Last week was not a good week for me banking wise – I misplaced my bank card and forgot to pay my credit card bill. It was thin ground to be walking on considering my back-up bank card was due for a replacement.

But what pleases me over and over again is how convenient it is for me to manage my finances as well as my cards through my banking app. I activated my new card just by punching in four numbers on my phone, and it was one click to put my other card on hold until I found it.

For high involvement services such as finance, convenience is a key way to add value for your customers, and being smart about how we utilise tech is great way to achieve this. Apart from apps there are other ways that companies are using tech to provide convenience to their customers:

• Many furniture stores now offer customers the ability to recreate rooms in their house to help them choose their furniture – think IKEA and their kitchen planner tool, you can measure up at home and immediately start building your new kitchen
• Instagram has recently introduced shopping on Instagram in Australia – businesses can tag their products directly in their posts and customers can tap through to learn more about products directly
• Amazon helps you shop with its voice tech functionality (available through the Amazon app or via Alexa); you can simply ask to order an item (literally yell out ‘Alexa, order batteries’ in your home), tell her your pin (if you’ve set one up) and they will be at your door in no time, almost like magic!

As marketers who are in tune with our customers we always need to be looking at how we can give our customers control over their experiences. At BrandHook, we know a great place to start is to:

• Map your customer journey and understand their frustrations with your brand
• Identify the opportunities to fix their pain points
• Ensure that you have a whole-of-organisation approach to your customers’ experience – embed your tribes in the organisation and revisit them regularly to enable a customer-focused culture that truly cares.

Written by Stacey.