Millennials AS CUSTOMERS

The 2018 Benchmark Report

Sponsored by

2The 2018 Benchmark Report

IntroductionToday’s retail market is

challenging, where focusing on

a specific digital channel is no

longer enough. Although there

are dozens of ways to make

recommendations and drive

promotions to target customers,

retailers still struggle to identify

digital strategies that will drive

customers into physical stores.

But for many retailers, location-

based mobile marketing is

compelling customers to visit

their stores and buy, especially

when they receive contextual

offers at the right time and when

they are near a store location.

Retailers that launch tailor-made

communications can attract

customers with locally relevant

messaging and offers.

Using digital tools, retailers

can better understand local

customers and their needs,

closing the gap between digital

and physical channels. But

they must leverage the right

consumer and location-based

data to target customers with

offers that will excite them.

Retailers need to expand their

digital marketing strategies so

that they widen their customer

reach and understanding.

They must use digital tools to

create both digital and in-store

personalized experiences. Using

a digital bench of the latest

technologies, retailers can

improve their competitive edge

in in-store retail.

Geo-location, geofencing, real-time targeting, and data from third-parties when integrated give us many opportunities to interact with customers. [They] present them with real-time, customized ads and promotions [that] encourage them to

purchase at a nearby store.

Carol Ott, Director of Marketing Analytics at

Best Buy Company

TABLE OF Contents

Executive Summary ........................................................................................3

Key Findings ....................................................................................................4

Research Analysis ..........................................................................................5

Customer experience as a mainstream focus ........................................5

Budgeting for performance across channels .........................................8

The imperative to develop a Millennial engagement strategy .............10

Overcoming the barriers to Millennial engagement .............................12

Key Recommendations ................................................................................13

Methodology .................................................................................................13

NGCX .............................................................................................................14

Kustomer .......................................................................................................14

WBR Insights .................................................................................................14

3The 2018 Benchmark Report

IntroductionToday’s retail market is

challenging, where focusing on

a specific digital channel is no

longer enough. Although there

are dozens of ways to make

recommendations and drive

promotions to target customers,

retailers still struggle to identify

digital strategies that will drive

customers into physical stores.

But for many retailers, location-

based mobile marketing is

compelling customers to visit

their stores and buy, especially

when they receive contextual

offers at the right time and when

they are near a store location.

Retailers that launch tailor-made

communications can attract

customers with locally relevant

messaging and offers.

Using digital tools, retailers

can better understand local

customers and their needs,

closing the gap between digital

and physical channels. But

they must leverage the right

consumer and location-based

data to target customers with

offers that will excite them.

Retailers need to expand their

digital marketing strategies so

that they widen their customer

reach and understanding.

They must use digital tools to

create both digital and in-store

personalized experiences. Using

a digital bench of the latest

technologies, retailers can

improve their competitive edge

in in-store retail.

Geo-location, geofencing, real-time targeting, and data from third-parties when integrated give us many opportunities to interact with customers. [They] present them with real-time, customized ads and promotions [that] encourage them to

purchase at a nearby store.

Carol Ott, Director of Marketing Analytics at

Best Buy Company

EXECUTIVE Summary

72% of organizations have established customer service departments with the express goal of providing better experiences.

89% also acknowledge that the Millennial generation has distinct preferences that require specific strategy adaptations to meet.

The Millennial generation, defined as those born between the early ‘80s to the early 2000s, are a demographic with a deep connection to technology. Coming of age along with the development of the internet means that for many Millennials, keeping pace with the newest devices and trends is second nature. As the tools they use to reach out to each other have evolved, so have their expectations for service and the desire for more personal brand interactions. This makes it critical for businesses to learn to meet them on the channels that they favor and to develop a voice that feels authentic and accessible, or risk being passed over.

To better understand how brands are tailoring their customer experiences to remain competitive as Millennials continue to come of age as consumers, NGCX surveyed 100 leading Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX) executives on the effectiveness of their strategies, their levels of preparedness, and the technologies that they feel will have the greatest role to play in the near future.

Read on to discover the insights that your peers had to share, along with the current state of the industry. Are you beating the curve, or falling behind?

4The 2018 Benchmark Report

KEYFindings

Most brands have been focusing on customer service for years but may still struggle to keep up with Millennials’ taste for disruptive technology.

CX is a well-recognized differentiator, and the large majority of brands have developed a strategy that encompasses their efforts across the organization. However, the Millennial generation’s preferences put even high-performing programs to the test. Disruptors can quickly gain a following and the convenience they provide becomes a baseline expectation, challenging brands across industries to keep pace in a CX arms race that can demand strategic-level changes on the part of brands to stay competitive.

Mobile and social should be regarded as the vanguard of a brand’s presence when developing a Millennial-focused strategy.

One of the key characteristics of the Millennial generation is a pronounced focus on all things mobile. The social channel is a natural complement to mobile as well, as instantly recognizable apps such as Instagram allow savvy brands to engage their customers on content-rich platforms with the potential for audiences to grow exponentially. Increasingly, Millennials want to connect and interact with their brands of choice in the same way they would speak with someone they know. This means that social presences should tie in to customer service with meaningful, real-time interactions.

Executive buy-in isn’t what’s holding brands back from creating CX strategies specific to Millennials. In most cases, it’s the details of planning and executing a strategy.

Ultimately, most executives recognize that the growing purchasing power of Millennials means that their preferences will need to be understood and catered to. That realization does not necessarily mean that they have a clear strategy for doing this. The speed with which Millennials can switch preferences can be a cause for hesitation, as well as the challenges related to developing personalization and segmenting that can keep up with a higher standard of brand interactions.

70% 30% 51% of brands have had

a CX department for over three years.

of brands ranked mobile as their #1

priority when planning their budgets.

of brands rank either lack of strategy or

execution challenges as their top barriers to

Millennial engagement.

5The 2018 Benchmark Report

How long has customer experience been a focus at your organization?

3+ Years

2-3 Years

1-2 Years

<1 Year

RESEARCH AnalysisOver the past several years, it’s

become clear that customer

experience is one of the most

important battlegrounds for

brands today. Metrics such

as loyalty and retention now

hinge on the ability of brands

to develop a real connection

with their customers. For

Millennials, more and more

of this activity is taking place

through digital touchpoints,

usually split between two or

more screens. That’s not to say

that physical stores don’t have

a place within these strategies.

Rather, to meet the expectations of Millennial customers, brands must ensure that their strategies extend across the full breadth of channels available to them while remaining coordinated. In addition to omnichannel availability, fully developed personalization strategies that unite the experiences of a customer across channels are expected by many Millennial consumers. Given the cross-departmental nature of these initiatives, over time it makes sense to centralize CX under the banner of a single group with a dedicated mission.

Customer experience has become a major

focus for competitive brands, with

70%having prioritized

developing a focus on customer

experience for over three years.

8%

7%

15%

70%

Customer experience as a mainstream focus

6The 2018 Benchmark Report

Does your organization have a separate customer

experience department?

The importance of building a

customer service strategy that

can compete on a high level

has seen many organizations

develop departments specifically

to manage their CX initiatives

across the organization.

Omnichannel consistency

requires coordination that

spans departments, making it

impractical for several business

units with clearly defined

missions to add responsibility

for CX to their plate. This is true

especially when brands attempt

to compete against their peers

who have already established

centralized customer experience

groups. With centralized CX

leadership, it becomes much

more feasible to establish

organization-wide best practices.

Without a dedicated CX department, it’s likely that brands

will fall behind their competition, the majority of which

already have a

core CXgroup in place.

72% have a dedicated

CX group

28% “No”

7The 2018 Benchmark Report

What are the KPIs for your customer experience efforts?

When judging the success of CX

initiatives, the most commonly

utilized KPIs are satisfaction,

retention, and loyalty.

Engagement is also used as a

KPI by over half of respondents.

What insights can be taken

away from the order of

these KPIs? The primacy

of satisfaction—even more

important than retention, goes

to demonstrate that in a sea of

options, brands may only have

one chance to deliver a quality

experience to their customers.

The battle for retention, and

then loyalty after that, can

only begin after making a

strong first impression. A

focus on engagement can

be particularly useful for

helping drive the connections

that brands need to learn

more about their customers’

preferences, and can yield

strong long-term benefits by

providing the data foundation

for more ambitious initiatives.

As programs mature, seeking

the methodology to tie

revenue and profit to the

effects of CX initiatives

becomes an important next

step for creating more buy-in

from key stakeholders within

the organization.

Satisfaction, retention, and loyalty are the

trifecta of KPIs in place for the majority of CX

programs.

Satisfaction

Retention

Loyalty

Engagement

Revenue

Profit

71%

67%

65%

58%

47%

35%

Glossier, the hyper-cool beauty brand Millennials love, is built totally around the customer. Glossier’s service team provides personal, consultative service by giving their agents single holistic view of their customers—including conversations, orders, feedback, and more.

Millennial feminine care brand LOLA’s goal is to create relationships that last a lifetime. Lola uses proactive outreach and bulk messaging to contact their users whenever there is a glitch in service, keeping them engaged and informed.

Connected doorbell and security solution Ring has exploded in popularity, and was recently acquired by Amazon. As their audience grows, they track every customer’s history and preferences, so their experience still feels as personal and responsive as knocking on neighbor’s door.

How do the brands Millenials love deliver a personal, fast, and proactive experience?

The Customer Service Platform Built for People. Learn more at Kustomer.com

Learn how you can deliver an incredible experience like our clients LOLA, Glossier, and Chubbies HERE.

Single view of the customer

Proactive service

Omnichannel conversations

9The 2018 Benchmark Report

Rank the following areas from one to five, one being the top priority for your budget plans,

five being your least budget priority area:

RESEARCH AnalysisMobile is now in the lead as a first-tier spending priority with 30% of respondents placing it as their top area of investment within their budget plans. It should be noted that the second most common tier-one investment area is in-store. Given the overhead associated with a brick-and-mortar location, the fact that mobile spend still outranks this category strongly suggests that brands recognize mobile as a critical area to develop in order to maintain their relationships with their customers.

Similarly, social media is the third most common tier-one priority, and the first out of tier two. Aside from serving as a clear complement to mobile strategies, the development of a social presence is important for brands seeking to bolster their relationships to their Millennial customers. For Millennials, the desire to interact with a trusted brand, share and tag content, and air their complaints means that a brand social presence is taken as a given, and a high level of social development is often expected.

Investments in mobile and social reflect the fact that they are key

communication channels for connecting with

Millennial customers.

Budgeting for performance across channels

12%14%15%

22%

10%

28%31%

14%

10% 10%

20% 20%20%20%

11%

18%

30%

17%

24%

21%

18%

27%

23%

13%

52%

Mobile Social media Employee training In-store Website

1 (top priority) 2 3 (neutral) 4 5 (lowest priority)

10The 2018 Benchmark Report

Web continues to lead the pack in terms of overall channel performance, with 61% of respondents rating it above average. Mobile is the second most performing channel followed once again by social. This follows the fact that for many brands, a flagship website will be one of their most long-standing digital properties with supporting SEO strategies and potentially years of testing and refinement supporting its performance. Mobile’s advantage is the near-constant accessibility that an app or mobile website can offer. When catering to a generational preference

for convenience, mobile’s importance is hard to overstate.

Looking at the channels with more pronounced splits in their performance, it becomes clear that in-store is in the process of being reinvented. Only 31% of respondents rated their in-store performance above a neutral level. As performance and revenue from digital channels increase, the role of the physical store is ripe for disruption and can still play a critical role in delivering positive customer experiences. The potential for convenient deliveries and returns from brick-and-mortar

Many brands admit that their overall

omnichannel coordinationis behind their ability to manage CX through a desktop website, making this a key area to

improve to meet Millennial expectations.

locations is compounded by their unparalleled ability to deliver engagement through interactions with sales associates and in-store technology.

Overall omnichannel coordination is still in the midst of fine-tuning for the majority of respondents, with 69% of respondents ranking their performance as neutral at best. Bringing the threads of social, mobile, desktop, and in-store together into a singular cohesive experience separates brands that have managed to digitally mature from those that are following in their footsteps, or just beginning on their journeys.

Please rate the performance of your CX strategy in the following channels:

33%

39%

11%

7%5%

26%

40%

4%

17%

44%

1 (highly effective) 2 3 (neutral) 4 5 (not at all effective)

20%

30%

25%26%

10%

3%

11%

32%

23%

14%

11%

42%

13%

4%

10%

Website In-store Social media Mobile Overall omnichannel coordination

11The 2018 Benchmark Report

RESEARCH AnalysisWhile 52% of respondents feel that their efforts to adapt to Millennial preferences will mostly grow in importance in the longer term, this belies the fact that in order to keep pace with Millennial development, the groundwork to support the features they expect needs to be laid down now. Another 37% of respondents are already feeling this pressure and are taking pains to adapt to this reality in the near-term.

89% of respondents acknowledge that they will have to adapt to changing Millennial preferences, over eight

times the number who do not see a

difference in their preferences.

The imperative to develop a Millennial engagement strategy

Do you feel that the preferences of your Millennial customers differ from other

generational groups?

3% No, we do not serve enough Millennial customers or have the segmentation to differentiate.

8% No, we do not see a difference in Millennial preferences.

37% Yes, we are under pressure to adapt to Millennial preferences in the near- term.

52% Yes, we are adapting to changing preferences that will have a long- term effect, though in the near- term there is little difference.

89% are adapting to Millennial preferences

12The 2018 Benchmark Report

The growing influence of the Millennial generation has caused 34% of respondents to prioritize the development of strategies specifically engineered to boost their levels of engagement, satisfaction, and retention. While not explicitly engineered with Millennials in mind, another 32% of respondents are working on customer satisfaction strategies that

include segmentation which recognizes Millennials as a specific, targetable demographic.

This still leaves a third of respondents without a developed strategy. For 11%, targeting Millennials is not a priority, while 23% have not yet managed to develop their strategies and are at risk of falling behind. Compared to the 89% of respondents who

Having a clear strategy for

Millennial engagement or at least a strategy for segmentation that

can cover this by default is critical, yet nearly a quarter of respondents still don’t have specific

engagement strategies in place.

Do you have a strategy in place that is specifically engineered for boosting Millennial

customer satisfaction/retention?

11% No, we are not prioritizing this at this time.

23% No, we do not have the ability to identify Millennials specifically, but would like to develop it.

32% Yes, but only as a part of a segmented customer experience strategy.

34% Yes, this is a priority for us.

affirm the reality of specific Millennial preferences, this is a significant chunk who are either content to do nothing, or fully acknowledge that they are in a bad position. That said, some barriers remain to the success of Millennial engagement strategies that can be difficult to overcome without the right strategies and tools.

13The 2018 Benchmark Report

RESEARCH AnalysisHalf of respondents are struggling with

either executing their strategies or

defining them in the first place.

Overcoming the barriers to Millennial engagement

One of the key challenges that are being faced by brands that are developing Millennial targeting strategies is the ability to execute on the plans that they have developed. Often this is a symptom of a lack of adequate data needed to build the segmentation to support a Millennial engagement strategy. With the range of responses on overall omnichannel coordination pointing to a

roughly even split between the capable and those playing catch-up, those who admit that execution is a challenge are likely in need of overall improvement of their capabilities.

Worse off are the 25% of respondents who report that they do not have a strategy or have only the beginnings of a strategic plan that is not yet ready to implement. They must complete the hard work of identifying their Millennial customers’ preferences, then laying the groundwork to engage them based on the data they collect.

32% of respondents cited either budget or internal resources as the greatest challenges that hold them

Only 8% of respondents cited a lack of executive

buy-in as the largest

obstacle in the way of their

Millennial experience strategies.

back from rolling out a Millennial engagement strategy. While not an insignificant number, this does add weight to the premise that the majority of executives are in a position where they understand the importance of growing Millennial buying power and how it pertains to their business.

What is your greatest obstacle to targeting Millennials within your customer experience strategy?

Execution

Lack of strategy

Budget

Internal resources

Other

Executive buy-in

17%

15%

9%

8%

25%

26%

14The 2018 Benchmark Report

KEYRecommendations

The majority of brands recognize the need to roll out a strategy that targets and appeals to Millennials.

Arguably the most critical step is to understand their preferences and meet them on the platforms that they favor.

Millennials expect that the brands they favor will have a presence on social media and mobile.

Further than that, they expect to be able to interact with them in meaningful ways, including fulfilling customer service requests. The ability to field these requests is another point of development that most brands will require.

Today, omnichannel coordination is a journey that only a leading few have fully completed, but most have embarked on.

That said, it’s imperative that brands continue to develop their ability to view customer data from a singular view.

MethodologyThe results analyzed in this report were gathered

from responses to a benchmarking survey delivered to an audience of executives with responsibility for customer experience and

user experience within their organizations. 100 executives responded to the survey.

15The 2018 Benchmark Report

Launched in 2011, Next Gen Customer Experience brings together senior level customer experience executives across all industries to discuss the latest customer experience strategies across all channels and touch points. If you want to develop a cutting-edge CX strategy or benefit from focused networking, Next Generation Customer Experience is an event you can’t miss.

Next Generation Customer Experience differentiates itself from other CX-related events by offering unparalleled quality.

Learn more at https://nextgencx.wbresearch.com

Kustomer is the modern platform for customer experience, service, and support that focuses on customers, not tickets, enabling companies to know everything about every customer to drive informed actions. Used by industry leaders such as Ring, Glossier, and Rent the Runway, Kustomer provides businesses with a full view of every customer by unifying all relevant data, interaction history, apps, and systems. Kustomer was founded in 2015 with headquarters in New York City. To learn more, visit Kustomer.com.

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