The New Consumer and Rethinking User Experience - Takeaways from AIBP Insights Malaysia

I had the opportunity to chair our last AIBP Insights Malaysia session about the new user experience and customer expectations and it’s not surprising that this category received the most number of Enterprise Innovation Award Finalists with Top Glove, Affin Bank and Maxis each sharing about how they have managed to improve the user experience for their stakeholders and used it as a key differentiating factor in growing their business.

The panel discussion featured a cross-segment of decision-makers in the public sector, real estate, utilities, financial services and retail and while each of their core business may appear different, the central tenet remains - for companies to remain competitive and relevant in the current landscape, they have had to gather data insights to explore new or better ways to engage with their customers.

The Digital Shift

It’s without a doubt that COVID19 has accelerated digital transformation and the speakers highlighted just how much this change was.

• En. Megat, Chief Retail Officer, Tenaga Nasional Berhad said that myTNB app users grew more than 100% from 2M to 4.5M during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period in Malaysia as more consumers sought to access essential services themselves.
• For Top Glove, their customer portal, Top Glove Customer Connect, had 4.5 times more customer logins from 1 March to 2 Oct as compared to the 8 months preceding the MCO period. Kalai Arasi Palaniappan, Deputy General Manager Marketing, attributed this customer platform as one of the key factors in supporting the company to reach RM7.2 Billion in revenue in FY2020.

Building up New Ways to Engage Customers

For Affin Bank to leapfrog their competition with their SME offering, the enterprise team created an SME community with SMEColony. The aim of SMEColony was to focus on what the SMEs were looking for, not what the banks should sell to SME. As the first bank-backed multi-partner resource and eco-commerce platform for the SME community, it was able to build relationships with the SME community which resulted in increased usage during the pandemic period.

Beauty Brand Sephora had to transform how customers buy their products as gone are the days of freely browsing beauty counters, and testing out the latest makeup colours. Customers can now arrange a 30min zoom call with Sephora Beauty Advisors for one-on-one consultation. In-store visits are also enhanced with a Scan to Interact feature on its app that allows customers to instantly access information on usage, ingredients, ratings and reviews.

Furthering The New Retail Experience

Maxis launched the Maxis Concept Store in May 2019 with Maxis Interactive Retail Assistant (M.I.R.A.) web app. The customer journey was reimagined to enable digital-first engagements and a personalized customer journey that created immersive experiences. Net Promoter Score for the new concept stores was 50% higher than traditional stores and enjoyed 20% higher revenue.

As one of the key essential services that remained open during the MCO, MYDIN business did not slow down but the team continued to look at new ways of serving their customers. Alwan Ahimat, Head of Business Reporting and Analysis worked together with his CIO to launch a new shopping service, Mydin Express in April this year. Consumers could shop for their essentials online and then pick up their orders from the store once they have been packed and prepared. The convenient new service helped customers to practise social distancing and was well received.

Partnerships to Accelerate User Offerings

Chua E Long, CTO, Kenanga Investment Bank, shared about their partnership with Merchantrade to launch Kenanga Money which will give its clients the freedom to easily transfer funds from their stock-trading account into an e-wallet and prepaid card for retail payments, remittance and withdrawals worldwide. Users will have access to the innovative multi-currency function and also earn an attractive interest income on their credit balances. With this partnership, Kenanga will be Malaysia’s first stockbroker e-wallet.

Hafeez Nazri, Head of Data Science for Touch’n Go, Malaysia’s largest e-wallet with 14 million user base, shared how they can work together with partners to drive new value propositions to consumers. They mentioned that in one of their partnerships with a toll company, they are able to offer cashback and rebates to consumers as a reward for them to avoid peak travel periods. Such partnerships can allow their concessionaires to access their information to drive new sources of revenue.

Further validating what Hafeez mentioned, Alwan also highlighted how their partnership with an eWallet provider increased the basket size of shoppers and grew customer retention.

Towards Happiness

At the heart of the user experience discussion is how each interaction aims to increase the satisfaction and happiness of an individual.

Puan Maimunah Jaffar, Director of Innovation & Technology, Iskandar Regional Development Authority, shared about how data is enabling the government agencies to make better-informed decisions (Better roads, better public transportation) and also allowing master developers to go beyond creating sustainable and green communities to increasing the resiliency of environments to weather natural disasters and pandemics.

To improve the citizen experience is to ensure a connected future, a view that was echoed by Van Tang, Head of Business Development & International Partnerships APAC, Hitachi Asia. In their vision of a digital smart city, happiness is the cornerstone that guides decision making. By understanding what citizens want when they work, live, play and visit, they are better able to drive incremental value that ultimately puts a smile on everyone's’ faces.

A future scenario where each of my experiences is tailored to my experiences, where online and offline interactions flow seamlessly, where I can perhaps enable a constant supply of chocolate ice cream with my IoT enabled refrigerator - now that’s something I can look forward to.