Aimee and Mark, thank you so much for being here at this
year's Dreamforce.
And this is a question for both of you.
Knowing how hard it can be to deliver these personalized
experiences that customers really enjoy, what would your
advice be?
Keep it simple.
Keep it centered around what really drives the customer's
behavior that you want to drive.
Be cool, not creepy.
Like, if you're going to ask a question, do something with the
answer and have it be expected, not unexpected.
Those are really good tenants.
I think the other piece is just get started.
People sometimes.
I don't think any organization lacks an idea for how to make
their experience more personalized.
If you get people in a room, they'll come up with five ideas
off the bat of what they could do next.
But then there's paralysis around bringing the people in
the room together to actually get anything done.
So I think a lot of it goes back to that.
I also, in my book layout five promises you've got to deliver
to the customer when you personalize.
And I think the last one is the most important.
So I'll hit on that. Delight Me, which is about just making my
experience a little bit better each time you connect with me,
which comes back to testing and learning, shrinking the time it
takes for you to implement those insights.
So I find most organizations are still taking 12 to 16 weeks to
turn around and make a campaign better or making make a
marketing experience better.
And that's just way too long.
How do you make it better every single week, which means
reengineering your processes, measuring things in a much more
automated fast fashion, and equipping the teams with those
insights.
What have you been seeing lately, Aimee?
I guess I would add to that the surprise and delight factor.
I think it's hard to measure, but it makes a difference.
If you find that one reason why they want to come to your store
or your retail or interact with you or your employees, that one
unique thing is going to bring them back in.
Yes.
So how do you also unlock what that could be?
Not just points, because points is kind of interesting and these
go beyond and what's that one unique thing for your brand in
your category that actually ties to your brand promise, why
people choose your brand?
I think I'd also add how do you engage the entire organization?
So if the entire organization understands what makes the
customer tick, they're all interacting the customer at
different places.
Your finance team might be setting pricing and they might
have to understand why a customer does or doesn't come to
you.
The operations team is interacting with your customer
in a different way.
If you engage all of these different people, you have so
many different ideas that could come out solving different
customer problems.
And to your point, how you operationalize those then to
create a unique ecosystem where you could take advantage of
that.
I remember when you drew the customer flywheel on your
whiteboard when you were launching personalization at
Starbucks that you had everyone in your office and, and engaging
the CEO, the CIO, the various stakeholders around it.
And I think that visual connection of, ok, this is the
big dream we're building.
And yes, it's going to be a hard road and it's going to take
dollars and it's going to be a phased approach really helped.
It was a hard journey, but that alignment at the front was
critical.
Mark, Aimee, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having us.