With Google announcing a delay in its plan to phase out third-party cookies and digital usage accelerating throughout the pandemic, marketers face new challenges in delivering business results and customer experiences.
In an AdNews-Accenture roundtable discussion, industry experts weigh in on delivering personalisation at scale to help marketers seize opportunities amid a background of changes to technology, data and consumer behaviour.
Digital adoption is driving tech transformation
The Covid-19 pandemic turbocharged digital transformation programs, with continued technology adoption across organisations and consumers. Telstra Head of Digital Intelligence Emir Kazazic reveals the telecommunications giant has invested the past two years in scaling its ability to personalise customer experiences across digital channels, part of a broader ‘T22’ Strategy to succeed and grow in an accelerated online world.
“We’re now seeing close to five million digital active users across our app and close to seven million across our web and app assets, which is a very big shift since Covid,” Kazazic told the roundtable. “What we’re also seeing is, just as importantly, the percentage of customers that are self-serving in digital. So it’s not just the growth of customers coming to digital, which has increased, it’s also the number that are completing those transactions.”
Kazazic confirms that almost half of all sales interactions with Telstra’s consumer and small business customers are now digital and more than three quarters of all service interactions are digital.
These developments have led the way for data-driven personalisation efforts across acquisition, retention, loyalty, engagement and service activities through web and app assets. The next phase for the telecommunications company, Kazazic says, will be making these deployments even faster as part of the rollout of T25.
“It’s all centres around data, AI and talking about real time experiences as part of our corporate strategy. There’s a strong corporate appetite for transformation.”
Connected customer experience on the rise
Bringing these customer data points under a unified strategy is now becoming a boardroom priority. Bupa ANZ head of marketing automation Lisa Dickson says the healthcare company is in the midst of its own two-year transformation journey, underpinned by improvements to technology, personalisation and channel connectivity.
“We’ve made some great technology investments in ensuring that we are able to deliver a connected customer experience across our different channels,” she explains. “We’ve done that by investing in a decisioning platform looking to predict the right outcome for a customer. The right conversation, the right action at the right time in the right channel. We can’t do that without having a connected experience.”
At the start of 2021, Bupa’s global executive team spent time mapping the brand’s position within the changing world. From these conversations, Bupa set out on a mission to become ‘the word’s most customer-centric healthcare company’ through increased digital interactions (at least 60% of customers), increased ownership of customer care touchpoints through physical and digital provision and a world-leading Net Promoter Score (NPS).
In Australia, Dickson says the business identified 22 ‘micro moments’ that are essential to create a positive customer journey.
“One of the things that we’re doing at a strategy level is looking at whether we are hitting the mark with what our customers care about. These are the moments that matter – data is just information and technology is just toys if there’s no strategy to drive that through. We’ve just had a very aggressive two year plan signed off where I’m really confident because we’re set up to succeed.”
Data governance amplifying change
The deprecation of third-party cookies has amplified conversations around true end-user consent to process personal data. Google has announced it will now delay its plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome until 2024, joining other web browsers in sunsetting the tracking technology.
Adobe APAC industry strategist Scott King says the move is recontextualising the debate around privacy and data.
“We’ve just published a Trust Report and it’s based on consumer behaviours around privacy, regulation compliance and data,” he explains. “What is very clear through all of that insight is personalisation – customers are happy to give up significant amounts of data if they are receiving a relevant, personalised experience. Two thirds of customers tell us they prefer experience over actual product.”
According to King, there are three core pillars that drive personalisation: data and understanding customer intent, content to deliver the experience and architecture to deliver the content. Therein lies both an opportunity and challenge for brands in the next phase of personalisation, according to Accenture managing director Abhishek Malaviya.
“The number of channels that people are interacting with has increased exponentially, which also means there are more points of data,” he says. “The ability to merge and have a seamless experience between physical and digital is even more important and customers expect the same experience, regardless of channel.”
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