Omni-Channel Customer Engagement Article

Customers today have a variety of ways to engage with the brands they use (or are considering using). They can pick up the phone, view a Web site, or send an email. They can check for a Facebook page, or a Twitter (News - Alert) account. They can engage with other users on message boards. Many of these methods, however, require work on the part of the consumer: look up a Web address, find a phone number, search for a Facebook (News - Alert) page or click through contact information on a Web site for an e-mail address. Since consumers today are increasingly living on their smartphones, it makes sense to try to engage customers where they live.

Reducing customer effort is a common theme of customer engagement. People want easy answers with a minimum of effort, and will reward the companies that provide it with their business. Increasingly, forward-thinking brands are turning to QR codes to connect customers to their support resources, or customers to each other. QR codes are those funny little black and white matrix barcodes that pop up at the bottom of print advertisements, on the backs of business cards or on brick-and-mortar store counters. Users simply scan the codes with their smartphones, and they can be quickly connected to a company’s customer outreach efforts: directions to a store, a special promotion, a coupon, or a chat session for more information. It’s a way to improve conversion rates over more onerous and passive methods of customer engagement (inducing a customer to log onto a Web site, for example).

Mobile messaging company Kik is reportedly implementing QR codes into their popular app, according to a recent TechCrunch report. The company is hoping to emulate how popular Chinese app WeChat uses QR codes to enable a range of interactions right from the app, such as buying a soda or printing a photo. Interestingly enough, Tencent – the Chinese company that produces WeChat – recently invested $50 million in Kik. Kik founder Ted Livingston praised WeChat and its use of QR codes in a recent blog post:

“Want to get a soda from a vending machine? You can use WeChat to scan the machine to start chatting and get the menu sent to you instantly,” he wrote. “Then you can select the item, agree to pay through the app, and get your drink. Want to print a picture? Scan the printer to start chatting, send it a picture, and the picture comes out. Want 10 percent off a T-shirt? Scan the checkout to start chatting, complete a survey, and get the coupon sent to you.”

According to TechCrunch, the company is starting slow before gearing up to the kind of engagement WeChat enables.

“Mike Roberts, head of messenger at Kik, told TechCrunch that the feature was primarily developed to allow its 240 million registered users to connect, but it has obvious synergy for brands because it simplifies connections and allows more opportunistic promotions,” wrote TechCrunch’s Jon Russell.

“You have a relationship with a brand and an app, but how do you initiate that experience? We have usernames on Kik, so the social friction around giving out a phone number is gone, but there’s still high friction as I need to enter my username and find the brand,” Roberts told Russell. “How do we eliminate that but allow you to connect with a brand easily? Particularly when nobody knows what’s on the other side of a QR code, a webpage with billboard ad or $5 coupon? We want to convey that with the Kik brand.”