Brands Must Infuse Their Origin Story With The Customer’s
Sipho Sepeng, Digital Customer Experience Design Lead at Nedbank, shares insights on aligning marketing and customer experience with digital evolution.
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With the move towards digital-first, marketers are quickly adapting to keep up with evolving customer expectations. In the new business landscape, the key to success lies in finding the ideal balance between technology and the human psyche.
Sipho Sepeng, Digital Customer Experience Design Lead at Nedbank, says technologies like artificial intelligence are helping marketers create moments of delight at key touchpoints across multiple channels.
Martechvibe had a chat with Sepeng about delighting the customer in the age of AI.
How have CX expectations changed in the finance industry?
Owing to the proliferation of digital platforms, from food delivery services and industry-agnostic super apps, customers have come to expect the same level of personalisation and experiences they derive from their favourite apps they spend much of their time on.
What is the role of technologies like AI and machine learning in enabling seamless online customer experiences?
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are essential in using identified user behaviours and preferences to compute predictive models that map out the ideal user journey based on desired outcomes. This could then create moments of delight at key touchpoints across multiple channels. The omnichannel experience will deliver the right content and solutions (products and services) at the right time.
How can brands emphasise the voice of the customer for enhanced customer service?
Brands have to be purpose-led and infuse their origin story with that of the customer, along with shared values. This entails understanding your customer’s jobs to be done, and the motivational factors driving their choice of product or service. Customer service is a component of the customer experience that occurs at a point in a journey. The brand has to proactively manage customer perceptions before this moment of truth, and deepen its relationship based on shared value after the transactional value exchange.
What is the biggest challenge in mapping different customer touchpoints? How does Nedbank approach this?
The biggest challenge is orchestrating business activities across the value chain comprising different business units with varying methodologies to create a seamless flow of value focusing on the customer. We are combating this through our enterprise-wide Create Summit, which is hosted twice a year. The summit brings different stakeholders across the franchise to align our business objectives and refocus our efforts on differentiating customer value.
How can marketers use design thinking to improve personalisation efforts?
Marketing is a dynamic and critical business function that needs to continually scan the environment for shifting consumer behaviours and preferences. Design thinking is a design that is needs-led rather than solution-led. Marketers should embrace the fluidity of the market, especially in the age where AI is growing in prominence, and adopt the iterative nature of ‘test, learn, and adapt’ inherent in the design thinking practice. They should establish readily available insights and communities they could tap for market feedback on anything from content (Does it relay the brand promise?) to product features (Do they deliver the perceived value?).
Sepeng will take the stage at the Vibe Martech Fest at Two Oceans Aquarium, Cape Town, South Africa, on 26-27 July 2023 as part of a panel discussion: Customers at the Core: Giving Direction to People, Processes, and Technology. Register here.
