The Science of Building Stronger Customer Relationships Through Conversations

This session, we're gonna talk about some of the five key trends that are currently shaping retail communication. And there are we're gonna share some tactical use cases from some incredible global brands like Zettig voltaire, C discount, and Intermush, and much more. And to take us through some of these stories, we are joined by two of the fantastic people from Cinch. Anna Jaeger, who's the vice president of international marketing. She has more than twenty years of experience creating customer value, and I know it's gonna bring a lot to this conversation. She's joined by Susan Sternberger, who is one of the senior account managers there. She has a incredible background in building relationships. And given that we have such I've been so many retailers on the, on here. I think you might be interested to know that one of her passions is fashion, and she's actually a member of the board of advisors for the Swedish fashion association. So I think she brings another interesting perspective to the conversation. So with that, I'm delighted to hand it over to both, Anna and Susan. Anna, I think you're gonna kick us off. Yeah. Thank you so much, Sarah. And, hi, from sunny stuck home here. Can you see my so, I'm looking for Susan I'm here. Thank you so much. And as the Swede say, Hey, So let's kick it off. So we are here today to talk about the evolution of commerce and, the way customers engage with brands is changing very, very fast. Brands use digital channels to send well crafted marketing messages, but most brands treat messaging as a one way channel They aren't prepared to, reply to, questions and, things coming from the field, which results in a very poor customer experience. So, therefore, customers want to have instant communication, of course. And, we have social channels and messenger apps, We call this conversational commerce, and brands have to step up to be able to compete with conversational customer experience. So today, we're gonna go through these five trends that you see on the screen. We're also gonna share some use cases how brands have increased the conversion rates, interacted and, conversed with their consumers and blending to channels with in store experience. But so let's kick it off. First, it's two minutes about Cinch. Who are we? Yes. Good day. Thank you, Anna. So, Cinch is we are actually we started in Stockholm, Sweden, but we are global all over the world. For those of you who don't know us, yes, we are a global company with offices in sixty four countries. We provide a customer communication cloud that you can use to engage with your consumers all around the world on any channel that they prefer at all times That includes Instagram, WhatsApp. So lots of, you know, different channels, wherever people are hanging out and talking. We have a super network which connects over six hundred operators, and we are publicly listed as well. One fun fact is that We reach every mobile phone on the planet more than seventy times a year through our customer communication cloud. So let's set the scene. What is conversational commerce all about? Thank you, Susan. So the evolution of retail is characterized by continuous optimizing the experience for the customer. The first supermarket, when we start starting with that was a significant step forward inconvenience. Of course, you could have all your groceries in one store. Then you have the shopping malls coming in to play where you could be, finding everything you wanted under one roof, have a whole day of experience, and shock think. And then if you fast forward, to the digital era where we started with Amazon and eBay, Until now, when we are in the twentieth century here where we are, you know, everything is digital. And you can buy from anywhere, anytime, and all around the globe. It, the common theme here throughout these hundred years is that, this has always been a need for the tail shopper to have conversations with retailers that smooth the path to purchase. They have questions about what provide. They have questions about how to return things. They have questions. It's a lot of questions that can help to smooth this, the the purchase for the consumers. And, That is a little bit of what we are gonna look at, from a survey that we did. And about retailers and how to engage with them. So what are the most common use cases, that consumers talk to brands about. So ninety percent here is support errands, of course. That is instant. We always want to, you know, get get answers to our support questions. Eighty nine percent have, initial, questions about the returns or exchanges back and forth. Seventy seven percent have the have questions about regarding their basket. If you can answer these, the chances of them converting are much, much higher than ignore than if you ignore these questions. And then on the fourth place, it's post purchase survey and customer satisfaction. But what's interesting here, we found out that more than fifty percent are frustrated when they received a mobile message from a business and could not reply to that. And this is something that we want really want to highlight here. It's a huge opportunity for for brands to use this and increase the customer experience. Let's look at how one brand, that we have here with us today, Susan, improved their conversations with their audiences. Exactly. And, for those that don't know, is a French, fashion brand. And, the Jonathan Natale, the director of marketing and digital said that we wanted to create a a dedicated relationship with customers, even if that included talking about problems they're having. They realized they needed to amp up their customer service at a strategic level, even if this meant customers would address issues, using the service. An open customer communication is better than no communication at all, you know. And if we could go to the next slide, Thank you, Anna. So basically, Zadiggin voltaire wanted to boost their relationships with customers. So they partnered with us at Cinch to create a way to build meaningful conversations when they're one with their one million us followers on Instagram. And, the challenge was finding the most efficient channel to boost engagement that was Instagram for them course. The solution was, that we created a dedicated relationship with customers from Instagram to contact center solution. And the result was a massive improvement in communication and the customer experience and you can see a little bit of that communication on the right there via mobile. And that's the the use case that we have for Oh, that's really, really, interesting and a good good use case as well. And I can let's let's dig into, the second trend that we have here and how important it is with the mobile and messaging, interaction, if I would like to say so. So we asked, in our survey, we asked, do you use, do you ever use mobile phone to shop on social platforms? And as you see here, it's, a lot of the generation said and millennials but I'm not part of those. And, I I also use my mobile phone and the social channels to to to to purchase. So I think, this is just the beginning. And then when we look at how long it takes for resellers to respond to your social messages when you start to engage on the social channels we saw that I mean, of course, it's great that twenty five percent gets instant response, you know, through the social channels. We have seventy five percent. That said said that they didn't get an instant response. And even two percent I don't usually receive a response. Terrible. Not yet. So several hours. I mean, if I have question. I'm I'm about to purchase something. And, I have a question about, I mean, when will I get this? Or da da da da, and it takes me several hours. I will drop off. We'll lose that customer engagement. And and that is something that we really, really need to cater for as retailers and brands. And that is a bit So let's look at how one brand, helped to improve this engagement, with con conversations. And what do we have here? It's alright, Ryan. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. So with so many online shopping options and entertainment choices available, times are tough for shopping mall, shopping malls, shopping centers. And getting a steady flow of customers is a real challenge. That's why Orion Mall, Bangalore's third largest mall turned to an AI chatbot via WhatsApp to amp up interests. And the head of marketing Oh, you were too quick, Anna. That's alright. The head of marketing, role that instead of broadcasting information without knowing if people were interested, we wanted to send customers useful information and that's really important. They you want you wanna be able to get relevant information that's gonna be useful for Now we can go to the next one, Anna. Thank you. At the right time as well. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. So the challenge here was that in twenty twenty one, Orion Mall was up against the common challenge in the retail industry three. How to answer customer questions quickly, but personally. They needed a solution to keep visitors up dated on the latest, long news, including opening and closing hours, shops and brands, food and entertainment options, promotional offers, etcetera. Orion Mall understood that providing more information to visitors would increase their chances of attracting more customers, more visitors and boosting sales. However, their existing communication channels weren't cutting it. And there was no way to scale. And, the mall wanted a faster and more accessible way for visitors to get FAQs answered and find the information they needed. So we know what the challenge was. The solution was Orion Jeannie. A what chatbot with twenty four seven availability. Sounds pretty cool, actually. And the results were increased foot traffic and half here informed customers at the mall. I think that's quite important. I'd like to know if there's some special discount at a store house happening. When I go into the, to the mall, you know, is there some offers or special something, especially, you know, with my kids to always buy things like, you know, as they're growing out of their shoe sizes. So and every every time I go into a mall as well, I have into finding the brands that I want. Yeah. And if I can just if I already know which brands I want and and this chat could actually, or this this chatbot, actually direct me there would be excellent. I know. Exactly. And there on the right, you see an example Whatsapp with the conversation. So, then we can go to the next slide. Thank you. So let's look at the trend number three is is for us all to understand how to adopt a hybrid model, physical, and online stores. So, in the in our survey, ninety two percent say they'd like to message a chatbot check if a product is in stock before visiting the store. But, seventy three percent responded and said that they wanted to visit a store then make the final purchase on their mobile phone. So this is very important. It's about very much about empowering advisors, be in the store or in the hub. They need to be relevant for the customer because customers want to do everything by themselves. It's the global director of customer services Farfetch said this. So by that, I would like to go into a little bit more around, the trend number four, which shares also what we can do to actually create, experiences that consumers will remember. Yeah. And here we come into not only the the conversations, but also what we create, what type of content we create for our consumers. There are some interesting stuffs here because twenty eight percent or only twenty eight percent, will remember a positive experience for over one year. On the opposite, we have forty eight forty three percent that remember remembers a negative experience for more than the more than a year. That means that brands, retailers, everyone, we need to deliver more and more relevant and fantastic experiences if I may say so that that people remember and, are positive about. So one way of doing that is to create content. For example, we we call it rich content, video tutorials, for example, setting up creating a buyer guide, that someone can download and and read if they want. Or video, a shoppable video, such as buying something featured in a influencer live stream. So this is using both the channel, like getting it in your phone when you need it at the right time or with the right channel, but also making sure that we provide rich content experience. So now we would like to share, how a brand called C discount created a more engaging customer experience through through this rich content creation, just a little bit. Susan. Exactly. So Seabiscount, the challenge was to improve conversion rates. On marketing campaigns. And, the solution was to highlight product offering via enriched mobile formats. So, basically, you send a message. And when you click on a link, it goes to a landing page in the cloud where you can have videos, you can have pictures, you can you know, move your fingertips. So it's very engaging content and interactive. I would say a little bit like gamification because you're you can have scratch card. You can have, you know, go back, and it's quite quite fun, actually. And, the result were that improved performance and conversion rates. So four percent increase in revenue and nine percent increase in average basket size. In this type of message, we call it next generation SMS, where you use rich content, enrich formats to engage customers. And, yeah, make it more interesting, more lively. Yeah. Great. Thank you. And, let's go to the last trend here today. There to be different. Adopting new technologies and identifying the why what and how to interact with the customers is daring to be different. However, understand the when to interact in the bio journey's true innovation. So applying technology thoughtful, hopefully, the final key trend. And as you see here, consumers are open to automation. Ninety five percent say they liked the option to switch seamless from the chat to voice when the situation requires that. And, I I must say that the conversational commerce has just started. This we are just in the beginning of what the consumers and brands are want to do going forward. So we, we, I hope that, we have one more case here how a supermarket was doing, some more engaging, conversational commerce. Exactly. And here we have, intermache, a French, grocery online retailer, grocery brand. And, the challenge was, to increase customer engagement with a more immersed and interactive brand experience. They they want to find new and exciting ways to bring fun and excitement to the grocery shopping experience. That sounds pretty cool, actually, because it can be pretty boring experience. For, you know, most of the time. As an innovation driven customer obsessed company, intermache knows that engaging customers in retail isn't just about product and price. It's also about the experience. I think they've got that. They've got that right. Yeah. They took the usual grocery experience that we as consumers find you know, mundane dare to be different from the competition and delivered a fun experience resulting in increased revenue. So the solution was mobile messaging campaigns using Cinch rich SMS what I had talked about before, sending fun engaging content, content, and conversational AI. And the result was true differentiation leading to higher customer engagement and campaign visibility. Fifty nine percent chatbot engagement rate increase revenue. I think that's pretty pretty good. I know. We should have a French flag. This is our Swedish flag. Next time. Yeah. Exactly. What what can we say also? They have a really nice quote here. Yeah. Exactly. So intermache's, rich SMS and conversational AI campaigns achieved excellent results. Maybe more importantly, though, this approach helped the brand stand out in an industry where differentiation and customer experience is the true battleground. And Clement wasier said the project manager, the CRM project manager said that we truly appreciated Cinch's productivity and creativity in helping us to by new campaign concepts. Their enthusiasm and ability to adapt to our specific needs and target audience really made a difference. Well, very happy to hear that. So, I think now we're getting oh, no. Yes. Right now towards the end, I believe. Yeah. So let's just summarize summarize this, and go through a little bit so we we remember the key trends of what we what we talked about today. Building meaningful conversations using social media, that's that's key. Like, over fifty percent says that they're frustrated when they they don't get a response instantly. So please be aware of that. Understand the importance of mobile and messaging, you know, use, the mobile messaging channels to engage with your audiences, where they are on their terms. Adapting the best of both physical and digital world in a hybrid model, making sure that, you know, the experience in the store and also online are aligned and seamless is key. Creative creating innovative experience that that customers will remember is something that that we all need to help building so that customers come back to our brands and, our shopping experiences. They're to be different. Use technology. Try it out. See how that can engage more with your clients and how you can move things, up and down the ladder and see how they engage with you and your brand. I want to end here by a quote from Laura Chris, and Head of Marketing at Marxist Spencer, if the conversation between a brand and a customer is authentic, relevant, and genuine, then I believe consumers are more likely to engage purchase and to stay loyal. And with that, I can also say that please reach out to us. We are here to help you. Yes. Exactly. Please reach out. If you have any questions, you wanna learn more on how to, be able to access different social channels, on one API to begin to to start having conversations with your clients and anything else. And with that, Thank you so much. As the Swede say Tak and I don't. We don't. Hey, Joe. Bye bye. Have a great day.