While a whopping 93% Indians want brands to make them smile and laugh, 83% business leaders fear using humour in customer interactions according to a new research report from Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX) and Gretchen Rubin— The Happiness Report. The report highlights that marketers and advertisers need to embrace humour and transform the way they approach customers at various touchpoints.
According to the report, people in India are searching for happiness in new ways and are willing to pay a premium. About 96% of respondents from India are looking for new experiences to make them smile and laugh; 92% believe brands can do more to deliver happiness to their customers and 93% say they prefer brands to be funny; this number increased among Gen Z (96%) and Millennials (96%).
Here are some inferences drawn by the study that underscore the preference customers place on brands that make them happy:
In India, 93% of people are more likely to remember ads that are funny, yet business leaders say that only 4% of their brands’ offline ads (TV, billboards) and 4% of their online ads actively use humour
77% of people are more likely to buy from a salesperson that is funny, yet only 5% of business leaders say that their brands use humour to sell
85% of respondents would follow a brand that is funny on its social media channels, yet only 3% of leaders say their brand is humourous on social
64% of people don’t believe they have a relationship with a brand unless it makes them smile or laugh and 56% would walk away from a brand if it didn’t make them laugh or smile regularly
If a brand uses humour, 86% of people are more likely to buy from the brand again
97% of leaders see the opportunity to use humour to enhance the customer experience and believe that their brand can do more to make customers laugh or smile
Having said that, 94% of the business leaders also state that they do not have the data insights or tools to successfully deliver humour. The report reveals that 61% of business leaders would be more confident using humour when engaging with customers if they had better customer visibility and if they had access to advanced technologies like artificial intelligence.
Deepa Param Singhal, vice-president, applications, Oracle India, says that today, a lot of service providers are coming up with tools and solutions which can enable marketers to meet this challenge. “It is imperative for brands to provide contextually aware and relevant advertising using advertising and CX (customer experience) tools that help brands reach the right audience, in the right environment, and at the same time help them measure the impact of the campaign for a timely course correction and achieving total business goals,” she says.
In a nutshell, technology and data can be a huge enabler in providing retailers with the appropriate insights and statistics. These can enable retailers with improved consumer visibility as well as platforms for engaging more deeply at a personal level with customers, thereby making them happy and convinced.