By Anchal Jain
1. OMNI BRANDS NEED PIES. Tip #7 would have familiarised you with the importance of Omni Brand over Omni Channel. Personal, Immersive & Intelligent, Emotional, Seductive (PIES) experience, delivered wholesomely (offline and online), is the essence of an Omni Brand that simply cannot come alive fully without the right engagement tools. These tools help fully articulate, integrate and deliver the brand proposition across different channels for a seamless customer experience journey.
2. PERSONAL and individually relevant experiences will be more and more valued in all four well-being dimensions; mind, body, heart and soul. Successful Omni Brands will be able to craft and personalise their offering to connect with varying customer aspirations, needs and tastes. eg., fashion customers would only want to engage with a selection of clothing that meets their style, colour/form, brand and fitting/silhouette preferences.
3. IMMERSIVE multi-sensorial customer experience that is able to engage both, the cognitive and the effective sides of the brain to accelerate the decision journey from awareness to desire. It is necessary to fully engage different senses to counter shortening attention spans of consumers. eg., Highly engaging shoppable videos that are able to capture traceability and performance as well as the experiential aesthetics of a product or service.
4. INTELLIGENT tech tools to deliver seamlessness, responsiveness and velocity in the 360 customer experience journey across different integrated sales channels. This is also critical in making the personalisation increasingly more accurate through machine learning and in delivering rational dimensions of the experience. eg., visualising personalised and contactless fitting in real time for clothing.
5. EMOTIONAL engagement of a consumer is essential right at the beginning of an experience journey, specially in case of lifestyle brands. This emotional engagement goes largely missing online, as a result it generates mostly pre-meditated purchases. eg., while the aroma and the nonchalant service of a Bombay Irani Cafe cannot be duplicated online, how can the dining experience in the cafe be enhanced when ordering and eating at home.
6. SEDUCTIVE customer experience refers to an authentic and honest nudge into making a considered choice faster and more confidently. It is not about manipulating a customer resulting in a later regret! The seduction comes from a wholesome engagement with a promise of better value delivery via an OMNI BRAND than a single dimensional product or service. This is likely to increase brand stickiness as well. eg., A well known biryani brand that is able to get its customers to enjoy the most authentic experience in its outlet(s) as well as cook a few of its signature dishes at home through a mix of selling key ingredients and master classes on cooking tips. The value delivered is far greater than just eating a good biryani in the restaurant and now extends to enhancing the customer’s own symbolic value.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Geetanjali Rastogi for her contributions.