Customers need to be at the heart of every retail business and those that take a customer-centric approach will be rewarded with a loyal customer base. However, meeting the needs of today’s consumer has become increasingly difficult. It’s not just the products and services themselves that drive purchase decisions. A company’s values; how, what and when a company communicates with customers; even the relevancy of product recommendations are all contributing factors. How are retailers to meet the diverse needs of their customers in a scalable, sustainable way?
Data is one of the most valuable assets for retailers and is essential for developing a customer-centric focus. With accurate and extensive data, companies can understand more about their customers in order to deliver the right products and messaging to the right person, at the right time. However, outside of transactional and marketing data, what other sources can retailers turn to?
This is why retailers need to care about customer health and well-being.
Over 70% of consumers prefer to purchase from brands that align with their values. How can you ensure that your brand values stand apart from your competitors, particularly if you provide similar products and services? Show your customers that you care about them for more than just their purchasing power.
Customers are seeking companies that show care for them, and this extends beyond help desk excellence. According to Gartner research “89% of companies now expect to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience”. According to A Call for Sustainability and Action: The Deloitte Global 2021 Millennial, Gen Z Survey, health care and disease prevention top millennials’ list of concerns. Offering, as part of the customer experience you provide, a demonstration of your commitment to customer wellness will allow you to form a valuable new connection with your customers.
In order to deliver a meaningful customer experience, retailers need to learn more about those purchasing their products. Marketing data provides basic identity information, when and how a consumer engages with your brand (whether that is liking your social media post or abandoning their shopping cart part way through an online purchase), and customer attitude towards your brand gathered through surveys, reviews and feedback. What these types of data have in common is that they tell you only a sliver of the whole person.
Learning about your customer’s outside of your brand eco-system allows your retail business to not only form a more complete customer profile, it provides valuable insights in customer interests and activities for enhanced personalization. What’s more, these new data insights will help organizations build improved personas to more effectively target future customers to help grow their business. Adding health, lifestyle and behavior data to your existing data stack provides a new level of consumer insights for enhanced personalization.
“Seventy-one percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And seventy-six percent get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.”1
How often does your consumer return to your brand’s app or website? Daily? Monthly? Quarterly? To engage with your business regularly, consumers need more than your products to entice them. Regular, non-transactional engagement is essential for keeping your brand top-of-mind so that when a consumer is ready to make a purchase, it is your business they come to. Drive your customers back to your brand with health and wellness offerings that are meaningful, actionable and engaging.
The Sprout Open Health API™ powers global businesses with access to our market-tested features designed to enhance new and existing customer facing applications. Our industry feature set allows your consumers to build a new relationship with your brand while safely and securely capturing health and lifestyle data to deliver real business outcomes.
Learn how the Sprout Open Health API’s modular, scalable and extensible platform architecture can tap into valuable user health data to drive business outcomes that matter to your organization. Book your discovery call today.
1. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-value-of-getting-personalization-right-or-wrong-is-multiplying
