April 21, 2021 - 1751 views
|Having a vision for customer experience is important, but it’s not enough. Here are the other dimensions and insights needed to differentiate the brand.
Not so long ago, a brand was whatever it could persuade customers to believe it was. Today, a brand is defined by how it makes customers feel as they interact with it — its products, its services and its people. This shift in the customer experience is becoming a critical factor in sorting leaders from followers.
To understand the progress companies have made in harnessing the power of a fully realized experience ecosystem, we recently commissioned a soon-to-be-published Forrester Consulting study. We believe the results confirm that top performers are outpacing competitors in delivering an experience that is personalized, predictive, precise and clearly tied to business outcomes. The research also demonstrates that some fundamental assumptions about experience should be critically re-evaluated.
Three building blocks of the customer experience
We view brand experiences as three-dimensional:
Seeing isn’t always getting
Based on the Forrester study and our own extensive knowledge in the field of experience, we offer four high-level takeaways:
In one striking example of personalization evolution, we worked with a North American fast-food company with more than 2,000 restaurants that was seeking to boost sales and build brand loyalty. The chain now uses artificial intelligence to prescribe (with a nearly 95% success rate) the optimal promotional coupon offer for individual customers, driving relevance for the consumer and value for the brand.
For automakers, the dealership network is a vital, and often challenging, part of the ecosystem. When MINI launched its first all-electric car, our UK experience agency, Zone, created insights and assets, tailored to the local market, that allowed dealers to communicate with consumers one-on-one throughout their buying journey, including social media posts and videos, direct mail, editable email templates and email signatures. Retailers were provided information about how to reach their target audience, the type of content that was most likely to appeal and assets designed specifically to target them.
In a world in which competing on price and product is increasingly difficult, experience is and will continue to be a major differentiator. Companies that invest in this area wisely will excel, while those that do not will flail.
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