ScentBridge Spotlight: Digital Intelligence’s Impact on Customer Experience | Rich Eldh

by rblakerice | Jan 28, 2021 | ScentBridge Spotlight

Digital Intelligence’s Impact on Customer Experience 

Consider which option would more likely put a smile on a customer’s face: A technician calling to schedule a proactive service due to a potential product problem vs. a break-fix call after the fact. In a world where reputation and brand is now everything, customer experience is a critical success factor. With digital intelligence, companies should no longer need to react to disgruntled customers. We have the ability to be proactive, fix it before there is a problem.  

As consumers, we all know customer experience is among the most essential variables in contributing to a business’s strong brand and revenue growth. Businesses must constantly execute initiatives to improve their customers’ experience.  

We’ve all received recommendations for products and books, even when we didn’t even ask for them. Similarly, companies seem to know our desires before we are aware of our own needs. Personalization and purchase history allow intelligent systems to make assumptions of what we will like and find value in.  

These same digital intelligent technologies allow commercial product companies to provide outstanding, proactive, highly valuable experiences. Deploying new technology to predict negative experiences before they happen should be the norm for all companies. Products today should never be standalone devices but should be combined with intelligent services to enable outstanding customer experiences. Examples include proactive diagnostics, proactive parts replacement, adjustments required, status changes, device monitoring, and so on.

Pervasive communications networks, IoT, and artificial intelligence allow all product companies to imbed intelligent devices into their products. These devices enable companies to independently communicate critical information. This information is then used to predict, alert, take action on issues, adding value to the overall product experience. 

Driving the Overall Customer Experience with Digital Intelligence

Digital intelligence technologies specifically help businesses improve relationships with customers by enhancing their overall experience. Take Scentbridge as an example. ScentBridge uses their smart IoT scent system to provide businesses with a unique and personalized customer experience through fragrance impressions that match their brand. Not only does this provide a great environment for the customer, but organizations can also track and monitor how effectively their scent marketing is working through their scent system and metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). 

Throughout the years, IoT has provided many benefits from convenience to efficiency. Now as we add digital intelligence, AI, machine learning, and other advanced capabilities our ability to deliver a superior customer experience is stronger than ever before.  

Meet Rich Eldh

Rich is a successful entrepreneur and industry thought leader in sales, marketing, and customer experience. He has more than 30 years building his knowledge, leading businesses, and people, executing go-to-market strategies throughout the world. Rich is a trusted advisor, offering his executive leadership and marketing, sales, and operational experience and guidance to the ScentBridge team. He is also a board member and investor in Smart Connected Ventures, the parent company of ScentBridge and BlueStreak IOT.

Rich is the Co-Founder Emeritus of SiriusDecisions which is now part of the public company, Forrester Inc. SiriusDecisions was a world-renowned business advisory organization. It specializes in Sales, Marketing, Customer Experience, and Product advice and consulting. While leading SiriusDecisions, Rich worked with hundreds of companies across multiple industries, including Software, Enterprise Technology, Financial Services, Manufacturing, and Information Services organizations. He worked with organizations in the US, Europe, South & Central America, S. Asia, and Australia, providing guidance and advice on go-to-market strategy and operations. This experience offers a rich set of insights and best practices to draw upon when interacting with new and established organizations.

Rich has previously participated in the startup and sale of multiple successful businesses. In addition, prior organizations he has worked at include, North American Plastic, Four Phase Systems, Hewlett Packard, Gartner Group, SiriusDecisions sold to Forrester.   

ScentBridge Spotlight: The Value of Scent | Jeff Sneed

by rblakerice | Jan 13, 2021 | ScentBridge Spotlight

Get ready for our first ScentBridge Spotlight! 

Each spotlight will highlight some of ScentBridge’s most innovative SMEs and professionals in the industry and include their thoughts and expertise around a specific topic.

The Value of Scent 

with Jeff Sneed

As scent marketing has grown over the years, Jeff has immersed himself in the sales, management, and strategy behind scent delivery. As one of the industry pioneers, Jeff can attest to the value scent gives business in conjunction with other media. 

For the most part, businesses and facilities focus on branding themselves through senses like sight and sound. For example, using specific colors for the walls, adding distinctive decor, or playing a particular style or music genre. While these strategies may tie in a company’s branding, they don’t compare to the emotive power of scent.  

Our sense of smell is hardwired through the limbic system — the part of the brain that deals with emotions and memory. It regulates autonomic or endocrine function in response to emotional stimuli and also is involved in reinforcing behavior. When done correctly, scent can play a powerful role in how a customer experiences, feels and even remembers a brand. 

Take this real-life scenario of a large hotel chain, for example. This corporation wanted to use the five senses to create a more memorable guest arrival experience. To capture each sense, the team established multiple initiatives. These included developing a custom music program, enhancing their lighting and decor strategy, creating a signature fragrance, adding towel service, and providing an arrival beverage for guests.  

The most effective of all those initiatives? Scent. The hotel found that customers reacted most favorably to the consistent fragrance they were using in the lobby of their hotels worldwide. Customers could recognize and associate the brand solely based on smell. Later on, the hotel created amenity products (like shampoo and soap) with the same fragrance to further amplify their brand recall through the power of scent.

Facilities should no longer overlook the impact scent can have on their business. When brands capitalize on the value of scent, they can expect immediate results and an overall better experience for their customers. 

Meet Jeff Sneed

Jeff Sneed is an accomplished, sales-oriented executive with over 25 years of experience in account management, corporate leadership, business development, and strategic sales. Currently, Jeff is the Vice President of Sales for Scentbridge, the industry-leading smart scent system provider. 

Throughout his career, Jeff has worked extensively to enhance the Customer Experience for his clients in a vast array of markets through the use of multiple media.

Before ScentBridge, Jeff held executive positions as Vice President of Sales for Prolitec, Inc. and Chief Revenue Officer for Spectrio, LLC. He also founded and still serves as a managing partner for Sneed Consulting, LLC. 

Jeff’s scent marketing experience stems from his work at ScentAir, where he served as ScentAir’s Senior Vice President of Sales for over 8 years. Jeff joined ScentAir as employee seven and quickly developed a go-to-market strategy that grew the sales and marketing organization to 90+ team members, transforming the relatively new concept of “scent marketing” from an interesting idea to a brand standard within marquee accounts.  

Before entering into executive management, Jeff had a distinguished career in sales with Mood Media where he consistently ranked in the top 1% of his peers at the local, regional, and national levels. He was directly responsible for negotiating and closing multiple enterprise agreements with major brands in markets such as banking, specialty retail, restaurant, and healthcare.