Customerland
Customerland is a podcast about …. Customers. How to get more of them. How to keep them. What makes them tick. We talk to the experts, the technologies and occasionally, actual people – you know, customers – to find out what they’re all about.So if you’re a CX pro, a loyalty marketer, a brand owner, an agency planner … if you’re a CRM & personalization geek, if you’re a customer service / CSAT / NPS nerd – you finally have a home.
Customerland
What Happens After You Click "Buy"?
Ever wondered what happens in that crucial moment after you click "buy" online? Ashley Firmstone, SVP of Global Enterprise Growth at ROKT, takes us deep into the psychology of the transaction moment and how forward-thinking brands are transforming it from a dead end into a value-creating opportunity.
When you complete a purchase online, you're experiencing either euphoria or potential buyer's remorse – a powerful emotional moment that most retailers have historically wasted. Firmstone reveals how ROKT analyzes over 6.5 billion annual transactions to help brands create relevant, valuable experiences precisely when customers are most receptive. "We want to serve something that you're not just going to click on," Firmstone explains, "but something you're actually going to complete a purchase on because you found that much value in the offer."
The conversation explores the delicate balance between monetization and customer experience. Research conducted with Harris Poll found that 62% of consumers will abandon their carts if presented with misaligned offers during checkout – a stark reminder of the risks of prioritizing short-term revenue over customer satisfaction. Firmstone shares how ROKT's "efficient frontier" testing methodology helps brands continuously optimize experiences as consumer preferences evolve, rather than taking a one-and-done approach to personalization.
Looking ahead, Firmstone predicts that winning retailers will differentiate themselves through AI integration, dynamic customer experiences, and strategic partnerships that feel genuinely relevant to shoppers. For retailers navigating today's uncertain economic environment, she emphasizes the need to leverage technology that helps move inventory without resorting to heavy discounting. "Retail industries move a little bit slower in general," Firmstone notes, "and they're going to need to adapt really quickly."
Whether you're in e-commerce, marketing technology, or customer experience design, this conversation offers valuable insights into creating meaningful digital touchpoints that respect the customer while driving business growth. Subscribe now to hear more conversations with industry leaders who are redefining how businesses connect with customers.
I think the brands that will be winning are the ones that are really utilizing it to create custom experiences. I think the checkout flow and just how customers shop is going to drastically change, especially with AI and even this thought of agents shopping online Like how are they aggregating those experiences. So I think you have to be ready to get really dynamic with what that customer flow looks like, because expectations are going to ramp quite significantly.
Speaker 2:Today, on Customer Land, Ashley Farmstone joins me. Ashley is SVP of Global Enterprise Growth at Rocked and if you let me rephrase this If you haven't heard of Rocked, I wonder which rock you've been living under.
Speaker 2:Because, everybody in this space I know I just thought of that too Everybody in this space is familiar with it, so many people that I talk to kind of describe their offerings as like, yeah, we're like the rocked of whatever, or we're just like rocked but this. So you kind of become iconic just in name. So, but anyway, none of that matters. What matters is we finally got together and we're finally talking about you and rocked and what you're doing in the marketplace. So thanks for joining me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm super excited to be here. Love talking about the customer, what that means. How do you keep them at the center of your business while also growing profitably? I think Rocked has been on an interesting growth trajectory. I've been at the company for 10 years, so it's really great to see the progress and to see our name referenced, as you mentioned, across the landscape.
Speaker 2:So before we officially hit the record button, we were talking a little bit about what that hockey stick looked like, because you know I think you mentioned Rock's been around for 12-ish years at this point but really started becoming this kind of reference point in the industry, I don't know four, five, six years ago, something like that, which kind of coincided with COVID and the needs for brick and mortar retailers that go, uh-oh, we better get our digital act together. Who can handle this kind of mess at scale? And there are only a handful of companies who could no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Rocked is a marketing technology and we really work to help e-commerce businesses unlock what we call a transaction moment and we use different product suites to solve for whatever those challenges might be, and normally that's a mix of solving for customer experience but also driving profitability and enabling partnerships through that moment. I think so many companies are trying to do so much with their customer online and Rocked is helping them solve. How do you manage all of those trade-offs for your business, but also solving for that end customer and making sure that you're not overwhelming or distracting from the core purchase path, creating a loyal customer in that experience as well. So we're helping make all those decisions with the technology that we've built.
Speaker 2:So you've got modules for I can't remember the exact labels for them, but basically post-purchase enablement.
Speaker 1:Yes, we have a couple different options of our core product offerings, but often I encourage our best clients to think about us as a thought leader in what they're trying to unlock, and so you can really think of our technology as unlocking any static piece of real estate through that checkout flow. The one that we're most known for is that post checkout confirmation page, which is normally a moment historically where you hit that page and the consumer's then bouncing off to their next task, and we've been able to unlock that moment to keep the customer engaged. Keep them on site utilizing relevant. To unlock that moment to keep the customer engaged, keep them on site utilizing relevant offers in that moment, and so that's probably where most people are familiar with our product.
Speaker 1:But we also help our e-commerce customers through their checkout flow. So, anything from add to cart to you know which payment provider you're selecting, how do you make sure that that moment feels really relevant? Or are we showing an insurance offer or a loyalty program? How do you get all of these things right without overwhelming or distracting the consumer, because there's so much going on through that moment and customers lose attention when there's so much thrown at them. So it's, how do you get that balance right. So we are helping unlock those static moments and making them really relevant to the end customer.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned this a couple of times, that you know that that this is a kind of a customer first view of all the technologies and operations and, enablement, um, and, if you'll permit me, everybody says that it's, you know, it's, it's, it's like everybody's favorite phrase in this space. But what I've noticed from what I've seen of how rocked puts this together is you were literally are starting with like wherever the customer is in the process in their particular moment in the life cycle, it's like and you'll you'll describe this way better than I, but it's it's just like, okay, you understand where they are, you understand what the options are, you understand what could activate them, and then you kind of go from there. Do I have that anywhere close to right?
Speaker 1:Yes, getting there, I think, I think where what we bring value-wise to our relationships is. We sit across 6.5 billion transactions a year. Right, we'll sit across that many in 2025. And so when we're thinking about customer experience, it's exactly like you said we're meeting them where they're at, but we're not just utilizing what's happening in that moment. We understand a lot about what customers like to see, which order they like to see things in, how they like things displayed, and we're using decisioning to make all of that optionality happen in real time, right. So Mike's experience is very different than Ashley's when we're going through the checkout flow on Macy's and we're seeing things that feel really relevant and contextual, but it's done in a way that feels seamless and native to the Macy's customer and their experience. So we're utilizing all the data that we're collecting, not just about contextual relevance, but how do consumers interact in that moment, and that's where we add a lot of value to the relationships that we provide.
Speaker 2:I would give a lot of money to look at the playbook of all the stuff that Rocked has learned from those billions of transactions over the playbook of all the stuff that Rock has learned from those billions of transactions over the past couple of years. In fact, I know a lot of people would. Yeah, this has generated a whole new series of questions that are way off script, but maybe we'll have to have a version 2.0 of this conversation somehow. So you've helped some of the largest brands in the world turn like make their transactional moments more valuable. So you know what's the secret to making a better ad business that actually makes the customer like feel better, you know, because this all has to be kind of emotionally driven at the core. So how do you? How do you do that?
Speaker 1:Yes, it's. It's very emotional for the end consumer. I think even if you put yourself in that position of when you're going through a transaction, you've already completed probably a very stressful browsing state of trying to figure out what you're going to buy, also sorry, trying to figure out what you're going to buy, and you finally made that choice and now you're going to buy Also sorry, I'm trying to figure out what you're going to buy and you finally made that choice and now you're in this flow and you just want to see that it's coming right, it's shipping to you and you're going through that motion. So it is very important that you treasure that moment for that consumer. I think when you introduce advertising for that consumer.
Speaker 1:I think when you introduce advertising, the way that Rocked thinks about it and looks at the end customer is we want to serve something that you're not just going to click on or find appealing or engaging, but something that you're actually going to go through and complete a purchase on because you found that much value in the offer that was presented. So the way that we actually structure our ad business and our models there is we actually work on the performance side with our brands to make sure that when we're serving an offer, it's not just to get market share or get eyeballs on the offer. It's to make sure that that customer is not only going to purchase but be a repeat purchaser and a lifetime value consumer for that brand. So then they're willing to pay more for that, which then benefits e-commerce partners and ultimately the end customer, because they're getting that really relevant offer in front of them so connecting that dot on performance and long-term outcome versus just the short-term revenue gain that you can get from an immediate click.
Speaker 1:That's something we're very conscious about and we make sure that we bring that to our relationships to make sure you're benefiting the consumer in the long run.
Speaker 2:And we unpacked that a little bit and, if you can, you can shake me off, wave me off if this is getting either too deep in the weeds or too proprietary or whatever. But, like you know, there's a. There are a lot of signals that would go into determining what that kind of value offering is for any given customer. I mean, there's a. There's a lot to consider where they've been, who they are, contextually, demographically and all those other things. Um, you know that's that's an awful lot of data to process. I know the compute power is there now, which wasn't always, so you've got the benefit of 12 years of billions of transactions and the data and insights that's generated. Do you layer in data and insights from other sources or is it pretty much just coming from what you know through Rock's operations?
Speaker 1:Yes, I would say on the data front, there's a couple different ways that we utilize data. I think the main role that Rock aims to play is this trusted intermediary that allows us to not conflate data between an e-commerce partner and an ad network. It's why a lot of our clients work with us, because they know that their data is safe and isolated to their account. Specifically use our technology to match and understand. You know, if a customer is a new customer that we haven't seen before for a specific brand, we're able to make that connection without any crossover of data. So it's a very privacy, safe way that we've been able to unlock this and the data plugins that we're using is essentially unlocking whatever's happening on that site that is contextually relevant. Our partners have control of that. They tell us what kind of data they're comfortable utilizing for the experience and how do we generate a better experience.
Speaker 1:We have our decision data a customer is interacting or is not interacting, which is important because if you've, you know, exited out of an offer on Uber or on Macy's, we might not want to show you one again, right, and we actually utilize that as a signal to our system of how do we get more relevant for Mike and serve him something that he's going to click on. And then there's advertiser data. So advertisers will share with us if they have a suppression file or a lookalike audience of their best customers to inform our models. But again, that then is so isolated to their account. So only if their offer is eligible will we utilize that data to make the decision on the offer. Will we utilize?
Speaker 2:that data to make the decision on the offer. The moment of transaction is a really interesting moment psychologically for a lot of people and we've talked to a handful of people who work specifically in post-purchase trying to kind of really get a good handle on this. But like there is this moment of euphoria like I made the deal, there is this moment of euphoria like I made the deal, but it's it's. It's made infinitely, infinitely more complex by the possibility of immediate buyer's remorse like I paid too much or oh no, like this could be. It's like this super high or super low moment. So you know, if you look at like, like the amplitude of the emotion at moment, it's either really high or really low and you got to figure out which one of those kinds of emotion sets to kind of leverage at that moment, because it's different for everybody and it's different circumstantially too and it's different circumstantially too.
Speaker 1:Yes, I would say that's true, but I think as long as you're delivering on creating value for that customer, regardless of what state of mind they enter the transaction moment in buyer's remorse, maybe I'm paying too much for this.
Speaker 1:If you're getting an experience through that checkout flow that feels like that company is also providing value to you as an end consumer, maybe that's a discount on an additional brand that they're referring to you that you feel like you're getting access to because of your purchase. That creates a value exchange for the consumer and that's what we're all looking for, right? We're so loyal to the brands that we feel like see us and know us and give back to their customers and care about their customers. So I think it's really important that when you're serving things through that transaction flow, that it is actually creating value in the moment. We have seen that when you do get that wrong, that can be very detrimental. So if a customer feels like you know the brand's not understanding who they are, or the messaging's off, or they're already a customer of Hulu and why am I being served this offer? We've seen through research that 62% of people will actually abandon their cart if that moment feels Just because it's a misaligned offer.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's done through. We did some research with the Harris Poll around that and really just understanding how important this moment is to get right, and I think that's why we focus on the end customer and making sure that whatever we're putting in front of that consumer feels valuable to that moment for them.
Speaker 2:So rocked. Basically is that like sits in the middle of this place of loyalty, monetization and personalization. And you know every one of those visualization and you know every one of those in my experience comes with there's a short-term play and a long-term play. And the short-term can be really appetizing because, hey, listen, you know instant transactional lift, but oftentimes and I don't know if I'm kind of preaching to the crowd or you agree with this or not, but, like you know, it's the longer term view where the real gains are made. So one, if you're kind of nodding your head in agreement, so I'm guessing this is like you know this is okay with you, but like, how do you get your customers to see that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think the best way to approach it is utilizing data to actually prove out what are the best customer experiences to serve. Each transaction moment is a little bit different, each customer set is a little bit different, but we often have this conversation with our clients because once you also start to see revenue coming in, you want to maximize it and there's a healthy balance there. I think I hear about this a lot in the retail media space too of just like people wanting to continuing to grow ad revenue. But there is a limit to that because you're going to erode the customer experience and ultimately hurt top line revenue anyway. So there is diminishing returns on that for sure, and we often have that conversation with our clients and recommend testing and learning.
Speaker 1:We often see that you know there's some points like we talked about.
Speaker 1:You know if you were to exit an offer you weren't interested in, there is probably a good chance that we should give you a break in that experience and maybe next time we're not bombarding you with different offers or different options and maybe you actually prefer streamlined checkout and that's what you know makes you a loyal customer because you get that.
Speaker 1:So we want to make sure that we're dynamic and helping customers have the experience that they want and that creates then a long term sustainable revenue line versus the short term. And so sometimes that can be really unpopular, especially when you know there's tariffs and we want to you know, you know maximize the profitability of the business, but we have to be careful of falling into the traps of previous advertising mistakes. Right, everyone knows about the offers that follow you around on different websites and how detrimental that was to behavioral targeting on consumers and that led to all of the privacy laws and restrictions that were rolled out because customers didn't want that. So it's really important that you consider that and balance your profitability goals with customer experience and making sure that you're making those trade-offs in a smart way.
Speaker 2:I love the language you're using because it's so dialed into a genuinely customer-centric point of view and, again, I don't want to sound like a commercial for Rocks, but it looks like it's pretty clear that that's really how you operate. Having said that, though, yeah, you've got to manage short-term profitability against longer-term customer experiences. So how does Rocked actually kind of measure that? Like, measuring customer experience can be really difficult. There's all kinds of like indirect signals you need to look at and, like you know, seeing a customer experience that's eroding, may not be, may not be like immediately understandable, visible, and so or or, if one is improving and enriching. So how does, how does Rocked kind of go about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good question and I think it is. There's so many external factors that impact consumer behavior, consumer sentiment, right, that can shake the performance of anything, and I think there's also not just on the consumer transaction side, but there's also on, like, the advertiser side. How are advertisers willing to spend what's happening there? That's, you know, causing dollars to shift as well, and so all of these things come into play. The best thing that we, you know, recommend with our partners, is just kind of always having control and treatment testing. So lift studies will do, and do that on an ongoing, repeatable basis. So that way you're measuring kind of over time factors and, I think, trying to just isolate, when you're doing testing to make sure that it is a clean test and you can try to isolate that specific experience or change that you're trying to measure. But there's always, I think, going to be things that can impact reporting and measurement from an external point of view, and it could even be as much as, like their brand sentiment has changed.
Speaker 1:Not much we can do about that. But what we can do is focus on isolating those little moments and try to be iterative and, I think, learn over time, because you know, another thing that we recommend with our clients is not running an A-B test and then just going with option A because that was the best outcome, right? We actually we call it efficient frontier, but recommend kind of a always-on testing flow of you know you have multiple variants serving at any one given time to try to get the optimal outcome, because consumer preferences change, brand sentiment changes, etc outcome because consumer preferences change, brand sentiment changes, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I should have anticipated that answer, which was the right answer, so you passed. So one of the most interesting things I think about this conversation is the fact that Rocked works across so many different categories big box, retail, entertainment, travel. Where do you see the most unlocked potential when it comes to using relevance as a growth lever?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think every vertical or industry that we work with they're all at varying stages of this. So it's interesting to see you know the large bureaucratic industries move a little bit slower when it comes to data and AI and how do you unlock that and create automation where you know smaller D2C brands are very quick to move and ahead of the game in some of these instances. So it's interesting to sit across these different industries and understand where they are on that journey. I think for most of them, key is really looking to leverage first-party data, which I think everyone knows that they have to do. But how are they doing that in a way that unlocks value, and how they're using it in other marketing channels, how they're using it to define customer experience versus just analyzing results. So the companies that are getting the unlocks are the ones that are amplifying that into a way that creates value.
Speaker 1:It was actually a huge part of the reason why we did the merger with MParticle. They are, you know, in our perspective they were top of the line in just unlocking data first party and utilizing that to create true audience segments that amplify your business strategies. And so, because that was creating a value for the brands and their customers. We saw that as a very complimentary tool set to us Plus. I think a lot of companies are struggling with that. How do they orchestrate it and contextualize their data in a way that they can utilize it in their marketing strategies?
Speaker 2:It's massive. I'm just interested in your personal opinion on this one. But you know you've been in this business quite a while. You know it wasn't until I don't know fairly recently that almost every company I spoke with was somehow kind of still trying to figure out how to wrangle data to derive usable insights out of it. I don't hear as much of that anymore. Maybe it's just because they're too embarrassed to admit it. I don't know. I mean it's possible, but with MParticle and the analysis and insight capabilities there, yeah, I can see how you could solve for that. But if you were to look out, say, 12 months at this point, what will brands that are winning at relevance and loyalty be doing that others won't?
Speaker 1:I think the brands that will be winning are the ones that are really utilizing it to create custom experiences. I think the checkout flow and just how customers shop is going to drastically change, especially with AI, and even this thought of agents shopping online like how are they aggregating those experiences? So I think you have to be ready to get really dynamic with what that customer flow looks like, because expectations are going to ramp quite significantly. I think the other thing is really being able to unlock both endemic, non-endemic partnerships things that contribute to your overarching business. How are you managing all of those in a way that feels relevant? I think a lot of companies are leaning on just endemic because they're scared to make that leap into non-endemic and they don't think that they can make it relevant, and that's going to hold them back from ultimate scalability and profitability in that space. So I think you have to figure out how do you mix all of those components together where it still feels like you're delivering on that customer value.
Speaker 2:Great answer that was worth the whole podcast Not that the rest was really great stuff, but that's really big. We'll put that right up front. Okay, last official question is if there was one thing you could stand on the mountaintop and shout to don't have to shout in a mean voice, but you know and shout to the retail world that they needed to be paying attention to right now, right now, what would it be?
Speaker 1:yeah, uh, it's interesting because we actually just had a conversation with this, with our board member, uh this Karen Katz, who's she's big in the retail industry, so we were picking her brain on this. But there's so much going on right now, so much uncertainty in the retail sector because of what tariffs could mean on their business and how they're thinking about that, how they're solving for inventory problems and challenges, and so I think, for that industry specifically, I would say you know AI is critical to make you go faster, just in your processes and efficiency. Really getting creative around, how you can offload that inventory without heavily discounting, I think is the critical question on everyone's mind. And so how do you use technology and partners to help enable that and help you move fast? Because it's so unpredictable right now. I think retail industries move a little bit slower in general and they're going to need to adapt really quickly. So leaning into AI and partnerships that help you streamline those decisions and streamline moving on that inventory is going to be critical for that industry to lean into.
Speaker 2:I love that. We'll put that up front as well. It's great stuff. Well, I literally have another dozen questions that will definitely dogleg us into golly knows what kinds of directions, but I'll spare you because that would just be unkind Suffice to say. Thanks for this. This is huge. I think that, first of all, you're an industry veteran. You've seen how this space operates, you've seen how it grows. But on top of that, you're working with a company that's transacting a monster amount of transactions, and the data and insights that kind of flow out of that are just have to be mind blowing. So thanks for sharing your insights, thanks for sharing your opinions. Love hearing them and I think the rest of the people who listen and watch this will too. So thanks, ashley.
Speaker 1:Of course. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. I enjoyed it.
