In business, the “Customer Experience Proposition” is the competitive battleground of the 21st century. Almost everything in today’s day and age has been commoditised. Granted, the world occasionally gets a Steve Jobs, who delivers innovative products coupled with an excellent customer experience, but the truth is that everyone seems to commoditising and the end result is blandness everywhere.
What, for instance, is the difference between shopping at any of the major (branded) local supermarkets?- Kevin-James Fenech
Let’s be honest: what, for instance, is the difference between shopping at any of the major (branded) local supermarkets? The products are almost all the same, the prices are similar and the customer experience is dirty car parks and trolleys, functional layouts, bright lighting, etc. My point is that very few supermarkets invest real money in improving the customer experience, moving from a functional to a more emotional customer experience, and the same unfortunately applies to a lot of businesses in various industries.
What is a “customer experience” and why is it important to business? To quote a certain Kathy Haley (who describes herself on her LinkedIn page as a ‘Thought-leader on Customer Experience Transformation and Brand Management’ “The customer experience is a combination of everything we do, or you fail to do for that matter, that underpins any interaction with a customer or potential customer”. It is important because customers have become immune to traditional marketing tools and tactics which try to influence their buying decisions. It is important since it is the surest way to win and retain customers.
In fact, and for decades, the standard for marketers and brand specialists was the famous funnel metaphor to understand the decision making process customers allegedly went through before making a purchase; consumers would start at the wide end of the (metaphorical) funnel with many brands in mind and eventually narrow them down to a final choice.
Therefore, marketing spend was front-loaded at the “consider” and “evaluate” stages and few bothered to invest in the customer experience proposition. This meant that companies used traditional paid-media push marketing so as to inspire a purchase. The reality, today, however, is that marketers and brand specialists advise companies to make their marketing investments at a pre-and-post-purchase stage in equal measure. The funnel has been replaced with the “Consumer Decision Journey” (Court, Elzinga, Mulder & Vetvik: 2009), which proposes a “Consider”, “Evaluate” and “Buy” decision journey pre-purchase but also contends that customers also add and subtract brands from their group under consideration.
In addition, the “Consumer Decision Journey” model envisages a post-purchase stage and a loyalty loop, which results in customers building expectations about your product, post-purchase, based on their customer experience(s) so as to inform the next journey. This has revolutionised the way we learn and apply marketing and companies which haven’t caught on to this might be losing valuable market share to their more savvy competitors.
The twist is that highly regarded business research conducted by McKinsey in 2009, which incidentally examined the purchase decisions of circa 20,000 consumers across five industries and three continents, points to the customer experience not just being seen as the physical but also the emotional and this is what I mean by the “Customer Experience Proposition”; the natural blend between the physical performance of your product and service and the emotions evoked and senses stimulated by that same product.
The hard truth is that if you get your customer experience proposition right and continually invest in it you don’t need to spend large amounts of money on advertising or fighting with your competition over price. Your customers will remain loyal, they’ll refer (even promote) you to others and more importantly they won’t mind paying a premium price. This is why some people prefer to buy a German car instead of a Korean car or why some would much rather buy a Mac Book or iPhone, even at a premium price, instead of any other equally as good product.
The companies I am referring to focus and invest in the customer experience and as a result they (a) satisfy (& some exceed) customers’ physical and emotional expectations (b) evoke a high emotional engagement through their customer experience proposition and (c) they cultivate customer loyalty.
Invest in your company’s “Customer Service Proposition”; you won’t regret it!
www.fenci.eu
Mr Fenech is managing director of Fenci Consulting Ltd.