Hello, what's your name? Where are you from? What's your favourite colour? What's your gender? Can I have your mobile number? What's your star sign? Where do you like to shop? Are you satisfied with your purchases? What size do you usually wear? Do you like this top? How did you get here?
That's a lot.
Enter: Progressive Profiling.
For many, the term brings to mind a notion of qualifying and triaging marketing leads in a database somewhere. In the context of CX, progressive profiling has a different meaning. No longer are we focused on getting customers through a metaphorical or, mind you, physical door; instead, we focus on getting to know existing customers better and enabling account-based experiences throughout the duration of a relationship. We're ensuring a profile is 'owned' by a customer rather than a brand.
As with most things CX strategy, progressive profiling is best approached with the end in mind, that means getting clear on:
- What your ideal profile looks like?
- What value each does question provide to the customer and the brand?
- What experiences are enabled? Virtual or face to face.
- Where can this profile be built upon?
- What is the minimum "Required + Desired" information required to create a profile?
- How do we ensure the quality, accuracy and freshness of information is maintained?
- How can a profile grow across channels?
- Where, how and if, profiling questions align with customer lifecycle stages
Brands best customers frequently want to share information that makes their shopping lives easier - things like not having to remember what size they wear or entering delivery and payment information every time they check out, they just want to do it when it makes sense for them.
There are even some unicorn-like advocates, who want a brand to know their eye colour as soon as they walk into a store and recommend products accordingly (I’m looking at you blue eyes), all of these unique and valuable people deserve to be catered for.
What this means is that brands need to design experiences where information is captured anywhere, anytime. Whether it's done by a staff member, accessible on my profile page of a website or littered throughout an online shopping journey, if a customer is ready and willing, brands need to be equipped to facilitate.
Fortunately for those already aboard the Omneo train (choo, choo), three key offerings that help you enable just that:
Clienteling
While the all-important face to face interaction is occurring, Omneo triggers discrete alerts for staff at POS when ‘required or desired’ customer information is missing or out of dates such as a bouncing email address or a missing mobile number.
Shapes
Logged in customers can be notified about missing information, allowing them to update and interact with their profile without leaving the shopping experience.
Profile Portal
Creating a conversation with customers about missing profile information and enabling them to update it is made easy through the Omneo’s Profile Portal with integrations across most major communication platforms.
Keep to nail down progressive profiling? Get in touch to enable relevant Omneo elements and extensions.