How should brands rethink their customer interactions?

15 Sep 2020

As Generali launches its first global brand campaign, we thought it was timely to examine how Covid-19 is impacting or accelerating trends that are shaping the way customers interact with brands. We also explore how the Generali brand is adapting to these changes.  

The stakes are higher, now more than ever, to get the experience right at every touch point of a customer’s journey. The proliferation of online shopping has reduced the human interaction customers are used to experiencing with brands. While on the other hand, marketing initiatives that worked last year may strike the wrong tone with customers who are currently navigating economic, health and social uncertainty.

Interacting online

Around the world the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated retail’s transition to a digital future. According to Bain & Company, from 2014 to 2019 online retail sales growth in Asia Pacific was nearly double the rest of the world’s[1]. Lockdown restrictions, since early this year, then sped up customer’s preference for shopping online, with studies by market researcher Nielsen revealing e-commerce as one of the few winners amid the world’s worst recession[2].  

A further study by Adobe on consumers in Asia-Pacific show that despite restrictions lifting in many countries, shopping habits and brand interactions have not returned to pre-coronavirus norms[3].

This presents a challenge for marketeers – how should they connect with customers when almost all their interactions with their brand is online? The answer potentially lies in having an in-depth understanding of where along the customer journey the human-touch point is essential. Then, considering how, at that point, you can maximise its impact.

An effective way to gather this insight is from customer feedback or the Net Promoter Score (NPS). At Generali, we send daily surveys to customers around the world, including six of our markets in Asia, to ask for feedback at every touchpoint. This is critical as part of our efforts to enhance their experience with us.

We have responded to this insight by deploying AI to enhance the customer experience through the automation of repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as processing claims. This has enabled employees to provide faster service and to focus on making that service more personalised, such as offering empathy with a better understanding of the policyholder’s situation.

Brand humanization

A significant majority of customers are more than ready for brand humanization. According to Salesforce research, 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services — up from 80% in 2018, yet this is heavily dependent upon the right approach to personalization and empathy[4].

Generali built an ambitious customer communications plan with the aim of reaching all their customers at least twice per year, and outside of any transactions. Customers may be reached by phone, email or messaging platforms. We feel this is the best approach to build close relationships with our customers based on empathy.  

Why is empathy so important?

For customers it plays an essential role in creating a satisfactory customer experience: customers want to know their feelings have been heard.

It is what makes customers more likely to stay with a brand and what pushes them to one in the first place. As interactions with customers moves increasingly online there is a growing need for connection and authenticity especially for businesses built on the relationships it has with its customers.

In 2019, Generali launched a new set of company behaviours as part of the 2021 strategy and to help drive our Lifetime Partner ambition. Human Touch is one of them, along with Ownership, Simplification and Innovation. It highlights our focus on partnering with others, showing empathy and team spirit. We want to be known for how our meaning and purpose-led behaviour enhances both individual and collective well-being, and this can only be achieved by embracing empathy in everything we do.

Times of uncertainty

The importance of brand empathy and purpose has been a hot topic among marketeers since the start of the pandemic. Companies have realised that they need to be practising these traits if they have any chance at winning the hearts, loyalty and dollars of customers in the future.

Data from The Empathy Imperative: Consumer Perceptions On Brand Empathy Through a Pandemic, a recent joint study by PepsiCo and Ipsos, suggests that companies need to evolve their customer-facing communications  around empathy as well as their support for workers and the wider community to build long-term brand loyalty[5].

Throughout our markets in Asia, Generali rolled out a number of employee, customer and community initiatives which were highlighted in the June edition of Asia Insurance Review (page 19). We also stepped up communications to our stakeholders as a means of ensuring they remained well informed and engaged during what was to become a difficult and isolating period for many. (this is already covered in the previous paragraph?)

Empathy’s role in marketing strategy has been growing over the years. Now in the face of negative consumer sentiment, and as we look towards a future of intense e-commerce competition, it must be the focal point. The companies who come out of this period stronger will be the ones who not only make empathy an essential part of their marketing strategy, but their overall business.

Footnotes: 

[1] https://www.bain.com/insights/the-future-of-retail-in-asia-pacific/

[2] https://www.nielsen.com/sg/en/insights/article/2020/ecommerce-channels-dominant-physical-stores-equally-important/

[3] https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/cc/sea/newsroom/pdf/2020/Adobe-APAC-Consumer-TopLine-Report-sea-200721.pdf

[4] https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/07/customer-experience.html

[5] https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/pepsico-empathy-051420