Enabling customer experience through technology

THE pandemic has propelled Filipinos to form new online shopping habits, and they now rely heavily on social media, apps and mobile devices to evaluate brands and make purchases. To capture mind share and preference, retailers, fintechs, business-to-business companies and every organization growing revenue via ecommerce need to humanize engagement and customer experience (CX) throughout the entire consumer buying journey and connect meaningfully with consumers.

It was an opportune time a CX forum was held recently where I was the moderator for a panel and speakers consisting of prime movers in the CX space. One of the speakers was Ms. Fay Angelica Supremo, country manager of Insider Philippines, who said that "given the speed of change in consumer behavior, the need to be highly engaged with your customers has never been greater." She highlighted that one way to capture the attention of your online audience is by leveraging gamification. Insider, a software-as-a-service firm that provides customer data experience platform, enables gamification through online coupons and Wheel of Fortune. This humanizes the user experience, improves engagement levels and encourages users to take specific actions. Ms. Janette Abad Santos, first vice president of Robinsons Bank (RBank), on the other hand, said that "online presence is a must-have and in various platforms; and yet, we observed the importance of being truly connected with the customers to involve both the virtual presence and the physical presence." She shared using email marketing, with the assistance of Insider's solution, as one of the key engagement techniques that helped RBank connect with its customers. As an example, RBank's Free Shakey's Pizza Promo for cardholders aimed to increase credit card usage to targeted customers. This promotional email marketing material has had the highest email open-rate and click-through-rate, which helped the bank increase the credit card usage of its customer. The third speaker was Ms. Jia de Guzman, brand acquisition manager under LazMall Fashion of Lazada Group. She shared how LazMall, touted as Southeast Asia's Largest Mall, is using online campaigns as one of the best ways to expose a seller's online store, gain more traffic, reach more people, and ultimately, boost sales. An example she cited was how LazMall employs brand mega offers, which is a daily campaign dedicated to LazMall sellers to drive traffic to their participating products and their best deals.