As shoppers shift toward more trust-based transactions, several companies are surging ahead to lead the new customer dynamic.
Last week we announced the partnership between Experiom, the data & technology advisory firm, and 3radical, the permissioned data platform, to create a unified, trust-based engagement solution for consumer-facing brands. This week, TheCustomer’s Rafer Weigel sat down with Tony Cox, the CEO of Experiom to better understand the reasons for the partnership and what value he expects it to bring to their broad list of clients. The following has been edited for brevity.
TheCustomer
Let’s start with a bit of breaking news. As you know, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple CEOs are going to be testifying before Congress. And now some are saying that this is going to completely change the landscape of big data companies all together. Why is this such a big deal, not only for companies, but also for consumers?
Tony Cox
They’re collecting customer data unbeknownst to users and while users do know that there some data is being collected, what they don’t know, for instance, is how much Google has on you. It’s amazing. The amount of data is actually scary. I remember back when Facebook was started to get big, and as a marketer, looking at the data that was available I was shocked. I thought, wow – they’re collecting all that and we can have it. It seemed to me then as now that consumers are getting pummeled with data collection from these companies.
TheCustomer
How important is building trust with consumers?
Tony Cox
These days building trust is hugely important. It’s first and foremost. We’re seeing this change to consumer driven engagement where consumers are going to be responsible for driving the engagement process and not the companies.
Consumers don’t want to feel like they’re being targeted, and they’re choosing to engage in actually establishing a dialogue with companies they can trust. And in order to build that trust, companies are going to have to pull back the curtain and reveal more about who they are – and more about what they are doing with what they know about their customers.
TheCustomer
How do companies get to that point – what do they have to do?
Tony Cox
It has to start slow and grow. It’s not one-time effort. It’s an ongoing “earned” relationship, that you continue to nurture to provide that trust factor by doing what you say you’re going to do by to that offer or whatever it might be, by exposing more about the company that you might normally expose in more traditional marketing approaches. The more you share of yourself (organizationally), the more people feel okay about responding with information of their own.
TheCustomer
Experiom specializes in marketing technology and helping companies market to consumers – is this going to change the way your company does business?
Tony Cox
We’ve already taken steps to get out of the arena of buying third-party data as much as possible because that data is largely aged and therefore incorrect. There are a lot of problems with that kind of data, not to mention that you start going down the edge of the road instead of down the middle of the road – being straightforward with your customers.
TheCustomer
Talk about the middle of the road. How do you get there?
Tony Cox
One of the approaches we’re taking is partnering with companies like 3radical because their Voco platform allows us to get consented data from customers easily, and it also allows us to target them in ways that can fill in the gaps of the data set. Now I don’t have to go out and purchase it from a third party, which again, might be inaccurate to begin with. It really helps your relationship with your customer and get allows them to take more control of the relationship. It is a consumer driven engagement model.
TheCustomer
Why did Experiom choose this particular customer data strategy?
Tony Cox
This is this is definitely a very unique approach but is one that is consistent with our values as a company. We believe that the best customer relationships are based on a mutual value exchange between both parties.
TheCustomer
Can you describe a little bit when you talk about a value exchange – what is the value exchange?
Tony Cox
There are a lot of different ways that you can incentivize people, but there has to be a give-and-take – it can’t just be a Take, take, take. Sometimes all that’s required is a little transparency on the part of the company, sometimes it’s a simple offer, sometimes it’s information, a better experience or whatever it might be that individual customer wants and values.
The other thing that’s unique about this approach is that customer data obtained in this way actually extends the shelf life of that data. In other words, the duration of the customer relationship behind that data tends to be much longer than what we’ve seen historically.
TheCustomer
Tony, thank you for your time today.
Tony Cox
My pleasure. Looking forward to our next conversation.
Photo by John Salvino on Unsplash.
