field notes

Creating moments of customer serendipity

Where “serendipity” is used to describe the coincidental occurrence of events in a beneficial way, the concept of customer serendipity is not a matter 
of chance at all.

With right strategy and technology, you can deliver the right content at exactly the right time that it matters. It seems like surprise to your users and yet it is a trusted and welcomed interaction.

Today’s modern and personalized web architectures allow you to give each user a unique experience tailored to their needs. 

Each day it's getting harder to keep up with the latest trends in digital consumer engagement – not to mention the complex privacy risks that come with it. Take for instance the concept of digital twins, which has secured a spot in Gartner's latest hype cycle for emerging technologies. These virtual representations of a customer are intended to simulate, emulate and anticipate consumer behavior to help modify and enhance the customer experience.

While even Gartner predicts true market adoption is still at least 5 years away, it's imperative that companies start setting the right ethical foundation now. 

In 2017, Marketo announced that we are in living in a new era: the Engagement Economy. “Today’s consumer craves brands that share their values and demonstrate that they understand “me” at a personal level.”

No matter if your hear "Yanny" or "Laurel", one thing we all can learn from this week's social debate is that the human brain has a magical way of constructing what we hear, see, and even feel. And this has huge implications for marketing.

By nature, social media sites are, well…social. That means that people use them for very personal and emotional reasons. Likewise, brands should have very different strategies for each channel. Especially at a time when Facebook is emphasizing more meaningful interactions, you should pause before posting the same exact content across all social channels. 

After helping judge the “Best Mobile Communications” category for the 2017 eHealthcare Leadership awards, White Rhino’s chief digital strategist Shawn Gross shared with me, “The industry is definitely on a curve of innovation.” But he was quick to follow that up, “there’s also a wide divide between what I would call true digital engagement and traditional marketing efforts.”

Much like your average cup of joe with cream and sugar, customer experience in healthcare has become a commodity. Patients don’t have any sort of loyalty to a particular brand. In fact, 23% of patients see 3 or more PCPs in just 2 years. And unless you’re delivering a great experience, they’re not simply switching to a new doctor in the same hospital. They’re making a wholesale shift to the hospital across the street. A Press Ganey survey found that hospitals with patient satisfaction in the bottom 10th percentile lost 17% of patient volume.

Ahhh, tax season. It used to be that time of year that you handed a giant folder over to your accountant – not merely for convenience but because he actually knows how to navigate the complexity of tax forms. Until, that is, TurboTax reimagined the tax experience, empowering millions of consumers to complete their taxes all on their own.