Digital for retention and new customers?

Organisations in today’s world focus heavily on attracting new customers as this forms the basis to grow and expand. Equally customer retention should have just as much time and energy focused on to ensure we maintain our loyal customers. Attracting new customers to your business can cost up to 7 times more than the cost of customer retention. The digital era in which we live in today can help with both of these aspects of growth. Take customer retention as an example. The term social media is fast becoming the gateway for organisation to continue to market their goods or services. However one simple solution of involving customers in in your social media can massively increase their loyalty. Soda Stream does a great job of regularly putting their fans in the limelight through their Facebook page and on their blog. Not only are they regularly engaging their fans with contests, they are making sure everyone knows who won, and creating a lot of buzz while they’re at it. This is also another form of marketing as these customers will spread the positive news to friends, family and most importantly on all social media platforms.

 Personalisation is another key aspect that most business over look, if we take the time to learn about our customers and present them with relevant products based on their preferences and buying purchases they will feel more valued and involved with the company. Ensuring repeat customers who buy online can have a simple purchase process take Amazons one click payments process as an example. Having a strong customer service presence online is more efficient then making customers contact and wait in line on call centre calls. These are just some of the simple but effective ways in which can ensure we retain our current customer base.

In order to attract new customers as a business you must be easily accesses, then of course you must offer value to the customer. If we look at Pinterest as an example of how using a unique sign up process was a strong form of customer acquisition.  Every step in the process, from requesting an invitation to the social signup, is designed to create a sense of belonging and wonderment, thereby building an emotional connection to the user. Having a demonstration video around the benefits of becoming one oy your consumers will increase conversations around your brand. Small offerings can increase someone to buy or use your product like an initial discount for first time buyers/ users. This can also be used to retain loyal customers. When potential customers are visiting your digital page for the first time we need to ensure it is now that we convert them as According to Infinite Conversions, “Over 80% of abandoning visitors never return.” Therefore, your focus should be on converting visitors the first time they visit.

Digital experience

Children's Hospital Los Angeles

In 2011 a leading paediatric Children’s Hospital located in down town Los Angeles(Childrens Hospital Los Angeles) moved into their new Children’s Hospital.  This was a 480,000 square foot with an estimated 317 beds. This new hospital cost $500 million and was to be a digitally enabled facility. While planning the new Hospital they decided to build digital density into the facility. Their primary goal was to “Improve patient outcomes” by trying to reduce the communication errors that contribute to 70% of patient harm. To solve this problem CHLA digitised their clinic by tying all patients’ records to an individual child’s patient record. Patients have a screening of their face done through facial recognition software. Once a patient is scheduled for any form of test everything is logged and tracked on their individual digital file. The IT team prioritised digital communications to make test results and diagnostic images the highest priority so that when the results are ready they are immediately available in the patient’s record, and nurses and doctors receive an alert. This digitisation as resulted in the common phrase “Are  the results back yet” you would be used to hearing from medial Television programmes almost derelict.  CHLA successfully achieved their goal of reducing communication errors that can harm patient. Additionally they also managed to save 66,000 nursing hours. If we look at a hospital that only wanted to reduce staff costs they would have cut nourishing hours or staff numbers. When in fact this may not be the only way to achieve a cost saving measure. 

Children's Hospital Los Angeles

Artificial Intelligence

For the past number of years we as customers have experienced numerous changes in how we buy things from clothes to flights. The biggest change in my opinion is how we go through the process of booking a flight.  It is fair to say that airline companies such as Ryanair and Aer Lingus have replaced staff with computers and intelligence systems. From the time you pick and book your flight to the time you board the plane the first point of contact with staff is while going through the boarding process at the gate. This for use speeds up the process and save costs for the organisations, however this process has replaced roles and people within the organisation. Combining our curious minds with our continuous drive to uncover and develop artificial intelligence we are continuing increase the risk of making our human species redundant in the work place.

Take even Mc Donald’s for example, They have introduced new touch screen pads in the majority of their stores which allows you to both order and pay for your food without as much as a smile from a staff member? Is this the world we have created with are increasing demands for new technologies?  Are we creating and encouraging a world where more time is spent interacting with robots during the retail sales process? All the above roles replaced by robots are fine in an ideal world where nothing goes wrong, however when we come into difficulties we demand to only want it resolved be a fellow human and demand to speak to one. We are only in the early stages of robots and A.I taking over. So what other industries and rolls run the risk of being made redundant?  

In my opinion I can see couriers in the long term being replaced by drones. So far I have only mentioned yet again basic roles and services being replaced. So let’s take a look at a more specialised role like accounting and book keeping. There is plenty of software packages available like QuickBooks, FreshBooks, and Microsoft Office that does the bookkeeping for you. This much more affordable than a person's salary, so it's no surprise this job has such a high probability in my opinion of being made redundant.

Considering we live in a world now where cars can park themselves with the touch of a button. The only roles in my opinion which are further from being replaced are the roles which require large amount of emotional intelligence. Human Resource management would fall under this bracket. 

Please click the below link for a video on A.I

Artificial Intelligence      

Spotify

what is Spotify

Spotify are a global on line music streaming provider from Sweden. Spotify provides the following services for its users, music streaming, podcasts, videos and more. Spotify was one of the first companies to offer free free music to subscribers. As we all know nothing in life is free and the price you paid was, after every song you would be subject to watching and listening to some advertising. However you could pay a monthly subscription and cut out the advertising. Spotify realised there was a gap in the market as they launched at a time where ITunes forced users to buy albums or songs.

Spotify was launched in Europe in 2008. Spotify’s aim was to help eliminate illegal streaming and downloading of music. Spotify operate by paying record labels and individual musicians their royalty fees in exchange to make their music widely available all over the world. They do this through offering various level of usage at a different costs. Spotify also allows its subscribers to create and share playlists which is a unique offering. They also have existing playlists created based on the humour and the mood you are in. They also offer a Discover weekly playlist which allows you to listen to new music. Spotify also have a feature available which allows fans to listen to the song writers behind their favourite pop songs. Spotify offers several options. You can listen to Spotify for free and you will be subject to listening to advertising after each song is played. You can use their premium offer which is only €9.99 a month and recently they offer student discount which would see the premium level fall to a mere €4.99. Alternatively you can also go for the Spotify family option which allows you to offer up to six people who reside in your house the premium option and the feel will only be €14.99 each month. Additionally Spotify collaborated with Facebook which provide a unique feature which allows friends to see what one another are listening to. In 2014 they launched a partnership with Uber which allowed premium users the chance to listen to Spotify as they travelled. Spotify can also detect the pace you are running at and will choose your next song combining your running tempo with a songs tempo.

All in all Spotify offered a unique experience like no other in the market that was up until Apple music was launched in 2005. Apple will undoubtedly challenge Spotify in the current market and may have more funding available in order to offer musicians and record labels more money in order to use Apple music. Apple currently have a greater music library available then Spotify but is Spotify’s unique additional playlist and family offerings that give them the edge over Apple music. Combine that with the fact that the interface of Spotify is easier to use over Apple music. This alone going forward will not last long and Spotify will need to provide its users with additional features to prevent them from jumping ship.