TLDR: Sitecore, global market leader for experience management software, asked experts about tomorrow's customers. The conclusion of .companion GF Michael Heine: Yes, a lot is indeed changing - but more remains as it is. Customers don't like to be "disrupted".
Sitecore surveys experts on tomorrow's customers
According to studies, the digital transformation is dramatically changing customer behavior. If you want to convince the customers of tomorrow, you have to follow new rules in marketing, sales and service. Sitecore asked some experts from marketing, sales and communication about their assessment:
- Has customer behavior also changed with the digital transformation?
- What characterizes the new type of customer?
- How can companies convince these new types of customers of themselves and their offerings?
Anne M. Schüller
The increasing complexity of real digital life requires a great deal of time. Providers who steal your time because everything is cumbersome are not an option for the new generation of customers. Those who are digitally fit simply don't accept that a company is still struggling with this. What's more, the power lies with the customers. With their comments on the web, they can decide the life and death of a provider. Anyone who fails in their eyes is not only promptly dumped, but also paraded. They worship their favorite brands with fervor and tell the world so loudly. Whom they hate, however, they would prefer to destroy. "Don't buy from ..., they totally ripped me off," they scream on all channels. And their whole network follows this battle cry to be safe from harm. This is what I call network loyalty in the context of a recommendation economy.
Anne M. Schüller is a renowned management thinker, keynote speaker and multiple award-winning bestselling author. In 2015, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the German Speakers Association. She is considered the protagonist of touchpoint management in the German-speaking world and trains certified touchpoint managers.
Michael Heine
The digital transformation has greatly changed customer behavior, especially media usage and communication behavior. Much else, however, remains constant.
Thus, strong incentives will still be needed in the future for customers to change their bank, their telephone company or their insurance company. And in the future, too, a brand will only become trendy or status-forming if it convinces the peer group.
For marketers, this means either using digital media to trigger familiar human behavioral reflexes in the right context (Sexy! Want me! Envy! ... ). Or use digital media to subvert human behavioral reflexes with new "disruptive" or better subversive products, such as free apps (e.g., weather), lock-in platforms (e.g., Facebook), freemium models, or fintech offerings (e.g., payment services).
What has changed with Digital Transformation is a) the speed at which customers can be lost, and b) the mechanisms by which customers can be retained (captured). Content marketing - with the right underpinning and sprinkled in the right context - offers an excellent basis for convincing customers.
However, there is no such thing as a "new type of customer. Customers are people, and as such, they don't like to change. This also applies to a fantasy target group called "millennials. It remains the eternal mystery of digital evangelists why they claim it makes no difference to those born after the turn of the millennium whether they are male or female, poor or rich, educated or uneducated. The customers themselves have not changed.
With his data-based marketing strategy consultancy .companion, Michael Heine has consulting mandates from 16 DAX-30 companies and numerous brands. He is one of the most sought-after neutral experts for metrics-based marketing strategy and digital communications management.
Dietmar Dahmen
We now live in the wiw.wiw.wiw world: Everything is strongly customer-driven by "What I want, when I want, where I want". So is the entire Digital Transformation. It is the customers who demand new ways of communication and - when they are there - use them IMMEDIATELY, thus dropping the old. Customers are in the driver's seat. Customers determine what's hot. This does not mean that companies are powerless. On the contrary. Companies have to make their offering THE CUSTOMER'S product/service. They have to give as much as they can to the customer. The customer configures HIS car. The customer says where HE wants to pick it up. The customer says how HE pays for it. The company doesn't belong to management ... it belongs to the CUSTOMER ... because that's who pays the salaries. So my recommendation to convince tomorrow's customer: RADICALIZE your scenarios and switch to MAXIMUM customer and digital focus! What if EVERY customer wants individual offers? What if M2M, artificial intelligence, robotization, the Internet of everything are fully developed and ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING is CONNECTED? Is your business still fit then? How do you ensure success then? How do you have to be positioned then? 2025 is not the linear evolution of 2016 - only 9 years later. The rules of the game will be rewritten - now, tomorrow, again and again.
Dietmar Dahmen is an inspiring, highly motivating speaker who not only rocks the stage, but also moves the hearts and minds of the audience. Over 20 years of marketing and advertising in Hamburg, Los Angeles, Munich, New York and Vienna - currently as CDO at ecx.io, an IBM Company and previously as CCO and Managing Director of the international agency group BBDO - make Dietmar Dahmen a deep connoisseur of branding and marketing, of contemporary communication and, above all, of the trends, challenges and opportunities for success of the future.
Stephan Heinrich
You've heard or read dozens of times that customers are making different decisions lately. The usual blather about the impact of the digital revolution on customer behavior completely ignores one aspect: digital is normal. For the last 60 years, we've lived under the influence of mass media that function as a one-way street: High barriers to market entry due to high advertising costs let only big players to the table, loudly and annoyingly bragging about their offers.
For a little over ten years, behavior has normalized: Customers communicate back. They talk to each other, exchange experiences and check before they commit. Companies must engage with the interests of potential customers and not only occupy but own subject areas - detached from their own product range and beyond the purchase decision. If you want to sell in the future, you have to serve the entire horizon of the target group instead of just blaring the same benefits over and over again into the media world.
Stephan Heinrich has distinguished himself since 2001 as a leading expert in sales to top business customers. He is the author of the best-selling sales book "Verkaufen an Top-Entscheider" (Selling to Top Decision-Makers), a frequently booked speaker at sales events, a trainer for top management, and a busy networker (including initiator and moderator of the XING Sales & Marketing group with > 113,000 members).
Lars Dörfel
The relationship between customer and company has changed fundamentally in the course of the digital transformation. Marketers today need to know their target group very well and customers expect much more from companies than in the past. One of the most important trends is content marketing. Strategically deployed content that offers customers clear added value is essential for long-term customer loyalty. This includes information as well as entertainment and dialog between customer and company. The marketer must identify customer needs at the specific touchpoints at an early stage and pick up the customer here. And when the customer is no longer just a consumer of the content provided, but also shares and comments on content himself, the most important foundation stone for modern, customer-oriented marketing has been laid.
Lars Dörfel is managing director of the school for communication and management [SCM]. He is the editor of the two trade magazines "BEYOND - Das Fachmagazin für Interne Kommunikation und Veränderungs- kommunikation" and "EINS - Content Marketing für alle" as well as the author of specialist books. He has also specialized as a trainer and consultant on the topics of content marketing, internal communication and management communication.