As part of the preparation for my new book, Customers The Day After Tomorrow, I spoke to Daniel Ropers, the managing director of Bol.com. His company is the largest e-commerce player of the Netherlands and Belgium, and he had some real insights into what kinds of things we can expect to happen in marketing in the next few years.
Bol.com has already been experimenting with the use of AI and chatbots and is looking at technology to predict how things will change in the near future.
Daniel Ropers (who is seated with me, on the left, in the video above) told me: “The first major impact of digital technology was the internet – and the fact everything is now visible. You could find out what people all over the world were thinking and the entire clothing ranges of shops.” What’s interesting is how this quickly became very stressful for consumers, because everything became immediately accessible and visible. An overload of information meant that it was impossible to make choices and filter anything for ourselves.
Daniel has noticed that many technology companies today are working to scale all the information and possibilities back to human proportions. They are using technology to filter through the irrelevant information and organise what is interesting – so the wealth of possibilities are made manageable again.
One worrying example Daniel has noticed is political agendas. We have heard a lot about ‘echo chambers’ and ‘filter bubbles’ in the media recently, where your social media channels and web browsing only gives you information which suits your perception of the world. This is a risk in politics, but it can be beneficial for online marketing. For online shoppers, it is best to have information filtered to eliminate what isn’t relevant to take away the stress of choosing.
He added: “Shopping used to be a compromise. You would go to a corner shop and accept the limited range and slightly higher prices. Or you would visit a cheaper shop and accept the limited service and longer distance. But customers are never satisfied any more. In their heads, they know exactly what the best of all worlds is.”
The good news for consumers is that the choice and range of products are constantly improving – but this can also cause them stress. It leads to the expectation that product choices should be the best of all worlds – and this is something a shopkeeper cannot provide on their own. Therefore, there is cognitive dissonance for the consumer; objectively, they are making better choices than ever before, but in reality the dissatisfaction rate is much higher.
Daniel thinks that, in some ways, Bol.com was successful in noticing that ‘the day after tomorrow’ was coming, and capitalising on it. They made their shop data-driven very early on – to document their own history and experiences with customers with similar priorities.
They realised their brand had to be a household name and their website had to be accessible at all times. They had to be reliable, make online buying convenient and all the payment and delivery processes had to be perfect. They fulfilled all these criteria, but customers said they wanted something extra. They wanted to be inspired when using the website and sometimes have items with the lowest price on the market.
Daniel believes that shopping ‘the day after tomorrow’ would change everything and they couldn’t keep up by themselves – they would need to forge partnerships with others to create value. And this is actually something they have been doing for years, although they rarely talk about it – around 1 in 3 products bought on Bol.com is supplied by a partner. Daniel says that opening up to third parties helped to lead them to the successful position they are in now. In order to succeed ‘the day after tomorrow’, companies should work on setting up a network with other brands, so they are all relevant the day after tomorrow.
I once ordered a product from Bol.com and it arrived a little later than expected. To find out where the product was, I spoke to ‘Billie’ – the customer assistant chatbot. I asked Daniel about the evolution of this bot in the company.
He said: “Originally, we had an FAQ section and a customer service via mail or phone. But an increase in volume meant that a lot of agents were being used to answer simple questions. We started to use a chatbot because, with access to the correct data, we realised that many questions could be answered automatically – which would free up agents to assist with other issues.”
They contacted a company that had been working on a chatbot at a very early stage and started working with them, giving them access to information from the backend and content systems. They fed the data and FAQs into the chatbot in order to provide better responses to questions. They aimed to have the chatbot answer the question accurately, no matter how a person asked it.
They got a small group of people together to think of various ways to ask the same question and ensure that the chatbot gave an appropriate response each time. If the bot gives correct answers, the customer is usually much happier than if they had been forced to make the effort to call the company. The use of this bot in customer service has resulted in a soaring customer satisfaction level and thus their staff have had more time to deal with the remaining customer queries, meaning, “the customer is happy and we’ve spent minimal resources”.
Voice recognition and interfaces Daniel thinks that the next level in terms of online shopping is ordering through voice command. We are now evolving towards hyper-efficiency and taking your phone out and placing an order will soon seem archaic. Daniel also thinks that, “ecosystem thinking will trend” and customers will choose the brand that is the most user-friendly and has the most complete offer.
It will become important for companies to work within in a network in order to get ahead. Bol.com are looking into collaborating with hardware partners to work on having a chatbot for pre-sales. If you linger on a page of more complex product groups it will ask you, ‘Do you require assistance?’ just like an assistant would do in a real shop. Daniel believes that voice recognition is developing quickly and soon they will be able to elaborate subjects and offer advice, just like a real human would.
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Prof Steven Van Belleghem is an expert in customer focus in the digital world. He’s an award-winning author, and his new book, Customers The Day After Tomorrow, is published December 2017. Follow him on Twitter @StevenVBe, subscribe to his videos at: www.youtube.com/stevenvanbelleghem or visit: www.stevenvanbelleghem.com
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