ETA’s TRANSACT 2022 just wrapped up last week, and I’m still buzzing with excitement from all the great interactions and discussions. This was the first time since 2019 we had everyone in person for TRANSACT, and you could see the difference it made. You could feel the excitement as everyone convened for the first time in a while – it almost felt like catching up with old friends at a reunion.
While it may feel like an odd question to ask, the parallels between dating and retaining customers make a lot of sense. You’re trying to attract them with the hopes of building a long-term mutually beneficial relationship. And, just like in dating, it’s important to know the boundaries of the relationship and what’s appropriate. Recent data from the MARKINBLOG shows that the probability of selling to an existing customer is typically 60-70% while new prospects hover in the 5-20% range, highlighting the importance of building the existing relationships with your customer base. Additionally, it costs up to seven times the amount to acquire a new customer as it does to retain an existing one. Not only is retaining a customer more valuable than acquiring one, having happy customers can also help bridge the gap finding new ones.
Providing a quick and efficient checkout is paramount to closing out a positive overall customer experience. You can do everything right up until that point, but if there’s additional friction or frustration, it could leave a sour taste in a customer’s mouth, or worse cause them to abandon their purchase all together.
While all companies have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the hotel and lodging industry was hit particularly hard. And while the industry continues to rebound with more people traveling every day, it’s important to remember that consumers expectations have shifte
d significantly. To that end, Hospitality Technology’s Lodging Technology Study found that 52% of respondents reported that their guests increasingly prefer digital experiences over encounters with staff. This follows the trends we’re seeing in other industries as consumers continually are opting for more streamlined, associate-less merchant interactions. For example, buy online, pick up in-store in retail and mobile ordering for restaurants.
Whether we like it or not, the evolution and use of consumer technology continues to impact how consumers engage with brands and make purchases. Think about your smartphone, for example, who would have thought 15 years ago that we’d be using it to make both online and in-store purchases? While much of the technology consumers use every day was destined for the retail world eventually, the COVID-19 pandemic played a critical role in catalyzing the use of many technologies.
