3 Ways a Branded Customer Experience Increases ROI

KEY TAKEAWAYS

3 Ways a Branded Customer Experience Increases ROI

The greatest product in the world just isn’t enough to compete in today’s business environment, where customers crave unprecedented end-to-end experiences with the brands and activities they invest in. They want to be invited into your space and nurtured through a journey that reflects a thoughtful approach to their needs and comfort, and throughout the process, they should be cloaked in your brand’s energy and messaging. 

Achieving this requires increasingly specialized innovation and knowledge, and that’s why partnerships—particularly in tech—are fast becoming the driving force behind today’s most successful brands. These relationships harness opportunities even the wealthiest players can’t afford to develop in-house and fund purpose-built integrations to deliver the highest possible ROI.

By making the most of what each partner brings to the table, a branded customer experience with a cutting-edge tech company can be a game-changing differentiator. Here’s everything you need to know about developing a branded customer experience—and the top three ways they can benefit your business. 

1. Rapid Customer Buy-In 

Branding partnerships make sense when one partner needs a tech solution but there’s high value in making it feel like part of their existing customer experience. For instance, a sports team may be struggling to capitalize on concession sales because of increased game attendance, and they want to bring in a facial payment partner to speed up service. 

However, the technology requires a lot of buy-in from fans to be successful, so it doesn’t make sense to develop a huge marketing campaign to sell an unfamiliar partner. Fans already trust their home team!

In this case, a branded customer experience is the perfect solution. By incorporating facial authentication technology but rolling it out under the team’s logo, fans get the incredible benefits of faster lines and simpler transactions with the confidence to participate through their team’s tech ecosystem.

The Cleveland Browns famously did exactly that when they partnered with facial authentication software developer Wicket to kick off their Express Access and Express Beer lanes. Wicket’s fast and reliable platform could save them up to $8000 per year per lane on ticketing alone while greatly reducing congestion at the gate, but it would have required an expensive customer relations campaign to generate trust and awareness through its own label. 

By creating an in-house portal and branding Wicket’s solution under their own banner, the Browns were able to deliver a sensational branded customer experience that fans could trust to make the partnership successful.

2.  Customized Content and Services

Branded partnerships also preserve value for both tech developers and the partners they work with. In many cases, these relationships allow organizations to leverage innovative technology and maximize their social currency while improving upon real pain points. 

For instance, facial authentication technology isn’t just useful for the Browns—it can benefit sports teams in any league, as well as conference organizers, concert promoters, and many other industries that feature live events. Branding helps avoid any potential confusion in the marketplace and reduces the size and scope of potential marketing investments.

By focusing on partnerships that leverage a branded customer experience, tech developers in these spaces free up partners to create highly customized content and services. They can take full advantage of the value these solutions present without being encumbered by another organization’s messaging. 

3. Flexible Integrations with Existing Investments

Most businesses that rely on branded customer experiences are investing in multiple tech partnerships at once to address a variety of challenges. Ideally, all of these solutions are pieces of a puzzle that work together to achieve big-picture institutional goals and speak directly to the values of their target audience. 

In the case of facial authentication software, the same platform that speeds up the ticket gate can be easily integrated with self-serve kiosks to create facial payment services. But once again, multiple use cases in the same venue can create confusion for customers—especially if it’s an unfamiliar brand. A patron might not understand what the ticketing platform they just used has to do with buying food and drinks, and hesitation to engage can produce awkward experiences and lost sales. 

In many cases, it’s much easier to learn about new tech experiences from a franchise or organization with which they are already familiar. It promotes buy-in from users and helps avoid assumptions about when or how they might be able to interact with a particular solution.

By allowing their well-known partner to integrate their services into a branded customer experience, that partner can put everything customers need to know in one place on their website and materials. That way, they promote a natural, organic, and trusted interaction across multiple use cases that’s a joy to use and a familiar part of the overall brand experience. 

Finally, branded partnerships create the opportunity for teams to engage with sponsors to offset the cost of the tech investment. The sports sponsorship market is expected to clear $120 billion in the next 10 years, and exciting new fan experiences are coveted opportunities to make the most of their advertising dollars. It’s just another way that facial authentication is delivering exceptional value and ROI for everyone in the business equation.  

Pursuing Tech Partners for a Branded Customer Experience

Whether you’re in the business of sports, entertainment, or live events, creating a branded customer experience that’s seamless and inviting for your fans and attendees is at the heart of any successful business strategy. Technologies like facial authentication can deliver benefits across a variety of use cases within these industries, and the top developers prioritize making their products and services as flexible and easy as possible to onboard, integrate, and adapt to their partner’s brand and business goals. 

Learn more about how solutions like facial authentication can produce some of the most valuable and consequential branded customer experience partnerships in the world today, and deliver maximum ROI for your business.