When we think of digital and omnichannel, we think of chatbots, customer service widgets and ChatGPT. But for some customer service leaders–and customers–that’s not enough to feel connected throughout the customer journey.
Such is the case with kiki.world, the first Web3 beauty brand where products are created based on customer polling and interest, and then exist in the metaverse by way of a commemorative product NFT.
Today’s beauty brands lean on intermediaries to connect with their target audience, leaving customers as passive consumers of brand content via third-party curation. But KIKI is aiming to break that mold–and you can, too.
kiki.world
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Inspired by the decentralized nature of Web3, KIKI converts consumers into co-creators and co-owners by giving them a say in every product the brand releases. Users have the power to choose everything from what product gets released, to the colors created and the future products KIKI develops.
This digital strategy is something that co-founder and CEO Jana Bobosikova says will change the future of customer centricity for not just the beauty community, but organizations around the world looking to truly encompass what it means to be an omnichannel company.
CCW Digital caught up with Bobosikova to highlight how her brand handles customer relationship building. Below she shares actionable insights on how customer contact leaders can take their CX strategy beyond the 21st century.
Don’t Let You Customers Just Be ‘Customers’–Make Them Co-Creators
JB: We created KIKI really with this vision that beauty as a category stands on the shoulders of customer recommendations and creator content. However, very few of those customers or creators benefit when a beauty brand blows up.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the people that make up the community of a beauty brand could participate in the growth of the beauty brand, could have a decision power in what the brand creates and could benefit when the products that they create do well in the marketplace?
You can go onto KIKI World and you can vote on which color nail polish or beauty product we create. Every time you vote you get KIKI points; you can vote up to one time a day. And there's a live leaderboard that's live on the website and you can go and see which color is winning.
Put Customer Feedback Front And Center When It Comes To Product Development
JB: As a consumer category, there's a lot of investment that goes into creating these products that people assume based on focus groups and or other assumptions that people will want. And then you create them for years, and then you figure out how to sell them. No. Why not just ask customers what they want?
kiki.world's product leaderboard
Make Product Purchasing A Lifetime Experience, In Person And Online
JB: The premise is very simple, but the technologies that we're using to achieve that layer of co-creation and co-ownership vary. We are both a technology and a blockchain company and first and foremost a customer co-creation company.
In order to do this and deliver on this promise of customers being not just passive users, but being active participants in what products we make and those who benefit when the products do well, we use a variety of technology.
KIKI has been built to serve expression. Myself and my two brilliant co-founders, we have a background in working in the consumer and fashion spaces. We just felt like the online world is so cool–you can play,whether it's generative AR or whether it's video games or Reddit or Twitter.
You can be so many people at one time. You can get so many experiences online, and it's all very cool and futuristic and whatever you want it to be.
And we love all retailers, but let's say you have this rich virtual life and then you go to CVS, it feels like those two experiences are 100 years apart. And so we had this thesis: the next beauty brand will not start as a PowerPoint or in a lab. There will be some people in a chatroom or a video game talking about how they want it to look, and it will probably look like nothing we can imagine. And we just really wanted to be a part of that.
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Promote Personalization At Every Touchpoint; Honor The Customer’s Emotional Experience
JB: In the customer service world, that idea of personalization, especially in the beauty space where so much of beauty is focused around how a person looks, and how the way that they look makes them feel and how the way that they feel causes them to choose their beauty and fashion products, is so important.
That idea that the customer is so central to that experience, and that it is so personalized, is really speaking to what the future is going to be when it comes to customer experience, customer centricity, especially in this beauty and fashion space.
kiki.world on Instagram
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Invite Innovation As A Long-Term Investment For Your Company And Your Customers
JB: Innovation every step of the way is what's important to us, and it's innovation for the customer. Really bringing customers into the journey very early and their being invested allows us to not only build for them, but also just build a better and less wasteful business is excellent.
And if you go and open KIKI today, you'll see that the nail polish color Pearl was voted in by 536 people–they all got a Pearl collectible, or shall I say NFT. And what that allows us to do long term is to create more, not even for us but for the customer.
Now they own that, that's a piece of blockchain, metaverse technology that's theirs. It's a fair exchange–in the Web2 world we've kind of settled on the Internet. But the product, you as a customer created it. You not only get the product but you get the collectible so that you're a forever creator.