London start-up OFFBLAK tea demonstrates with flair the characteristics of a customer-obsessed company. The venture launched in February 2019 with a selection of premium blends in pyramid sachets delivered in colorful 12-pack letterbox sized mailers.
Last fallForrester Consulting queried two hundred companies on their interaction withcustomers to discover their level of “customer obsession” and then surveyed 500customers to see what they had to say.
Forresterdiscovered that “customer-obsessed marketing is rare – and it’s leading to gapsin business outcomes.”
While 94percent of retailers agree their firm “embodies customer obsession” only 9percent qualify as customer-obsessed, using Forrester’s standardizedassessment. The assessment is based on structured interviews of 1,000 c-levelU.S. and European executives. It was released in June 2018. The study ofcustomer obsession was commissioned by Listrak, an internet marketingservices company based in Pennsylvania.
“In partdue to overconfidence, retailers have failed to optimize key marketing featuresand so have fallen short on customer expectations and potential revenue,”according to Forrester. “Retail marketers struggle to win because businessoutcomes are not their top consideration,” Forrester observes.
Forrester notesthat customer-obsessed companies “had the largest median three-year salesgrowth, higher margin performance, and happier employees.” Forrester predicts theseresults will spur a wave of intense competition by firms mastering the approach.
A recentexample is start-up OFFBLAK,a London-based venture founded by Dmitry Klochkov, a former investmentbanker and graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business whoalso holds master’s degrees from Saint Petersburg State University and theUniversity of Amsterdam.
OFFBLAKlaunched with a keen insight into how tea companies can enlist enthusiastic teadrinkers to promote the brand and its values. Klochkov is marketing OFFBLAK as“a healthy lifestyle tea – with style.” He addresses consumers as “GenerationT” and understands the power of sampling with Millennials. “Don’t Buy our Tea”is the theme of one online campaign. According to Saatchi & Saatchi X, “Millennialsare three times more likely than their non-millennial counterparts to purchasesnacks and alcoholic beverages when they have the opportunity to sample them. That is because Millennials careabout the experience of a particular product – the way it tastes and feels whenthey consume it. The more they know upfront, the more likely they are to buy.”
OFFBLAKdelivers samples free of charge via mail and encourages customers to “send ablend to a friend.”
Messagingis on trend: our mission is to “Make instagenic tea that lives on thegram, not in the cupboard” clever code instructing customers to posttestimonial videos and photos on Instagram. Teas are described unconventionallyas evoking feelings. Squeeze Me orange and jasmine tea “Feels like: Soaking ina citrus scented bubble bath.”
It ishelpful to think of customer obsession as a response to consumers who are shiftingtheir focus from brand name products to the customer experience that brandsdeliver. Eighty-seven percent of organizations agree that traditional customerexperiences are no longer enough to satisfy customers yet only 34 percent haveestablished a customer-obsessed culture. Chief marketers say that “making ourinteractions more human” and “fostering customer engagement across the entirecustomer life cycle” are top priorities,” writes Stephen Shaw in DM (DigitalMarketing) magazine: “The old brand-building model is dead.”
World Tea Expo Presentation
The presentation Retail Innovation: Customer Obsession at this year’s World Tea Expo, explains that customer engagement measures the level of involvement a customer has with a brand over time.
This differs from “marketing engagement” which measures the success of a sales channel or campaign during a particular phase of the life cycle. Ideally, marketing engagement moves customers to the next phase of involvement/engagement.
Measuring marketing engagement requires studying proxy metrics that track customer behaviors, involvement, and emotions. These metrics are somewhat unique across each business. The presentation describes specific practices used to observe behaviors of tea buyers, encourage their involvement and generate emotions that customers both welcome and respond to with ever-greater engagement and sales growth.
Dive Deeper in this World Tea Expo Session
Retail Innovation: Customer Obsession
describes how to practice mass customization and provides examples. This session will take a place June 12, 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. in room N254.