uqwo.com – Strengthen Customer Experience , Mobile apps are becoming an important tool in building customer loyalty in the digital era. As digital behaviour changes, marketers need to strengthen the experience and continuous interaction with customers.

The use of apps as marketing tools continues to grow rapidly today. It provides a great opportunity for marketers to connect with consumers in a new way. The convenience of shopping and the new experiences offered make consumers not shy about making repeat orders.

The survey classifies four emotions, namely new customers who first express positive emotions at least twice in a row. Then, customers who expressed negative emotions at least twice in a row. Then, shifting emotions were also measured in this study.

The shift means that the customer’s emotion switches from positive to negative or vice versa expressed through the mobile app. As a result, for positive sentiment, the finance industry’s mobile app is the champion. As many as 67% of customers and new customers gave positive emotions. Then, followed by travel category applications with a percentage of 65% and followed by media 62%. Chart 1.

Meanwhile, different results occur in the retention rate of app usage. This shows the percentage of users who are still using the app a few days after installation. As a result, from the third quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter of 2019, food & drink was the app with the highest retention rate.

In five consecutive quarters, the retention rate of food & drink apps was 60%, 50%, 44%, 39%, and 37%. Then, followed by shopping applications with a percentage of 55%, 41%, 32%, 26%, and 21%. The third is finance apps with 64%, 52%, 44%, 38%, and 32% retention. Graph 2.

Looking at the data, there are at least three reasons why engagement is key in creating loyalty in the digital era. First, there is the battle for attention. This is because there is currently a lot of content that consumers receive every day.

In fact, the amount of content published worldwide can reach 2.5 quintillion bytes per day. In fact, the level of consumer attention is no more than eight seconds. The second reason is that consumer behaviour has now shifted. For example, the Baby Boomer and Gen X generations tend to prefer to pay attention to established companies. However, today the younger segment tends to seek experience first.

Thirdly, there is engagement addiction which is reflected in the data that eight out of 10 Indonesians check their smartphones within a minute of waking up. This means that when people wake up they immediately check their smartphones and when they are already engaged in their daily activities they spend approximately eight hours and 36 minutes every day surfing the internet.

Mobile apps, in fact, have a lifecycle that is often referred to as app user engagement. This is a pattern of behaviour that is obtained from people getting to know the application, acquiring it, activating it, companies achieving revenue or sales through the application, to providing recommendations.

When you want to get engagement marketing, marketers must be able to lead customers to continue to do this continuously. In mobile apps, there are usually three trending features. These features are commonly referred to as SOLOMO or social, local, and mobile. Social means allowing consumers to interact or collaborate with others.

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Local means that the app has a location-based feature so that it can customise according to the customer’s current location. Then, mobile means the app has features that can be used on the go and can be done anywhere.

PT Kereta Api Indonesia (Persero) is one of the companies that recently revolutionised its mobile application for the better. This effort was carried out by revamping or improving the performance of the train ticket booking application which was previously called KAI Access. This application has changed its name to Access which will provide additional services, such as trip planner, hotel booking, live tracking, and loyalty point programme.

The innovation was carried out by the company with the target of making the Access application a Super Apps or an application that provides many services in one platform. This application is also equipped with various other services, such as booking commuter line tickets, airport train tickets, Jabodetabek LRT, and food products on the train.

Dewi Aju Damajanti, Vice President (VP) Digital Business at KAI, said that the effort was an adaptation of customer feedback on the Play Store and App Store, contact centre 121, customer satisfaction surveys, and marketing consultants. From this input, it was then developed into a one-stop mobile application service. The goal is to pamper passengers while increasing brand loyalty.

Until now, the Access service has been downloaded by 12 million customers with 6.1 million active users. Overall, online train ticket sales contributed 61.77%. In addition, sales through mobile apps contributed 27.10%, and website 2.52%.

From here, the company sees that digital innovation must be carried out every year to adjust to changes in customer digital behaviour. Meanwhile, in terms of demographics, 60% of Access users are male and 40% female. In terms of age, 40.50% are Millennials and 40.26% are Gen Z. The hobby of most KAI Access application users is Travelling, which is 27%. In addition, 34% of KAI Access application users work as private employees.

“In order to get a high engagement rate, the thing that needs to be done is to improve the performance of mobile applications. In this way, it is expected to provide more innovative service facilities,” said the figure who is familiarly called Yanti.

Yanti added that to increase customer loyalty, one-stop service is not enough. Another strategy is needed to encourage customers to place repeat orders. In this case, KAI provides discounts through the Railpoin Loyalty programme. The company provides the benefit that every transaction of booking commercial long-distance train tickets will get Railpoints.

However, developing a mobile application is not easy. This is because it requires considerable investment to develop applications that are in line with market demand. To do the backend development of the application, KAI can already do it on its own. However, the frontend development is still assisted by partners.

On the other hand, Yanti said, in the future, application trends will continue to develop so that companies must quickly adapt. One development that is expected to occur in the near future is applications based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The use of these two technologies has been rapid in mobile applications to provide users with a more personalised and relevant experience.

“The expectation for Access apps going forward, is the increased use of virtual assistants powered by AI. In addition, the increasing number of payment methods available gives customers many choices. We are working on adding to the existing payment methods with paylater,” he said.

Today’s retail business is also not immune to the touch of technology and mobile applications. In fact, its use is now not only dominated by large-capitalised retailers, but also traditional micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) retailers. PT SRC Indonesia Sembilan, a business unit under PT HM Sampoerna Tbk. through the SRC ecosystem, connects grocery stores with its partners, namely wholesalers digitally so that their business is more efficient.

Rima Tanago, President Director of SRC said, currently SRC members have reached more than 225 thousand members and more than 6,100 grocery store partners spread throughout Indonesia. Since its inception in 2008, SRC has consistently developed grocery stores through direct coaching, capacity building, business development, market expansion, and digitalisation through the AYO by SRC digital ecosystem.

We are doing this so that Indonesian SMEs, as the backbone of national economic recovery, can be upgraded and continue to improve their competitiveness in the era of digital transformation,” he said.

According to him, SRC is a mobile application that presents a digital ecosystem that is integrated with each other as part of sustainable business assistance to improve the competitiveness of grocery store SMEs. This ecosystem is intended to be a solution for all, namely grocery store owners, wholesale partners, and grocery store customers in Indonesia.

To be able to compete in the midst of intense digital application competition, SRC strengthens the digital ecosystem to support businesses in running their businesses, and also consumers in shopping for their various needs. The hope is that the more complete and accessible AYO by SRC digital ecosystem will be able to encourage SMEs spread throughout Indonesia to become more advanced.

“We will embrace and expand the distribution network together with SRC strategic partners who have the same vision and mission to collaborate in providing more diverse daily needs to be enjoyed directly by the people of Indonesia,” said Rima.

In order to get a high engagement rate, the thing that needs to be done is to improve the performance of mobile applications.
Dewi Aju Damajanti
Vice President Digital Business PT Kereta Api Indonesia (Persero)