In recent weeks, we’ve been writing a lot about customer experience. We’ve addressed ownership of the customer experience within the organization. We’ve discussed how your customer’s digital experience influences their view of your brand. We’ve also touched on the role of metrics in your customer design experience.
Our primary message throughout has been that if you integrate each of your customer’s touch points to reflect your brand, you win. So, let’s talk about a few brands that are doing this brilliantly:
Each store looks different from outside, but the experience inside is always on-brand. That clarity and consistency across thousands of stores allows Starbucks to charge A LOT for a cup of coffee.
Europe’s ultra low cost airline offers the polar opposite of a luxury experience – no assigned seats, no preferential boarding, and fees for everything from baggage to pretzels. They even considered charging to use the bathroom. But safe, cheap, and on-time is the customer experience they’re selling. If they suddenly started offering champagne, customers might worry about where they’re cutting corners.
Amazon offers a seamless purchase and return experience, but they go way beyond that on their mission to be “the Earth’s most customer-centric company.” In spite of being a huge and faceless online retailer, they’ve managed to establish a helpful, responsive personality. You can accomplish just about anything online, but if you do call for support, you’ll find that customer-centric personality alive and well. Rather than make you wait on hold, they offer to call you back within a specified number of minutes.
In each of these examples, it is the consistent, holistic experience that keeps customers coming back. These companies understand their buyers, they understand how to meet customer needs within their value proposition, and they deliver consistently against their brand.
It’s not about being the best. It’s about being consistent and fulfilling your promises to customers.
Customer experience is gaining relevance as a lens by which to aggregate customer touch points, but consistency is not easy to achieve. One might think it would be easier in one-to-one B2B customer relationships, but given the demand we’re seeing, the challenge is larger than logic would dictate for every type of business.
