In the last two years, Covid 19 has wreaked havoc all over the world, affecting a variety of industries. The case of India is no exception. Many businesses across the country have experienced supply chain disruptions and decreased demand for their products and services. Although Covid-19 is affecting all business, smaller business that do not have sufficient funds to survive are facing higher risk. There has been loss in consumers as the personal interaction is been missing.
The HEART framework helps an organization that only outlasts pandemic like Covid-19. But also develops a basis on which a company should work to maintain customer relationships and its management.
Heart Framework
It is Humanize Your Company, educateabout change, Assure Stability, Revolutionize Offerings, Tackle the Future. It outlines what to say to customers — and what not to say — during prolonged crisis. It focuses on informing current and future customers about your company’s strategy for assisting them and offering additional value. We must create a value to the consumers so that they feel emotionally connected with the brand and that helps to increase customer value.
Be pro-active in making decisions and if there are any changes in the timings, staff reductions, facility closure, must promptly inform on all the social media websites. It is important to pay attention to the consumers pain-points. Whenever there is necessity, the need for invention arises. We must always provide value addition to the consumers. They must be satisfied while purchasing the product.
Humanize your company: This emphasizes that the primary objective of a business should be to provide the best service to its customers, not just to make money.
Educate about change: This element explains how the changes during such times should be communicated to its customers by an organization. The company during such unusual times can make sure that only its employees but also its customers should be made aware about their operations. The customers should be aware about how their organization is dealing with pandemic. For example, when curbs were lifted after first lockdown in India, companies like McDonald and Dominios made sure that the no contact delivery method of working is communicated clearly to its customers.
Assure stability This element creates trust between the customer and the organization they are connected with. The company at times like this should make sure the value they were delivering pre-pandemic is not hampered during and post-pandemic. For instance, Ola a Cab aggregator company, assured its customers that the company will make sure the rides are completely safe by adhering to the Covid protocols.
Revolutionize your offerings: This explains how an organization can make use of the existing problem and work towards discovering the opportunities. For instance, Dmart which is an offline store but during pandemic it came up with the online feature that delivers items to its customer’s door steps.
Tackle the future: This explains that the company should ensure its customers about the future possibilities in the Company and cultivate goodwill with past customers. It is about the customer-centric approach of the organization towards consumers.
The above HEART framework will help most of the organization to combat the situations like the current pandemic. This framework will also help the companies even after the pandemic and helps in building long lasting relations with the customers. In Summary, The benefit of the framework is retaining the old customers and acquiring new customers during and post pandemic
Top 3 Must Do Things to Get the Best Placements Ft. Barun and Isha from JAGSoM (Amazon, Swiggy, Schneider Electric)
CATKing, the popular YouTube channel for business school guidance, has vital advice for enhancing placement prospects. In an insightful discussion with Isha and Barun, both JAGSoM PGDM 2020-22 students, we learn how to make an impact with leading companies like Amazon, Swiggy and Schneider Electric.
Isha and Barun talk about JAGSoM’s role in shaping their career and enhancing their prospects for rewarding placement opportunities.
The main topics of the video and the corresponding time intervals are below.
00:10 – 3 things to do in an MBA to get the best placements
CATKing, a popular YouTube channel for business school advice, has released a detailed review of JAGSoM. The video covers batch profiles, placements, and other critical aspects to help you understand if JAGSoM is the right business school for you.
The main topics of the video and the corresponding time intervals are below.
00:00 – Introduction to JAGSoM (formerly IFIM Business School)
Relationship marketing is one aspect of CRM that focuses on building long term relationship with the customers that may yield to free word of mouth promotions, lowering the cost and increasing the revenue of a company. The ultimate aim is to bring back the customer in future, once he has made the first purchase.
Companies are using all sort of solutions these days to make the relationship with customer, long lasting. Unfortunately, the companies are not able to build so. Rather, they fall in trouble of dis-satisfaction. Customers do not delight in the way the companies try to convince them, by confusing them with more products, introducing many new features of electronic gadgets, lots of invitation to participate in frequently reward program and so on. The ultimate aim of Relationship marketing is to build the epitome of Customer satisfaction.
The more the companies try to offer reward program for the customers, the more they make their relationship with customer worse. Company needs to think and figure out how and why are they undermining their best efforts, as well as how things can be brought back on the track.
Seeing through the eyes of customer:
Companies policy of making one on one relationship with customer seem to be useless because very less consumers agrees for the same. If companies take too many steps to build one on one relationship, the consumer stops taking heed of you. Simply paying discounts/money to consumer can also never give long term relationship.
There should be a balance between ‘give and get’ for a healthy relationship. The data taken by company from any consumer must not be repeated to build trust. And the information taken out from consumer must be respected. If any customer has availed any particular service in the past, then that doesn’t necessarily mean that the customer would want the same, even if they liked it earlier. It depends on the present condition of the customer. Not understanding this would result in weakening the relationship.
Companies should not only rely on designing relationship/loyalty programs for those who generates more revenue. In such case, other consumers would feel left out and this may back fire the company.
Sometimes the company adopts any strategy and think that it will solve the problem of consumer but many a time it creates more problem. For example, too many solutions for any one problem many lead to confusion for customers. Also, a sense of freedom of choice should be provided to customer to bind commitment and trust.
It is wiser to understand that sometimes technology designed to reduce the work, ends up increasing the work load. So, it is essential to understand the needs of consumer. Consumer develop ‘purchase & consumer’ rules. Instead of accepting the advances (which you as a company think that you are helping your customer, you end up providing them to arm themselves to fight back.
Regaining Trust:
In 1985, psychologists Michael Argyle and Monica Hinderson defined universal rules of friendship:
Provide emotional support
Respect privacy
Preserve confidences
Tolerant of other friendship
In light of relationship marketing, companies hardly provide commitments to any of the above-mentioned rules.
How to then regain the trust of customers?
To start with, we can think of new products extension. Research states that most of the product extensions are not proper because the managers were not able to explain and understand what will resonate with customers and what not? We must eliminate or reduce the features while introducing new products that frustrates or overwhelms consumers. For example, P & G has standardized its new products formulae and packaging, reduced number of promotions and coupons, pruned marginal brands and cut back on dizzying array of new product bunches. While executing, company must think that are these initiatives undertaken with genuine concerns for consumer’s emotional well-being?
The next step is to respect the private information of customers. To build long term relationship, make sure that customer should not suspect you even once. Company must not ask sensitive information from customer, repeatedly, unless it is put for use.
Finally, the relationship goals should be practical and based on foundation of genuine-ness. Company must avoid fluff, fake promises and bad languages etc. The main aim should be honest commercial intent of doing business by convincing them that it is a good deal.
Attaining Intimacy:
The above three points, even if honestly followed, the company still faces trouble in making long term relationship. True intimacy is the key to rewarding relationship. To attain that, one must understand the consumer behavior. That is how does the consumer uses your product on day to day lives.
The company can’t rely only on the rating of customer on satisfaction scale. There are two major dimensions company must attend if they want true intimacy:
Product satisfaction and life satisfaction
Only data collection is not enough to understand the discontent of consumer but to get into the heads of consumer, marketer needs to turn on the tools of ethnography and phenomenology. Video tapes and photography are also reporting tools.
Some of the underutilized data can be used to find the clear picture of customer responses. For example, customer service hotlines may give actual picture of consumer response but unfortunately, they are not being used properly.
There are also external sources of the company that is readily available to provide information. For example, Ad agencies can be a good source of trend analysis.
To understand the consumers effectively, the company personnel are required to go on the field. Not only the researchers but also the senior managers, middle level managers or else engineers etc.
Only data can’t provide us required information about customer’s psyche. To be truly effective, one must understand philosophy, communications, psychology and religious studies. Understanding emotional part of consumers is very critical to overall analysis.
Conclusion:
Marketers are the boundary line between the customers and the company. Marketers must understand the needs of consumer and act accordingly. That is, they provide the company, customer’s point of view. But these days, both the roles are not being played effectively that puts Relationship marketing in danger.
To build relationship, company often takes many muddled steps that makes relationship even worse. So, the company must understand true meaning of relationship and delivers, on the principles on which it was founded.
Gone are the days when every company used to hire only celebrities for endorsing their products or service. Some companies today have stopped giving big cheques to celebrity for ads and they have started realising the importance of real customers in the advertisement. When a real customer promotes the product today, it creates a bigger impact on other customer minds.
Today all the service sectors business focuses a lot on reviews and ratings. SWIGGY, Zomato, Uber are few of the companies which are focusing a lot on reviews. It is a review only which makes a restaurant big or small in SWIGGY. If a restaurant is having good reviews, only then I can think of ordering from that restaurant.
Today Marketing has become more transparent as a company knows whatever they are promising in the advertisement they have to fulfil that promise otherwise the customer is ready to write bad complaints and negative review against the product on social media.
Digital Advertisement has changed the traditional way of advertising through celebrity. Several YouTubers who are common people like us have become a new favourite of companies for promoting the brands because a customer can relate with that person that he is also living the same standard of living like us.
I have one simple question for those who are reading this article – whom will you trust, a big celebrity who is advertising the product or 100 reviews given by common people like you when you will buy a product. I think today you will trust reviews.
Today Artificial Intelligence and analytics have completely changed the marketing business. Suppose if you are searching for a product on e-commerce websites, the websites will show you similar types of products next time you visit the website as now they know which types of product you are searching for. Analytics has a major role in advertising today as the marketer knows how many times you visited the site, which product you purchased and based on that behaviour it will also recommend you similar products to buy.
Today there is a big scope in Marketing and lots of students are building their career in Marketing. But to be successful in this field you need to have the right set of skills to deal with new generation of marketing – one of that skill is how you can use the customer for the benefit of the brand. What you need in this field is to select the right business school which can nurture you in the right direction.
Revenue from digital advertisements in India has risen exponentially from 6 billion dollars in 2008 to 199 billion dollars in 2020. Digital advertisements are projected to overtake print and TV advertisements by fiscal year 2024, in terms of revenue generated. The popularity of digital advertisements can be attributed to obvious reasons like increased consumption of digital content, which in turn is due to availability of cheap data and smartphones.
But what really attracts businesses, small and large, to digital platforms for advertisements?
Specific targeting
One reason why businesses are drawn to digital platforms is the ability to cater to customized audiences. Audience profiles can be targeted based on age, gender, location and even hobbies and interests.
2. Measurable results
Most digital advertisement platforms provide dashboards that show relevant information to track the progress and success of advertisement campaigns. These help make sure the campaigns are progressing in the right direction and also to take any corrective actions if necessary
3. Accessible for everyone
From a local baker who spends less than 2 dollars in India to a multi-billion-dollar business like Samsung spending more than 2 Billion dollars, digital advertisement platforms are accessible and necessary for every business.
Digital advertisement is the only way forward for businesses of all shapes and sizes to reach their target audience in a cost-effective manner. These new methods of advertisement also promise huge returns for its adopters.
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