Mastery of The Six Pillars of Customer Experience

Regardless of a company’s industry and size, its business model or strategy, customer relationships have a significant bearing on the life cycle of any business. Customer experience is more important than product price and quality; it is the main competitive advantage. For this reason, businesses invest very heavily in customer relations, but this does not always allow to achieve the targeted increase in profit and return on investment.

And the problem is not that management inadequately builds a strategy for interacting with the client. According to the KPMG Tomorrow's experience, today, 70% of CEOs prioritize representation of customer interests, and 67% of CEOs would like to focus on building trust in customer relationships. Businesses understand that to win tomorrow's competitive battles you need already today to start managing customer experience and impressions. The main challenge is the rapid change in external factors: the competitive environment is constantly increasing customer expectations, new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital transformation, and predictive analytics, are radically changing approaches to how quickly brands should adapt to this challenge.

According to the KPMG Global Customer Experience Excellence report 2018, conducted among 54 thousand consumers in 14 countries of the world, there is direct correlation between financial performances and the level of customer focus of the company. For example, revenue growth indicator demonstrated by the 50 companies heading the list of the leading brands was 54% higher than that reported by the 50 brands closing the list, and the EBITDA growth was 202% higher, respectively.

What helps the leading brands be the first on the market where it comes to creation of unique customer experience?

·       Deep understanding of the thinking and psychology of the client and his evolving needs

The problem with most companies is that data obtained through traditional market research or demographic market segmentation is no longer sufficient on its own. It gives an understanding of what customers are doing, but does not answer the questions “why” and “when”? Meanwhile, leading companies use more advanced methods (predictive analytics and cognitive research) with a complete ecosystem of quantitative digital observations of their customers.

For example, Netflix, an American entertainment network and movie and TV show provider, has developed a model for predicting movies that viewers would like to watch. In 75% of cases, such an analysis was correct. According to Real-Time Analytics (Harvard business review, 2018), from 2018 to 2020, the power and importance of predictive analytics will increase by 13%.

·      Pioneer knowledge plus experience in new technologies

According to KPMG CIO Survey 2018, 61% of organizations that use digital technologies are seeing higher revenue growth than competitors. It is therefore not surprising that leading brands more thoroughly explore customer needs and satisfy them earlier than others using innovative laboratories, experimentation, ethnographic design, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other digital tools.

Working with a huge array of data (Big Data) obtained while interacting with customers, the Hilton Hotels chain knows almost everything about its customers. Who are they, what do they like or dislike during their stay at the hotel. But most importantly, management understand how to transform this customer experience into service improvement and increased degree of customer satisfaction.

·      Coordination and management of the entire ecosystem of partners

Customer experience is not the final destination, but a journey that begins with understanding the client. At this stage, it is necessary to integrate ability to creatively combine technology, personnel, and business processes.

For example, Singapore Airlines (SIA) has already announced its intention to become the leading digital airline of the world. To achieve this goal, SIA created a digital laboratory, which allowed the company's employees to collaborate with a number of partners, incubators and accelerators. As a result, new ideas and developments were crystalized. Today, they work with partners in such areas as digital security, predictive analytics, robotics and automation, which helped reduce costs and delayed flights time, raise quality standards and develop a personal approach to the client.

·       Mastery of The Six Pillars of customer experience

Studies of different sectors and markets show that only 6 key factors provide an ideal customer experience.

1. Personalization creates emotional bond and confirms understanding of the customer needs.

2. Integrity - it is critical to be a reliable partner that inspires full confidence when communicating with employees at all levels and during any interaction with the brand. The degree of the customer confidence depends on the willingness of organizations to deliver on their promises.

3. Expectations - not only manage and meet customer expectations, but qualitatively exceed them.

4. Time and effort - prompt delivery of a product or service, minimizing the time and efforts of the customer. At the same time, speed should neither impair the quality of the product, nor affect any other elements of the customer experience.

5. Resolution - the best brands instantly respond to difficulties facing the customers and help overcome them quickly thus returning the customers to the state of satisfaction that existed before the conflict. The customer gives positive feedback and remains loyal. Therefore, speed of reaction and sincere apology are the main factors of successful resolution of incidents.

6. Empathy - understanding of customer circumstances to establish deep confidence and reach mutual understanding as the basis of loyalty and long-term relationship.

These 6 fundamentals touch upon psychology, motivation, emotions, thinking and decision-making, therefore they should underlie any strategy and be equally applicable for B2B and B2C, permeating the entire life cycle of customer relationships.

The changes brought about by technologies and digitalization are irreversible. They carry both great opportunities and the risks of losing markets in favor of more innovative and customer-oriented players. A responsible choice for each organization should be the decision of whether to adhere to traditional approaches to customers attraction and retention or to apply new customer experience management strategies related to anticipating customer expectations and using digital technologies.

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