by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, August 4, 2017

In a world where Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook set consumer expectations for online and offline experiences, lesser known companies struggle to keep up with those that lead the trends.

The innovations of these companies set the standards, allowing each separately to branch out and disrupt a variety of markets, shaping the way consumers and businesses think about physical and digital experiences.

Forrester Research has released a report with five factors that provide marketers with insights into the ways they can use the tools these tech giants offer to provide the same types of experiences. These include: intuitive, intelligent, contextually aware, ecosystem driven, and ubiquitous. The report, “Four Tech Giants Dominate Your Customer Experience,” analyzes the path to build out a loyal consumer following.

TJ Keitt, lead analyst at Forrester for this report, writes that these “tech firms can create sticky experiences because partners fill in gaps in their offerings.” He believes that partnerships are required with companies that are willing to build on or integrate with their products and services.

While “intuitive” draws consumers into the experience, “intelligent” keeps customers engaged by understanding their needs and providing more options. “Contextually aware” makes the experience stronger by ensuring that the options customers get match their current circumstances, ecosystem driven enhances the value of the experiences by encouraging third parties to address additional customer needs, and ubiquitous embeds the experience into customers’ lives by making the services pervasive.

Growing their market share with engaging products, these vendors continuously offer new services that enhance the experience of their core offering. For example, Amazon has expanded its ecommerce services into streaming video and music to make its Amazon Prime service more attractive and add members.

Coaching and guidance from Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, among others, ensures that companies do not stumble when leveraging their platforms. For example, Amazon created the Amazon selling Coach, which provides third-party sellers in its marketplace with data to guide their decisions, such as adding new products or lowering prices.

Google has created customer reliability engineering, a group of consultants who ensure that the apps that a Google Cloud client builds will work in its infrastructure.

The report also maps out several strategies on how to work with the vendors and create a similar strategy.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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