Why the customer experience needs a revolution
According to a study, customer experience management is very important in 95% of the companies surveyed. However, only 15% of these companies are satisfied with the established customer experience management. Customers also frequently view the experience very critically. For example, more than two-thirds of the customers surveyed believe that corporate customer experience measures could be improved. The importance of a smooth and, above all, memorable customer experience is reflected in rising customer acquisition costs and falling customer lifetime values. After all, in order to bind customers to the brand in the long term and thus increase customer loyalty, it now takes much more than a great product or a great service. It takes an exceptional customer experience. Are you ready to discover the true potential of Web3 on the customer experience? Let's dive in.
Representing customer status with NFTs
Non-Fungible Tokens - often reduced to digital art or collectibles - offer an extremely versatile application. In our view, NFTs are a unique way for companies to enter the blockchain world without having to reinvent their business model. For example, NFTs offer two character traits in particular that make it so useful for companies to integrate them into customer engagement efforts.
First, NFTs represent digital proofs of ownership that cannot be counterfeited, reproduced or copied. For this reason, NFTs are ideal as a unique representation of loyalty status or loyalty program membership. Second, the blockchain allows memberships to be actually owned by customers in the form of NFTs.
So for us, uniqueness and ownership are the attributes that make it so valuable and desirable for customers to constantly interact with the brand to increase or improve their loyalty status. In this way, customers can prove their loyalty status to others without question. In addition, this creates a fun experience for customers, making brand loyalty fun and rewarding to have a high loyalty status. For example, a certain number of NFTs or a certain customer status can unlock special events or benefits that are exclusive to that particular group of customers. This can increase engagement and make the customer loyalty program more fun and interactive.
In addition, customer loyalty pays extreme dividends, as NFTs can be used and traded as digital assets at will. Thus, high-value customer status brings not only exclusive rewards and benefits, but also high demand on the secondary market. This creates the possibility that membership in loyalty programs can be monetized by the customer for the first time, which is another incentive to increase their customer status and value.
Another opportunity that blockchain offers is interoperability. For example, a high-ranking customer status or corresponding NFT could grant access to other loyalty programs to unlock rewards and benefits at brand partners. For example, Lufthansa's most loyal frequent flyers could receive a free coffee at Starbucks at the touch of a button through their loyalty NFT without having to set up a complex interface.
NFTs create new and unique ways to reward and engage customers in a loyalty program, making it more valuable and desirable to participate in compared to a traditional loyalty program. It is not necessarily the rewards and benefits that come with NFTs, but also the new type of experience that is opened up to customers.
The Metaverse for an extraordinary CEX
According to McKinsey, the Metaverse will be worth $5 trillion by 2030. Compared to the 200 billion today, where the opportunities in the Metaverse so far fall mostly on the entertainment industry, it can already be guessed that there will be a rapid increase in the coming years.
But how can we imagine the customer experience in the future? Completely virtual? We say no. We don't want to define the metaverse, we leave that to the creators. However, we believe that an immersive experience is critical to success and adoption in the medium and long term. The fusion of the digital and physical worlds is what makes the Metaverse what it can be: An efficient and facilitated everyday experience. So, in order to leave a lasting mark on the customer experience and thus on customer satisfaction, the two worlds must go hand in hand.
It is not for nothing that the potential is perceived with great enthusiasm. According to the study mentioned at the beginning, almost 60% of consumers are already enthusiastic about shifting everyday activities to the metaverse. The e-commerce, retail, gaming, education, and telecommunications sectors in particular are expected to have a major impact on the merging of the digital and physical worlds in the coming years.
With NFTs to the Social Hub
Often, the customer experience with a brand ends after the purchase. Even loyalty programs designed to drive customers to repeat purchases are largely based on transactional rewards and offer little innovation in terms of the experience the customer has with the brand. Therefore, it can make perfect sense for brands to focus on non-monetary experiences and customer experience measures to foster a sense of belonging. After all, this feeling is a basic human need, and when brands succeed in triggering this feeling, a much deeper connection between customer and brand is created. And it is this connection that can turn a customer into a fan of the brand.
This feeling is great to create with exclusive social hubs or online platforms that are only accessible to loyalty program members. In turn, access authorization is based on the technology of NFTs, which is why the attributes of ownership, unforgeability and uniqueness come into play here as well.
Here, NFTs act as membership cards or access keys to the social hub. While customers can only interact with their favorite brands to a very limited extent on social media, and these cannot really distinguish a follower from a fan, exclusive platforms offer completely new opportunities for community building. Whether it's interaction between members or between customer and brand, the customer experience is transformed from a double-tap like to a sense of belonging. Since only NFT owners have access to the Hub, the exclusivity of Trueprogram membership is greatly enhanced.
For the community with access, the Social Hub also offers exclusive and limited rewards depending on the brand, such as unlockable content, invitations to events, voting rights, meet-and-greets, or further opportunities to climb the ranks to unlock even higher value rewards. All in all, communities associated with NFTs offer an extreme variety of incentives for customer engagement and brand loyalty that previous loyalty programs or social media could not.
We help build your social hub
In summary, NFTs can be used to create unique, valuable rewards that can't be easily replicated, which can increase customer loyalty and retention. If you too would like to revolutionize your loyalty program or are looking for assistance in building a loyal community, feel free to contact us. We successfully advise companies on how to enter the Web3 world and accompany them from conception to realization and implementation.
