Customer Engagement

I rarely talk to anyone at my bank (I can do it all on the internet) but I noticed something wrong with a statement recently and realised I'd actually need to talk to a human at the bank to sort it out. After 5 minutes of searching their website I finally found the number to call and then had the increasingly-excruciating IVR experience to get through to a customer service rep.

I'm definitely not the first, and will not be the last, person in the marketing industry to question why so many major B2C brands make it so ridiculously hard for their customers to engage with them. Frankly, at this stage of the evolution of marketing as a profession, it is time our industry demonstrated to business leaders how poor engagement affects sales and how good engagement grows market and profit share faster than anything else!

I attended a large Marketing Conference last year in LA and the theme was Customer Engagement. Look, it was a good solid event, but one participant did facetiously point out to me at a cocktail function that the three previous years were themed as Customer Interaction; Customer-Centred Marketing and Customer Intimacy. I never checked if they were the real names but the point he was making is that our industry just seems to keep repeating the same theories and re-labelling them, and yet we don't seem to be winning the battle with the people who design processes and service delivery in the business. Its someone else, with apparently more power, who is driving the customer engagement plan in the business and doesn't have a clue what they are doing, because (in my bank's case) if they had a clue it wouldn't take me 10minutes before I'm able to actually 'engage'!!! Newsflash: engagement should be frictionless.

Now, lets focus on a brilliant example of a company that does get this stuff!

NRMA Insurance (http://www.nrma.com.au/insurance.shtml), a major Australian insurance brand, part of Insurance Australia Group (IAG), launched a new campaign called "Unworry" in 2008. The essence of the campaign is that life should be easy, without stress, worry and without so much friction! Well, that's my take on it anyway.

The great thing about this campaign is that marketing has driven holistic changes through all the points of engagement by customers. The campaign is a by-product of a very real and substantive change to the way the business delivers its offering and its service. The campaign fulfills the business strategy.

Of course, as a polished marketing outfit, IAG have made all the brand touchpoints perfectly reflect the campaign messaging. The style and voice of the IVR 'operator', the website, ATL and BTL marketing. Its all consistent, clear, uncluttered and distinctive, which is great. But what's better is that the offers, and the systems and processes to deliver the offers and the subsequent service all actually live up to the campaign promise. NRMA told me that life should be easy and when I had to renew my car insurance yesterday IT WAS EASY!!!! Hallelujah, a B2C brand that has integrated its messaging and the reality of its business. I love it. And that's what great customer engagement is about isn't it? To ultimately get customers to associate a positive emotional response to the brand.

At this point I should say that IAG is a client of Orbis. Has been for 10 years. All of that stuff they produce in marketing goes through the Orbis Marketing system, helping them get to market faster (making their marketer's lives easier). But more importantly, I've been a personal customer of IAG for 21 years. There's been plenty of potential churn points along the way and they've managed to keep me. Based upon their current approach to customer engagement I expect they've got a great chance of keeping me for a long time to come.

Happy marketing.

Grant