I recently returned from the 2018 Franchise Consumer Marketing Conference, in Atlanta, and as with past FCMC events, it was a great place for picking up fresh ideas and insights from some of franchising’s most innovative and successful marketing pros and practitioners. 

By the time a customer walks into your location, he or she has already had multiple interactions with your brand, many of them online. They came in wanting something more – an experience that not only drives them to make the purchase, but form a deeper bond with your brand and your offerings. The fact they are in your location means they’ve decided to take the relationship with you one step further – what are you doing to engage them?

In the manufacturing industry, one of marketing’s greatest asset are the sales channels, on the ground, in local markets, who are responsible for representing, sharing and selling a brand’s products or services.

But how can you break through the noise of the sales room floor? The consumer shopping experience is very different today, and sales channels represent several different brands all at once – including competing brands.

As the relationship between businesses and customers continues to evolve, the value of the customer experience has been magnified greatly. Customer-facing social media channels and the general ease with which anyone can find information about anyone/anything online have made businesses and their employees and managers more accessible than ever before. This means businesses – the whole business – must be ready to address customer needs across any number of outlets. But good customer experience doesn’t just mean effectively handling complaints, issues or questions; it means having a real relationship with your customers.

It’s a no-brainer to say customer service matters, but some recent studies really quantify just how much it matters. In one study, respondents indicated that they stand to lose up to 21% of annual revenue as a result of not offering a positive, consistent and brand-relevant customer experience. Another study says that bad customer service stories are more likely to be shared than good customer services stories, with 62% of B2B and 42% of B2C customers purchasing more after a good experience.

It’s really important for us at DocuStar to make sure the client experience is a positive one. My goal is for the client to consider us a part of their team. After all, we practically serve as an extension of their marketing department for some projects. Whether you work B2B or B2C, reaching that level of intimacy with your clients is critical for sustained success but can be difficult to achieve. I think there are four things you can do that will put you and your client in a position to succeed:

With nearly 50 percent of mobile phone users in the U.S. carrying smartphones, and 25 percent of this sample also carrying tablets, connected devices and tablets have gone mainstream and are leading the shift towards a mobile-driven consumer decision journey. Accordingly, the IBM State of Marketing 2012 report found that 41% of marketers worldwide cite the growth of channel and device choices as the top challenge to their company over the next 5 years, while adoption of mobile websites and mobile applications grows.

As an internal advocate for the customer perspective, marketing touches all aspects of customer service. Product managers in marketing are tasked with ensuring not only product quality, but also the quality of the support materials and resources available for their product lines, while brand managers are charged with overseeing customer experience excellence throughout the customer lifecycle. Just as every department has a stake in elevating the customer experience, QR codes can create value-added impressions across multiple customer touch points. Below are four innovative ways QR codes can be used to improve the Customer Experience.