Building a cohesive, cross-channel customer experience is key

1. Creating exceptional customer experiences instantly differentiates brands in
today’s mobile world
Building a cohesive, cross-channel customer experience is key
In today’s social media-dominant culture, the customer experience can almost instantly help
or hurt a company and its reputation. Customer experience, no longer an overlooked
commodity, can now define a brand immediately thanks to digital platforms like Facebook,
Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as mobile applications available on smartphones and tablets
around the world.
Consumers can now share their experiences — good or bad — with the masses, resulting in
either increased brand loyalty and advocacy or lost customers. Giving customers an
engaging and satisfying experience can significantly boost an organization’s appeal to others
who hear about those experiences. Using data to shape those experiences leads
organizations in the right direction.
According to Alicia Rankin, Head of Research and Fan Insights for the National Football
League (NFL), it has been imperative for the NFL to make sure that the in-stadium
experience is exceptional. And in 2007, it became a corporate initiative to focus on in-
stadium engagement to ensure that it is not just as good, but even better than watching an
NFL game on TV. Since that time, the NFL started a Gameday Experience/Voice of the Fan
research platform that is driven from Rankin’s department and executed across all 32 NFL
clubs. The online survey with ticket members evaluates the entire driveway-to-driveway
gameday experience.
Rankin will speak about how to effectively track and leverage the customer experience at
the marcus evans Customer Experience 2013 Conference, August 13-14 in Chicago, Illinois.
“Not dissimilar to most businesses, the NFL has a core group of fans that drive a large part
of our business. That group starts with our ticket members who spend more than three
times as much time with the NFL in a given week as the average fan,” Rankin explained.
“And with fan insights revealing that ‘avid fans’ generally bring along ‘casual fans’ with
them, it is critical to make sure that their gameday experience is great every time.
Regardless of whether your team is winning or losing, you want fans to feel compelled to be
there so that not only do they keep coming back, but they act as advocates for others to
attend in the hopes they become interested in getting their own season ticket package, thus
keeping a strong pipeline of fans and revenue.”
Research has played a critical role in how the NFL evaluates the customer experience. “The
advantage of any tracking study is the ability to benchmark, and we do that on both a
league level (all team data aggregated) and club level,” Rankin stated. The research allows
the NFL to determine which areas may need to be more league-focused and driven vs. club-
driven. An example of the former is the League instituting mandatory in-stadium replays of
all big plays, regardless of it being of the home or away teams.
“Both quantitative and qualitative research with our ticket members have told us that fans
are accustomed to seeing replays on TV and want to see as many as possible in the stadium
as well,” Rankin said. “Separately, through factor analyses, we can gauge which areas of

2. the overall experience are most likely to impact ticket renewals. So for the clubs, the data
generated has been extremely helpful to them in determining which areas of gameday
operations and/or gameday entertainment to prioritize.”
Rankin added that the Customer Experience 2013 Conference offers organizations critical
knowledge on how other companies and industries put their customers first and what
research programs they utilize to measure success. “The passion, questions, and opinions in
talking with conference attendees about the NFL are endless (in a good way). Afterwards I
always feel like I just did a focus group with a hundred people, just without the M&M’s!”
The marcus evans 2013 Customer Experience Conference will take place in Chicago,
Illinois, August 13-14, 2013. For more information, visit the event website.
For more information please contact Michele Westergaard, Senior Marketing Manager, Media
& PR, marcus evans at 312-894-6377 or Michelew@marcusevansch.com.
About marcus evans
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annually, ensuring niche-focused subject matter presented directly by practitioners and a
diversity of information to assist our clients in adopting best practice in all business
disciplines.