The Customer Experience Story: Seamless and Not So Seamless

There is a real surge of interest and attention being paid by marketers to customer experience, and with good reason.

In a highly crowded and fragmented marketplace, prospects need to be wooed and won over by brands.

“Customer experience is your customers’ perceptions of how the company treats them.

These perceptions affect their behaviors and build memories and feelings and may drive their loyalty.

In other words: if they like you and continue to like you, they are going to do business with you and recommend you to others.”

Toma Kulbyte, Super Office

The customer experience is increasingly complex

Marketers are facing the challenges of trying to deliver unified and coherent customer experiences in a multi-platform, cross-channel world.

Access to an increasing amount of data, the proliferation of channels being used by customers, and the technological challenges facing marketing teams are making this increasingly complex.

Added to all of this is the fact that customers are becoming increasingly fickle; 52% of customers are less likely to engage with a brand after a bad mobile experience and 67% cite bad experience as a reason for disengaging with a brand.

Brands need to make sure that they are providing a consistent, seamless, and tailored brand experience across all channels or risk being left behind.

Customer experience is a key differentiator between brands

Research predicts that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key differentiators of brands by 2020.

In the following story we look at the customer experience provided by two different, fictional, coffee shops – Barista King and CFC (Coffee for Commuters).

These two coffee shops are the favourite of our two commuters Ella and Joseph. Ella is a fan of Barista King, whereas Joseph is a customer of CFC.

Barista King use data from Ella’s previous purchases to upsell and cross-sell her products that she might enjoy.

Barista King also lets her place her order and pay via an app.

However, CFC offers no such convenience, forcing Joseph to visit their website and download a PDF of their menu.

When Ella’s train gets into the station her order is ready and waiting for her at Barista King.

This puts her in a great mood and gets her ready for the day. Poor old Joseph however, has no such luck and must join a queue of disgruntled commuters who are now in danger of being late.
 
Throughout the day Ella’s experience with Barista King gets better and better; while Joseph is left questioning whether or not he would be better off getting his coffee from elsewhere…

Discover more about the differing customer experiences of Ella and Joseph in our slide deck below.

 

 

Main Takeaways

• Customer experience is increasingly recognised as vital to marketing success
• The customer experience is complex today, in part because of the vast amount of data available
• Prospects and customers are now active on multiple channels before purchase
• Evidence indicates customers swiftly abandon brands that offer poor customer experience
• Alongside price, product, promotion, and place, customer experience is now seen as the fifth key principle of marketing 

Discover how you can create a seamless customer experience, download The Customer Experienced Simplified.

 

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