Take a look around. Disappointed? Thought so, everything largely looks the same doesn’t it? What did you expect Jetsonesque transport and Matrix style outfits? This is 2020 not 2688 as depicted in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

That said over the last decade marketing has evolved and become much more customer centric. This shift was influenced both by new technology and the customer revolution in the mid noughties, which was sparked by the dominance of what was then called social networking through now largely defunct sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Take for instance the contact centre. The tired concept of having warehouses’ of people in rows taking thousands of calls, has all but disappeared,  having been replaced by intelligent outsourcing, where the solution depends entirely on brands’ customer’s needs. Many of the agents work from home using cloud based infrastructure and dial into a secure real-time multichannel system, meaning manned centres are much smaller than their previous counterparts. The CSR role has climbed the corporate ladder as these individuals are now recognised for what they are – custodians of the brand. In some premium cases we now have personal agents for specific customers, focusing on their every need.

Moreover instead of basic on-screen data about a customer’s brief history with a brand, agents now know far more about the brand’s products that a customer has purchased recently, along with their competitors, the shops they have bought from and their current location at the time of the call from location-based mobile technology. Agent empowerment has increased; for example agents have the power to send a voucher to a customer as they walk past a particular store for the brand in question. For example, if a customer was speaking to an agent whilst considering a purchase, an agent can actually increase purchase patterns for the brand by sending a voucher to the mobile handset of the consumer whilst they are in contact to help influence his/her decision.

Agents have finally got a completely holistic view of the customer and able to resolve any enquiry immediately creating a stronger and more positive brand engagement.

It’s interesting isn’t it – do you see a different future?