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The Variance in Customer Experience: Customer Affinity from Optimized Content Delivery
CMO COUNCIL, Dec 2008, Pages: 224
Seeking to measure the consistencies and disconnections in customer experience, the analysts set out to audit and catalog the Variance in Customer Experience across 25 major brands. The program was designed to identify limitations, liabilities and lost opportunities when companies do not enforce brand guidelines, control digital assets, and harmonize content origination and delivery channels worldwide.The final result is a comprehensive audit of individual channels of content delivers, along with an overall ranking that aggregates all touch points to create one final score that assesses the totality of the customer experience.
Variance in the Customer Experience was a complex undertaking designed to rate and compare the quality and consistency of the brand experience for 25 leading companies across a wide variety of communications-based interactions and touch points, including web sites, advertising, events, in-store experiences and call center exchanges. While each assessment was based on a single auditor’s experience and reaction, critical and valuable findings can be derived from individual company results and the aggregated rankings and ratings.
Among the lessons we hope this study offers is the critical importance of consistency in communicating and supporting the brand experience. That obviously means providing a satisfying encounter, with minimal frustration, at every customer touch point. However, it also means an experience that is continuously relevant and supportive of the overall brand. Our auditors reacted favorably to companies like Home Depot and Marriott that delivered a consistent experience across all of their communications.
Critical, too, is the lesson that our brands are only as strong as their weakest link. Customer loyalty can disappear quickly with a single negative experience. Consumer packaged goods buyers may not frequently visit your brand’s web site, but once they do, a frustrating interaction can lead to a lost customer. Perhaps even more frightening is the opportunity to lose a customer at the call center, where too many companies in this study saw their experience ratings drop compared to other touch points. Yet the opportunity to strengthen the customer relationship exists along every step of the brand value chain, particularly when one step leads to another. A positive call center interaction that includes an introduction to valuable online services can leave the consumer satisfied after that one call, but more engaged with the brand over time. A web site that helps customers navigate the instore shopping experience can pay brand dividends far beyond a satisfying online interaction.
Other key findings of this study.
1. Consistency of Promise and Message Improve Experience and So lidify Brand Affinity
For those companies whose message, promise and identity remained consistent, accurate and accessible to customers throughout their experience, scores remained high, and steadily elevated brands like Home Depot and hotelier Marriott to the top of the list. While Home Depot, our top ranked brand, did not stand out in a single category, an even, consistent and accurate brand message leveraging the belief that “You Can Do It, We Can Help” came across clearly through their web, call center, events and in store content channels.
2. The Call Center Can Compromise the Customer Experience
Research and analysis of media and content consumption indicate that customers regularly turn to corporate websites for information, but look to live interactions and channels to heighten their experience and opportunity to engage. Unfortunately, call centers, a critical point of live interaction, are among the most troubled touch points of the customer experience for many companies. The call center scores of two of our audited companies fell into negative territory. However, perhaps even more importantly, calls centers had an overall diminishing impact the customer experience of many of our audited companies. Time and time again, companies received higher marks in online and offline collateral materials, but saw their scores fall in the live interaction.
3. Immediate Experience with Content Trumps Brand History
Brand recognition and the memory of past experiences is a heavily gauged measure of brand performance. In Profitability from Customer Affinity, technology marketers were asked to rank their awareness, recognition and word of mouth for top brands. Companies like Microsoft predictably appeared at the top of the list. But when that ranking was reassessed based on what forces and factors actually affected the decision to do business with a company, it was truly customer-centric enterprises like Network Appliance and Juniper Networks that shifted to the top of the pack.
4. Youth Doesn’t Equal Easy Experience
Much like the scenario with Doritos, youth-focused marketers struggled in the experience rankings. The theory among marketers seems to be that if you make it interactive or animated, younger users will flock to it and thrive on the experience, becoming a loyal throng with disposable income. Experience and content proved to be far more elusive and difficult for brands with typically younger target demographics.
5. Events Are More than Logo Placeholders
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a sporting event brand took the top spot in the live event ranking. Sporting events are about entertainment, about the spectacle. Major League Soccer did not disappoint. Even for what many consider a second tier sport, a first rate fan experience is the standard. The reality in professional sports is that every move, every experience from the moment a car enters the parking lot to a fan’s first glimpse of the playing field is carefully mapped and repeated throughout every game. Marketers can take a long hard look at this exacting eventproduction and learn something: events are about the experience, and it is our duty to map it, create it and fulfill on the promise to meet the expectations of the customer.
6. In Times of Flux, Content Consistency Cannot Go Untended
We are surely in an era of upheaval and disruption. Product and brand extensions and mega-mergers create the opportunity for brand confusion that leaves the customer to decipher who they are doing business with. Let that confusion fester and you will lose the customer.
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