncommon and begs the question, 鈥榳hy would you want to download a banking app if you weren鈥檛 a customer鈥�. If the app were a useful source of information, such as being able to easily find out their home loan interest rates, or had good articles on how to manage my money that I could share with my friends, then why not download the app.

Banks launch new products regularly, a recent common example being home-loan offers with cash back. Since I鈥檝e just re-financed 鈥� now might not be the right time for me, but I鈥檇 sure be interested in a regular update and would happily to give my consent to a forward-thinking bank to keep me alerted of their rate changes or product changes. First-mover advantage, anyone? Alas, at this time, a bank won鈥檛 let you start a relationship with them unless you open an account. I imagine many must be the same, but I鈥檇 also guess most people don鈥檛 want to have bank accounts all over the place.

It just takes a little rethinking in terms of how banks utilise customer data to demonstrate value, add convenience, remove friction, and create new benefits for customer and employees alike.

Learning from Other Industries
From my perspective, the media industry is a leader in this kind of customer-centric approach that creates value from customer relationships. If you think about a typical media company, they often have multiple brands with unique brand identities across the market. Customers want to engage with those brands, so media companies give customers the opportunity to have micro-level control over their relationship in terms of how often they will hear from the company and the kind of content they鈥檒l receive.

A potential customer may not purchase anything initially, but the media company welcomes the opportunity to connect and establish a relationship to remain in the potential customer鈥檚 mind, so one day the potential customer willingly converts their relationship into a paying customer.

in the 麻豆原创 Customer Data Cloud to build detailed customer profiles and create personalised user experiences based on segmented data, such as demographics, interests, and onsite behaviours. The media company saved up to 12 months鈥� development time on tasks such as managing social networks, APIS, and maintaining privacy relationships while switching from its internally built customer data platform.

This digital transformation resulted in NewsLifeMedia utilising customer data to send personalised emails and relevant content directly to users who鈥檇 already given explicit consent, while also giving customers low-friction authentication options, such as re-using social media credentials. Intelligent use of data not only streamlined various backend processes but put the user experience at the heart of improvement. Banks must do the same.

Offering transparency and value
I opened an account with a mobile only neo-bank recently. This particular neo-bank does a good job of engaging their customers to crowdsource improvements to their digital experience. There is so much value for financial services providers to pilot changes that make customers鈥� lives easier. One of the real benefits of modern cloud-based digital tools is that it鈥檚 much easier to take a hypothesis, test it, measure the results, and then either expand, iterate, or pivot.

It鈥檚 a commonly held understanding that customers are happy to share more data with brands if they can see the value they鈥檒l get from sharing, such as removing friction from a process. For example, hands up if you were initially hesitant to share your personal details, payment information, and location with ride-sharing platforms such as Uber? However, most of us soon realised how this capability removed so much friction from the experience of ordering and paying for rides, that we willingly shared our data with them.

I believe the ultimate solution for consumer data confidence comes back to truly solving all the friction points and blind spots in a customer鈥檚 journey. To alleviate friction points and illuminate blind spots, banks must build trusted personal relationships with their customers. If banks can find ways to remove friction from the banking experience while being transparent and explicit on how data shared by customers will improve a customer鈥檚 knowledge or experience, then banks will begin to earn that trust and see the benefits of customer loyalty that comes with increased trust.

Furthermore, when employees have confidence in the quality and compliance of consumer data, they feel more empowered to do their jobs and deliver great experiences for your customers.

Learn more about the trust equation and how Financial Services providers can take the .

The post Consumer Data: Creating Confidence & Trust appeared first on 麻豆原创 Australia & New Zealand News Center.

In our experience-driven economy, data is the most important ingredient for crafting deeply personalised experiences and delighting customers. Yet the companies most notorious for enabling this 鈥� including digital platforms Facebook and Google 鈥� are in the spotlight after an official inquiry was launched by the ACCC. The inquiry will examine how these platforms gather information about consumers and use it to target them with highly personalised advertising online.

Many marketers may worry these developments present a Catch-22 for their work. How can businesses meet these competing demands for more personalisation and more privacy?

As a starting point, it鈥檚 safe to assume a few things. Managing customer data will become an increasingly critical trust point in any business relationship and doing so effectively will only get harder the longer you leave it. Yet the rewards for businesses that get it right will far outweigh the difficulties in doing so 鈥� and it鈥檚 best to start early than risk getting caught out.

A changing data landscape

It鈥檚 clear that consumers are increasingly recognising the power of data and are far more educated on its impact and value. They鈥檙e also far more critical of companies they think manage data badly. In fact, among Australian consumers, a whopping 78 per cent believe companies aren鈥檛 taking adequate steps to protect their personal data, according to Deloitte鈥檚 annual Media Consumer Survey. Close to nine in ten (88 per cent) say they strongly value privacy over convenience, according to a survey by Privacy Australia.

To address this shift, governments around the globe are setting new standards for how businesses can use customer data, from 2018鈥檚 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU to Australia鈥檚 Notifiable Data Breach Scheme, which requires entities to notify individuals and the Information Commissioner about data breaches that are likely to cause 鈥渟erious harm鈥�.

The ACCC added to the debate with last year鈥檚 review of loyalty schemes, such as
frequent flyer, supermarket and hotel loyalty programs, calling on businesses that offer them to improve both their data practices and how they communicate with customers, to help consumers understand how these schemes operate.

Now it is doing so again with its announcement of two new inquiries into possible anti-competitive behaviour by digital platforms, and services allowing online advertisers to target Australian internet users.

A red line from data to value

The good news is it鈥檚 easier than many businesses imagine. Start by offering customers transparency and control of their own personal data. Not only will this give customers a better understanding of your data practices but it can also let them define their own experiences, which builds trust. There鈥檚 no better partner to businesses than an informed, empowered and data-driven customer.

To achieve this kind of partnership, businesses can no longer offer vague language and promises as to what they will give in exchange for personal information. Consumers want and need to know, in the simplest language possible, exactly how their information is being used.

Businesses should speak directly to customers as individuals, giving them confidence that they are actually a part of the process of building better experiences. In retail, for example, this could include asking for location data in exchange for push notifications alerting customers to a sale if they approach their favourite store.

It鈥檚 a simple shift, but one that eliminates doubt and treats customers as partners.

Treating customers as trusted individuals

One of the major global regulatory changes around consumer data revolves around the channels and methods we use to ask for information. Under GDPR, companies with complex, multi-page user agreements can now receive a hefty fine.

Consumer data protection laws are as unique as the regions they cover, but a common goal is to create more transparent relationships between brands and customers. Giving customers the ability to pick and choose what they sign up for and which brands they engage with is an important sign of respect.

Whether it鈥檚 the 鈥渆xplicit consent鈥� requirement of GDPR or the 鈥渞ight to opt-out鈥� requirements that other global initiatives include, the underlying regulatory trend is clear: give customers the explicit ability to pick and choose what they sign up for, which brands they engage with, and the specific manner in which they wish to be engaged. Make it easy to find, simple to access, and fast to change.

That includes regular 鈥� proactively shared 鈥� options to opt-out if they have been
stuck on an email list for five years.

Handing over the reins

Another emerging trend is the creation of a centralised, intuitive portal through which customers can manage their own data. Think of it like settings on your phone. Customers would get the ability to turn specific levers on and off depending on the brand they engage with.

While these rights vary depending on the specific regulation, the common thread is clear: this is the new standard. Making it a key part of your customers鈥� experiences will show that you鈥檙e taking their data as seriously as they do.

Resetting the relationship

The global conversation around data has evolved significantly in recent years. From hacking and data breaches to exceptional data-driven customer relationships, personal information has become the foundation through which brands either succeed or fall short. With increasing scrutiny, such as the ACCC鈥檚 latest probe, you should expect the way you handle data to become increasingly visible, whether you are ready or not.

Brands can stay ahead of customer expectations and build trust by putting customer needs first, setting the highest possible bar for transparency and giving customers control and choice when it comes to their personal data.

This article first appeared on

The post ACCC Probe a Privacy Wake-Up Call appeared first on 麻豆原创 Australia & New Zealand News Center.