This is an opinion editorial by Frankie Wallace, a freelance writer from the Pacific Northwest.
Bitcoin has been much in the news recently, for reasons both good and bad. Recent declines in bitcoin values engendered intense speculation over the future of the currency. At the same time, the expansion of bitcoin into markets worldwide and rapid developments in system capabilities suggest that the reports of bitcoin’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
While much remains to be revealed about the future of bitcoin, what is becoming increasingly apparent is its vast potential to revolutionize the customer journey. This article examines the use of bitcoin to promote customer engagement, support customer satisfaction and ensure an exceptional customer experience.
Bitcoin And Hyperpersonalization
Proponents of bitcoin tout the technology’s potential to provide customers with a level of personalization impossible with traditional monetary systems. The personalization capacity derives principally from the mechanisms through which bitcoin circulates through the system.
Because bitcoin platforms offer both comprehensiveness and transparency, they enable stakeholders, from merchants to service providers, to access the complete ledger of every bitcoin transaction a consumer has ever made. This gives businesses unprecedented targeted marketing power, for users who have decided to not utilize certain (often recommended) privacy practices that would otherwise make this near-impossible.
Promotional materials and online ads are directed only at consumers for whom they are most relevant. This means that prospective customers will receive news of products and services they care about, without having to rifle through a chaotic miscellany of irrelevant ads.
In addition, the transparency of the blockchain enables transactions to be documented and reported in real-time, which is projected to dramatically enhance customers’ experience of loyalty programs.
With traditional loyalty programs, customers often had to wait for transactions to be processed and recorded before earning points or other rewards. Loyalty programs operating through bitcoin, however, can enable users to access rewards in real-time.
Best of all, because of the comprehensiveness of the ledger, merchants, banks, service providers and other entities are better able to customize loyalty program offerings. This holistic and evergreen profile of a customer’s transaction history means that loyalty programs can be truly hyper-personalized, ensuring that the program’s loyalty incentives are ones that are actually meaningful, and effective, for customers.
And, as every retailer or business person understands, there is no better way to engage and retain customers than to demonstrate that you know your customers as individuals, that you care about serving their unique needs and goals through services tailored specifically for them.
Empowering Customers
Bitcoin platforms don’t just support the customer journey through hyper-personalization. They also enhance customer experience through empowerment. For example, bitcoin frees customers from the constraints of national and international currency systems, allowing users to engage with any entity that accepts bitcoin, whoever and wherever the parties may be.
Not only does this eliminate the need for currency exchange, reducing, if not entirely eliminating, transaction fees, but it also decentralizes capital, taking economic power from the hands of controlling, and often autocratic, agencies and transferring it into the hands of the consumer.
Enhanced Protections
Much in the same way that bitcoin enables consumers worldwide to engage with others on the platform however and whenever they choose, technological advances are also serving to protect consumers in times of crisis. For example, the new Border Wallets technology enables customers to memorize seed phrases in an easy way in order to access funds.
This provides a far more reliable, accessible, and secure approach to accessing and using funds when crossing borders in precarious situations.
This is especially critical for users in crisis, such as those who have been displaced and are compelled to urgently and unexpectedly cross international borders.
The peace of mind of knowing that bitcoin users will have access to their funds when they are most urgently needed is perhaps the greatest enhancement to the overall customer journey. This is particularly true when organizations that have adopted bitcoin also put in place advanced information security programs to protect customer data and, especially, to preserve the integrity and privacy of their bitcoin account.
The Takeaway
Enhancing the customer journey is often key to securing their loyalty. Bitcoin offers commercial and public entities unprecedented opportunities to optimize the customer experience. This includes an exceptional capacity to personalize the customer experience for those who opt in, from increasing the efficacy of targeted marketing efforts to enhancing customers’ experience of loyalty and rewards programs. In addition, bitcoin supports the customer journey through empowerment, decentralizing capital and ensuring that consumers can securely access and use their funds whenever, wherever and however they choose.
This is a guest post by Frankie Wallace. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
