Heads up, customer experience professionals: The Super Bowl is more than a Sunday football game. It’s a guide to improving your customer experience.
The Super Bowl and everything that surrounds it – events, entertainment and travel – have cranked up the experience this year (as they do every year), and there’s takeaway for B2B and B2C organizations.
“AI has great potential for B2B organizations. For example, with AI-enabled technology a manufacturer can analyze machinery and can recognize when parts are worn or faulty. That way, a company knows they need to order a replacement or perform maintenance, well before it shuts down the line”, says Linda Haury, VP and Chief Marketing Officer of OZ, a consulting company focused on driving customer experience through digital innovation.
Here are six areas where either whole industries or individual companies have invested in enhancing the customer experience, plus tips on how you can capitalize on the idea.
1. Biometric Scans
Security agencies use facial recognition and fingerprint technology to move people more quickly and safely through lines at airports, public transportation areas and the stadium.
Many people use fingerprint technology to get into their devices more quickly and securely. Heck, Captain Kirk was doing it in the 1960s. Maybe you can you adopt similar strategies for order or delivery verification. Just be careful to not overstep customer privacy.
2. RFID Tags
Airlines increasingly use these tags to keep tabs on luggage and shipments. Stadiums also hand them out to families so adults can keep track of their children.
For companies, you just want to keep track of things – not kids! With the amount of online ordering and quick delivery options, customers of all types expect to know where their products and packages are and when they’ll arrive. You almost can’t ignore this technology to meet customer expectations.
3. Customer Preferences
Airlines are starting to tap their own technology to record, store and act on customer preferences. From their on-board ordering system, they track preferred drinks and let staff know what those are so they can have the drinks waiting at passengers’ preferred seats when they arrive.
You probably already track customers’ orders. Use your CRM’s capabilities to proactively do something – send a sample, remind customers of promotions or suggest scheduling an appointment – every month to improve the experience.
Or, on a more technical level, Haury suggests “implementing chat bots, which can use technologies including augmented reality, machine learning and analytics (to) remember you when you call. It will know – and speak – your preferred language, what time zone you’re in and what currency you use. It will answer customers’ questions, recommend parts or services and enable them to use voice recognition for ordering, making payments or calling up account data.”
4. Smart Rooms
Hotels got much smarter since the first Super Bowl in 1967 when travelers were happy with a clean room, comfy bed and warm shower. Now hotel rooms automatically adjust to guests’ preferred temperatures, turn on lights when they arrive and have their favorite tunes playing when they wake up. Plus, smart devices are available to order room service or the car service.
B2Bs might not be able to get that cozy with customers, but you will want to note preferences, plus things customers consider a “treat,” “bonus” or “add-on” and throw those in periodically with future orders.
5. App of Things
The Super Bowl app gives fans a variety of conveniences – from providing the best or cheapest ways to travel to and from the stadium and least crowded lines at the concession stands to directing attendees to the bathroom with the shortest wait time and reserving a heated seat at the victory parade back home!
Do you have an app?
“As businesses shift their focus to enhance customer experience, there are project management capabilities being built into apps to keep people on task and on schedule,” Haury says. In addition, B2B organizations are adapting apps that aid in finding the best prices for products or materials, while also comparing quality, metrics and other details to help customers determine the best, most cost-effective and quickest supplier, depending on their needs.
6. Virtual Reality
With VR headsets, fans in nosebleed seats feel like they are on the field as players warm up or stand in the huddle. (We’re not sure if they want to be that disconnected with the actual reality, but it’s an option.)
For B2Bs, you can offer fun virtual reality headsets at meetings as ice breakers or for entertainment at larger events for groups of customers. Or give them a valuable “virtual reality” through webcasts with your experts on how they do their jobs or use your solutions better.
