QR Codes in Practice

Transcription

1 QR Codes in Practice Add Value to Your Customer Relations StreamServe is now OpenText June 2011 Abstract Mobile devices have changed the way people access the Internet as well as the way companies communicate with their customers. Although QR codes have been around for several years, the explosion of the smart phone market is now driving adoption and forming the basis for interesting marketing and customer service strategies. Essentially, QR codes are the hyperlinks of the physical world. They connect printed communications to all of the possibilities of digital content. In the context of your customer communications, this means that you can take advantage of a moment when you have your customer s attention, to provide a personalized, relevant and interactive experience. Would you like to enhance your customer service, strengthen your brand, and even sell more, through some simple additions to your business documents? TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER

2 Executive Summary Through simple additions to your customer communications you can enhance your customer service, strengthen your brand, and even sell more. Business documents, such as invoices, statements, and welcome letters, represent a customer touch point with very high observation rate and thus a great opportunity to get across to your customer. There are several ways to increase the value of your customer documents even further and to make them personalized, relevant, and interactive. Using QR codes is one of the options. A QR code is essentially the hyperlink of the physical world! It allows you to turn a simple paper document into the starting point of an interactive customer experience. Put simply, QR codes are similar to barcodes, but can hold much more information. When read (scanned) by smart phones, they can take you to a web page, play a video, send an SMS, or add an appointment to your calendar. There are countless ways you can use QR codes in your customer communications. This paper presents some ideas. TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 2

3 Increase the Value of Your Customer Communications with QR Codes Make business documents interactive by including QR codes There are several ways to increase the value of your customer documents and to make them personalized, relevant, and interactive. Using QR codes is one of the options. Mobile devices have changed the way people access the Internet as well as the way companies communicate with their customers. Although QR codes have been around for several years, the explosion of the smart phone market is now driving adoption and forming the basis for interesting marketing and customer service strategies. In the context of your customer communications, this means that you can take advantage of a moment when you have your customer s attention, to provide a personalized, relevant and interactive experience. By adding a QR code - the hyperlink of the physical world - to a customer document, it is transformed from a simple paper into the starting point of an interactive customer experience. Put simply, QR codes are similar to barcodes, but can hold much more information. They can be read (scanned) by smart phones, either through a barcode scanner already built into the phone, or through a free QR scanner app that is easily downloaded and installed on the phone. There are countless ways you can use QR codes in your customer communications. Here are some ideas: Product or service delivery Imagine a delivery document sent together with the product or provided together with a service. Instead of also sending a hard-to-read and expensive-to-produce paper manual, why not add a QR code to the delivery document? When scanned, it will show an instructional video helping your customer to quickly get started with the new product or service. Or, if video is not available, the QR code opens an electronic instruction or stepby-step guide. TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 3

4 Example document: In this Order Confirmation for lift equipment a QR code has been added to give direct access to an instructional video for the ordered equipment. NOTE: do not try to scan this code. It s for illustrational purposes only and too small to read. Branding or Customer Care While you have the attention of your customer (studying their order confirmation, reading their letter or notice, or checking their bill), why not add to the customer experience and the value of your brand? Scanning a QR code could show the customer a video with a greeting from your CEO, or give them access to their customer loyalty points to change for a gift or a voucher, or why not a free ebook or app that they can start using right away? Another idea for you; if a customer scans the code your company will donate one extra euro within your corporate giving program. The customer will be directed to a thank you page with information about the charity. TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 4

5 Customer service / support Imagine that you are sending a confirmation for e.g. an appointment, a booking, a renewal, or any other type of communication where the next step might be for the customer to get in touch. Scanning a QR code could open up a pre-filled form where all the customer needs to do is check it and press confirm. Or it could open an online chat with a customer support representative. Another example is to let the QR code contain the business card information (a vcard or mecard) of the support representative or account manager, so that the recipient can automatically add the contact details to his contact list by scanning the code. Example document: In this Customer Welcome Letter a QR code contains the contact details of the Personal Adviser (a vcard). NOTE: do not try to scan this code. It s for illustrational purposes only and too small to read. TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 5

6 Up and cross sell Business documents are closely related to the customer behavior and can offer the perfect opportunity to up and cross sell. Imagine an order confirmation or an invoice for a recent purchase. Are there related or complementary products? The QR code could be a link to a personalized web page with offers for those related products, with the possibility to do an additional purchase. Or it could be a link to a campaign site or some customer recommendations for similar products that might be of interest. For products with longer sales cycles scanning the QR code could trigger an SMS to be sent to the sales rep asking him/her to give the customer a call. A few things to consider when using QR codes Small, complex QR codes are challenging and time consuming to scan. It s generally a good idea to allow more space for the code so that it can be larger, and to minimize the data stored in the code, e.g. by using a URL shortener. Be sure to test the scannability of your code thoroughly before mass printing or distributing. Perform the tests with different phones, lighting conditions, scanning distances etc. Provide a back-up option as well, so users have some other alternative way of getting to the information. Don t take for granted that your audience know what the QR code is and how to use it. As long as it is still a novelty concept, always include a step-by-step guide together with the code. It can be as simple as: 1) if you don t have the reader/scanning app, download it here, 2) scan the code with your phone, 3) enjoy the (whatever your code does). Reward your audience for the work they are doing by scanning your code! Make sure it is worth their while and not just a plain URL to direct them to a web page. In any case, make sure the web page is mobile friendly! Consider scenarios that leverage smart phone features ( , SMS, phone call, video, map, apps, etc.) to save the user time. TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 6

7 Some additional reading What is a QR code? A QR code (short for Quick Response) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. Unlike a 1- dimensional EAN code, a 2-dimensional barcode stores data in both directions and can be scanned vertically or horizontally to be decoded. A UPC/EAN code stores data in one direction. A 2D code such as a QR code stores data in two directions. A traditional 1D barcode (UPC/EAN) stores up to 30 numbers, while a 2D barcode (QR) can store up to 7,089 numbers. The additional storage capacity accommodates a variety of data beyond numbers: Text Hyperlink Telephone number (Phone call) SMS/MMS message (Send message) Contact entry (vcard or mecard) Calendar entry (vcalendar) The hyperlink option allows you not only to load a web page, but to play a video, download a mobile app, check-in on Foursquare, update a Twitter status, "Like" a Facebook page, display map directions, and more. TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 7

8 QR isn't the only type of 2D barcode The most popular 2D barcode formats are QR code, DataMatrix, ScanLife EZcode, and Microsoft Tag. The QR code is one of several two dimensional barcode formats. QR has become a common term used to reference a 2D barcode (2D code, mobile tag, mobile barcode, etc.) even when codes are technically a different format. How to read (decode) it A 2D Barcode is read by scanning it with a smartphone. A 2D barcode reader app is required to decode the encoded data. You read the barcode by opening the reader app and scanning the code. TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 8

9 Would you like to try? If you haven t used QR codes before, below are a couple of simple examples to try it out. Description QR Code Scan this code to watch a video guide to StreamShare, StreamServe s community Scan this code and you will see a customer reference video Scan this code and you will be able to add me (Karin Westlund) as a contact. This contains a vcard/mecard. TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 9

10 About OpenText OpenText is the world s largest independent provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software. The Company's solutions manage information for all types of business, compliance and industry requirements in the world's largest companies, government agencies and professional service firms. OpenText supports approximately 46,000 customers and millions of users in 114 countries and 12 languages. For more information about OpenText, visit About OpenText Customer Communications Management Part of the OpenText ECM Suite, customer communications management software (StreamServe) helps organizations process and deliver highly personalized documents in any paper or electronic format. It enhances customer interaction capabilities enabling the automation of customer communications for business-to-business and business-toconsumer marketing, as well as customer service scenarios. Designed to address the "last mile" of communication between an organization and its customers, our customer communications management solutions excel at improving and expanding business relationships. They enable companies to automatically create personalized documents in high volumes through rules-based dynamic assembly and present them to customers, partners, and suppliers in multiple formats and through any channel they prefer. Our customer communications management solutions scale across a company's document-driven business processes and are designed for easy integration with ERP and supply-chain systems and applications, including those from SAP. Sweden Finland Denmark TOGETHER, WE ARE THE CONTENT EXPERTS WHITEPAPER 10 Visit online.opentext.com for more information about OpenText solutions. OpenText is a publicly traded company on both NASDAQ (OTEX) and the TSX (OTC) Copyright 2010 by OpenText Corporation. Trademarks or registered trademarks of OpenText Corporation. This list is not exhaustive. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. SKU_EN