The document discusses trends in customer experience and loyalty. It notes that customers now have greater power and access to information due to digital technologies. Companies must work to understand individual customers and earn their loyalty. Effective leadership approaches that empower employees, such as flatter organizational structures, can help improve both customer satisfaction and employee retention. Customer service is becoming an increasingly important factor for brands.

1. P03 Customers are setting
P08 Getting personal with
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the business agenda
offers you can’t refuse
loyal fanbase 21/10/14
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Overview
Without doubt it is the age
of the customer. They are
louder than ever, have
greater power and more ways of
exerting it. Digital innovations
have meant the consumer knows
everything about a company, the
product and its origins, as well as
faster and more efficient ways of air-ing
grievances and singing praises.
While it might be terrifying
to think your customers know
everything about your processes,
there’s an argument for embrac-ing
the move towards customer
empowerment. This is absolutely
crucial to loyalty, says Alex Cheat-le,
chief executive of lifestyle con-cierge
and loyalty solutions provid-er
Ten Group.
“There is simply no such thing
as a customer for life anymore; cus-tomer
loyalty needs to be earned.
Companies must show that they
understand their customers and
are responding to them as individ-uals,”
he says. “A luxury clothing
brand can’t just give away a pair of
cufflinks with a shirt; they need to
give the customer tickets to the op-era
– because they know they like
opera – in a city they visit regularly.”
The customer isn’t just a buyer
of a product, says Mr Cheatle, “Car
manufacturers such as Maserati
don’t just stick extras on their cars,
they think around the issue and
provide benefits that are perhaps
unrelated to motoring, but are tai-lored
to the person who is buying
the car. Banks will no longer just
offer travel insurance or Avios [re-ward
currency] – customers have
no patience with poring over small
print or jumping through endless
hoops for fulfillment.
“Programmes such as Thank You
from Coutts offer curated opportu-nities
selected and tailored to their
account holders. The customer
needs to feel in charge of the ben-efits
they receive and companies
must use benefits to show how well
they understand the individuals
they are doing business with.”
KEY TRENDS
A report from Forrester, entitled
Navigate the Future of Customer
Service in 2014, outlines a num-ber
of key trends. Customers now
demand an omnichannel service.
They want to start an interaction
in one channel and complete it in
another. The report says today’s
customer is beginning to adopt a
“mobile-first” mindset. Companies
are starting to move away from
duplicating their web presence
for mobile and instead are look-ing
at the right usage scenarios to
add value to customers in a mobile
environment. There is now a ten-dency
towards a more focused user
experience that allows tasks to be
accomplished efficiently.
Customers 2020, a report from US
customer intelligence consulting
firm Walker, looks at the customer
experience industry of the future.
The report claims customer service
is the next brand differential, and by
2020 will overtake price and product.
The report says to be relevant
in 2020, companies must focus on
leveraging data to create a single
source of truth and make custom-er
intelligence accessible. It says:
“Companies must consider ‘insight
generation’ as a sales enablement
function.” It also predicts the like-lihood
of more companies having
“chief customer champions”, serv-ing
one purpose, “to create an un-relenting
focus on the customer”.
Data is being used to reach out pro-actively
to customers in the form of
invitations to chat and take part in
tutorials. In addition it is being used
innovatively to develop post-pur-chase
engagement.
Forrester’s The Business Impact
of Customer Experience, 2014 report
looks at the link between customer
experience and consumers’ loyalty
to a company. Unsurprisingly, the
correlation is high. And the business
case is strong. The research shows
loyalty-based revenue benefit for
a firm going from a below-average
customer experience index score
for its industry to above-average,
ranged from $55 million for con-sumer
internet service providers to
$1.6 billion for wireless providers.
And then there’s personalisation.
There’s certainly a move towards
the individualisation of the con-sumer
process. Companies are in-creasingly
using predictive analyt-ics
to up and cross-sell to consumers
based on their individual buying
and browsing habits. It’s no longer
just about knowing the customer’s
name; it’s now about making sure
offers are bespoke.
NEW ADVISERS
A 2013 IBM study, The Custom-er-
Activated Enterprise, says that
customers are the “new” business
advisers, claiming that 90 per cent
of senior leaders expected extensive
collaboration with customers with-in
the next five years. More than half
(54 per cent) of chief executives said
customers now have a considerable
influence on their enterprises and,
crucially, the outperformers are 24
per cent more likely than underper-formers
to have given the customer
a prime seat at the boardroom table.
The report highlights that in
the first IBM study of this kind,
released in 2004, chief executives
ranked their own customers as
sixth on the list of all market factors
they believed would drive the most
change in their organisations. What
we see today is a very different sto-ry,
where empowered customers
now lead the agenda.
The value of customer loyalty, based on a positive
experience of service, is more important than ever,
writes Hazel Davis
Distributed in
Publishing Manager
Nathan Wilson
Managing Editor
Peter Archer
Head of Production
Natalia Rosek
Commissioning Editor
Hazel Davis
Design, Infographics & Illustration
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Customer service is the next
brand differential, and by 2020
will overtake price and product
HAZEL DAVIS
Freelance writer, she contributes to The Times, Financial
Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian on a wide
variety of subjects, but specialises in small businesses.
MARCUS LEROUX
Industrial correspondent of The Times, he was previously the
newspaper’s retail correspondent.
CHARLES ORTON-JONES
Former Professional Publishers Association Business Journalist
of the Year, he was editor-at-large of LondonlovesBusiness.com
and editor of EuroBusiness magazine.
IWONA TOKC-WILDE
Freelance business journalist, she contributes regularly to
various national media and trade press, covering economic
trends, professional practices and other business issues.
HUGH WILSON
Former reporter and feature writer for Retail Week, he
now writes as a freelance on a variety of topics including
business, technology and innovation.
CUSTOMERS ARE
SETTING THE
BUSINESS AGENDA
Image: Getty

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Leadership
EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
KEEPS STAFF AND
CUSTOMERS HAPPY
Indicators of customer satisfaction show that
executives who empower employees not only
manage to hold on to valued staff, but also improve
levels of service, as Iwona Tokc-Wilde reports
Improving customer ser-vice
need not involve a
radical change in pol-icy
or complicated technology.
Adopting a different manage-ment
style and company culture,
together with customer-focused
personnel training, can increase
both employee satisfaction and
customer engagement.
The traditional “command and
control” structure of organisations
may no longer be fit for purpose in
a connected world, where both em-ployees
and customers want to be
engaged differently. “Today’s team-based
organisations respond best
when their leaders are with them,
not above them,” says Rachel Bar-ton,
head of Accenture’s Customer
Strategy Practice.
Some companies are, therefore,
moving away from a hierarchical
structure to one that is flatter, with
fewer or no levels of middle manage-ment
between staff and executives.
So-called flat organisations tend to
organise themselves around the work
that needs to be done and not around
people occupying specific job func-tions.
Time etc is a virtual workforce
platform that provides services to
businesses worldwide. Three years ago
they switched from an upwards flow of
work and reporting to mutual delivery,
says founder Barnaby Lashbrooke.
“This means everyone, including
me, delivers whatever is needed to
other people in the business in
order to push things forward,” he
says. For example, Mr Lashbrooke
now deals with every client com-plaint
personally.
“But I still make sure the team
are fully involved,” he says. “When
they see how seriously I take every
complaint, it hammers home the
importance of customer satisfac-tion
so they are getting better at
resolving issues before they turn
into complaints. It’s also good for
clients to see the founder cares
about their custom and that no
complaint is too small.”
Despite significant growth in the
last few years, Time etc receive few-er
than ten complaints a year. Mr
Lashbrooke points out it was the
mutual effort that has led to all com-plaints
being resolved satisfactorily
in the last 12 months. “We’ve also
seen a significant increase in team
retention and morale since switch-ing
to this way of working,” he adds.
In flat or flatter organisations,
leaders seek their employees’
opinions regularly and act on
them. “Engaging your workforce
as equals, taking on feedback and
keeping the dialogue open through
every channel are all ways to flatten
the management structure,” says
Ms Barton.
Employee engagement at Lon-don
Overground Rail Operations
(LOROL) has been central to its
success as the fastest growing UK
rail company since privatisation.
HR director Darren Hockaday says:
Retail sets
example
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of operations. “Out of this has grown
the company’s ethos of ‘training for
all by all’ and in the last year more
than a third of employees were in-volved
in passing on their skills and
experience to others.”
The fact that all staff, regardless
of position, can now deliver custom-er
service training was “a conscious
move from a culture which was
highly compliant, dependent sole-ly
on people following procedures,
towards a culture focused on cus-tomer
experience”, says Ms Plow-right.
Since the move the company
has won several national customer
service training awards for its high
standards of customer service.
“Our net promoter score, an in-dicator
of how likely our custom-ers
are to recommend us, is indus-try-
leading at +78 and customer
retention rates are consistently over
90 per cent too,” she says.
Lawrence Jones, chief executive
of internet hosting company UK-Fast,
says their net promoter score
has also improved, from +50 to +70,
since he invested in an in-house
training department last year.
EMPLOYEE AUTONOMY
In flatter organisations, front-line
staff have a bigger say in how
they deal with customers, which
has direct impact on customer ex-perience.
At John Lewis, staff work
on the premise that the customer
is right and they just need to solve
Images: Getty
Research has consistently
proven a link between happy
employees and happy customers
any problems as quickly as possible.
What they call “heroic recovery”
contributes to John Lewis scoring
the highest marks in various custom-er
satisfaction surveys year on year.
The world’s best hotels would not
be the world’s best without their
employees having almost complete
autonomy, says Phil Anderson, client
director at Ashridge Business School.
“When I recently visited the Ritz
Carlton in Singapore, staff were able
to spend up to $2,000 replacing or re-pairing
any item damaged by guests,
without seeking approval,” he adds.
GO THE EXTRA INCH
De Vere Hotels and Village Ur-ban
Resorts have a new customer
service initiative called Going the
Extra Inch, which empowers staff
to take action to exceed their guests’
expectations. People development
director Mike Williams gives an ex-ample
of an employee who, working
breakfast service, overheard a guest
saying they preferred firmer pillows
and went out at the end of her shift
to buy them.
“We’ve also created VIPs – Very
Informed People – in each hotel,
who look for ways to improve cus-tomer
service, and who then present
their ideas to their hotel manager
and the company executive team,”
says Mr Williams.
Mr Anderson insists that in call
centres and similar organisations,
staff simply must have autonomy to
be effective in dealing with custom-ers.
“First Direct are an excellent
example, they are truly a one-stop
shop,” he says.
At Wahanda, an online bookings
platform connecting consumers
and beauty businesses, the custom-er
service staff are allowed to make
judgment calls and issue credit
notes without reverting to line man-agers
first. “Our tech team aims to
turn around any issues with the site
within 24 hours, so our combined
efforts have resulted in pushing
up our net promoter score to over
70,” says Wahanda’s chief executive
Lopo Champalimaud.
When employees have a bigger
say in how and when they work,
and get incentivised to deliver
results, this too leads to better
employee satisfaction and en-gagement,
and to better customer
service. At Wahanda, there are no
limits on holiday allowances. “We
simply trust people to do their job
and they use their good judgment
when it comes to taking time off,”
says Mr Champalimaud.
UKFast gives £1,000, £500 and
£250 to the top three support en-gineers
at the end of each quarter.
“Earlier this year, high-performing
engineers were also taken on an
all-expenses-paid trip to Las Ve-gas,”
says Mr Jones. De Vere Hotels
and Village Urban Resorts celebrate
their best employees at annual em-ployee
awards.
“Research has consistently proven
a link between happy employees and
happy customers,” says Ms Barton.
De Vere Hotels and Village Urban
Resorts have run their own com-parisons
of their employee engage-ment
scores for each hotel against
their customer service measures,
discovering a compelling correlation
between the two. “Our three hotels
with the highest customer satisfac-tion
scores of over 80 per cent are
also the top three when it comes to
employee engagement, again over 80
per cent,” says Mr Williams.
72%
of highly engaged employees
believe they can positively affect
customer service
Source: CIPD
90%
of leaders think an engagement
strategy has an impact on
business success
Source: Accor
80%
of the variation in employee
engagement levels is due to
the line manager
Source: Accenture
50%+
of organisations with high
employee engagement retain
80%+ of their customers
Source: Demand Metric
1in2
employees in large organisations
feel engaged
Source: Temkin Group Research
“The way that LOROL has always
approached engagement is simple
yet highly effective: you regularly and
consistently ask employees what they
think, you analyse and think about
what they’ve told you, you take ap-propriate
action, and then tell the em-ployees
what you’ve done and why.”
At LOROL, improved employee
engagement now equals improved
customer satisfaction. As engage-ment
rose to 91 per cent in 2014, so
did passenger satisfaction, which at
91 per cent nearly doubled from 57
per cent in 2007.
CULTURE AND TRAINING
Four years ago insurance com-pany
Cornish Mutual flattened the
management and delivery of their
personnel training, changing their
corporate culture in the process.
“Every employee in the company,
from managing director to adminis-trators,
has been trained in coaching
skills,” says Sharon Plowright, head

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P00 ENGAGEMENT AND LOYALTY
15/0000
Commercial Feature
Powering loyalty with credit cards
With the UK economy showing clear signs of recovery and household
spending on the up, brands are capitalising on a renewed opportunity to
commercialise and collaborate on customer loyalty
As consumers once again reach into
their wallets, many will be pulling
out their cards and demonstrating
their commitment to a particular or-ganisation,
whether that’s a football
club, airline or charity.
Affi nity card relationships can offer
consumers loyal to brands a unique set
of benefi ts as well as driving results for
the brands themselves.
“Credit-card affi nities can help brands
grow their business on the back of real
consumer advocacy,” says Michael Don-ald,
commercial executive at MBNA, a UK
leader in credit-card affi nity relationships.
“Every time a customer takes a card
product out of their wallet, it reminds
them why they took it out and about the
brand they have a particular affi nity with,
whether retailer or airline. UK brands
are able to make these connections
even more powerful, while brands from
• AMERICAN AIRLINES
• EMIRATES
• ETIHAD AIRWAYS
“Our model is rooted in truly under-standing
consumer loyalties, and con-necting
and rewarding these. It’s a win
for the consumer, but also a commercial
win for the affi nity brands we’re proud to
work with.”
One example of this is the organisa-tion’s
work with Manchester United,
where MBNA was able to roll out a new
“Champions” credit card to eligible fans
in the UK within a week of the club win-ning
the title for a record twentieth time,
helping to strengthen its relationship
with supporters and allowing them to
share in the club’s achievement.
emerging markets are also coming to
the UK with their global brand, wanting
to launch affi nities.”
For brands, it can not only generate an
additional source of revenue each time a
transaction is made, but also help to re-inforce
and reward a customer’s loyalty
to their organisation, ensuring priority of
the card and helping to keep customers
loyal in the future.
From a consumer’s perspective, af-fi
nity credit cards allow individuals to
benefi t from a wide range of rewards
put forward by the brands they support,
ranging from discounted fl ights to foot-ball
shirts, tickets to events and charity
donations, as well as helping to support
that particular cause fi nancially.
MBNA’s affinity-card experience
means it can work with partners to iden-tify
the business model that best suits
them and their customer base.
“We believe MBNA is unrivalled in the
UK in terms of running co-branded cred-it-
card programmes and the reason we’re
so good at it is that we’re able to work with
the partners to understand the needs of
their customers,” says Mr Donald.
Michael Donald
Commercial executive at MBNA
MBNA IN NUMBERS
300 affi nity card
programmes
MBNA Thames Clipper
airlines 6
football clubs 29
MBNA UK AFFINITY CARD PROGRAMMES
• ARSENAL
• ASTON VILLA
• CHELSEA
• LIVERPOOL
• MANCHESTER UNITED
• TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
FOOTBALL CLUBS
• MILES AND MORE (LUFTHANSA)
• UNITED AIRLINES
• VIRGIN ATLANTIC
AIRLINES
Credit-card
affi nities can
help brands grow
their business on
the back of real
consumer advocacy
• BREAKTHROUGH BREAST CANCER
• BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION
• NATIONAL TRUST
• ROYAL BRITISH LEGION
• RSPCA
• WWF
CHARITIES
“Our capabilities allowed the club to
focus on their fan base and ensured pri-ority
of the card in wallets or purses with
a whole new set of engaged consumers,”
says Mr Donald.
With credit cards operating across
the three main credit-card networks
of American Express, MasterCard and
Visa, also means MBNA customers can
benefi t from a wide range of additional
rewards, driving even greater value di-rectly
to consumers.
The model is well established in sec-tors
such as football, airlines and trav-el,
but there are other industries which
MBNA is an established leader in
providing co-branded consumer
credit cards, drawing on a 21-year
history of operating in the UK and
its relationships with more than
350 partners.
These include card pro-grammes
with retail and
professional organisations,
such as the AA and NFU, as well
as airlines, football clubs and
charitable organisations.
The business is committed
to its own brand promise of
“making life easier”, and prides
itself on a pledge to provide
world-class customer service.
This brand promise can now be
seen on the River Thames each
day following its support of the
MBNA Thames Clippers.
Owned by Bank of America,
MBNA is also primary sponsor
of the Sale Sharks rugby union
team and its local football club,
Chester FC.
It was voted credit card provid-er
of the year in the 2014 Consum-er
Moneyfacts Awards.
MAKING LIFE EASIER
could benefit, including utilities and
retail. There are also potential opportu-nities
for brands themselves to collabo-rate,
using a mutual MBNA relationship
as the basis for even more compelling
customer offers.
“An example is airlines which have
relationships in football,” says Mr Don-ald.
“We support card programmes for
both segments and that offers us some
amazing potential.”
The economic downturn of the past
few years has seen a number of fi nancial
institutions and card providers
leave the affi nity market, leav-ing
behind those who have
built their business around
the concept.
“The UK issues more card products
than any other outside the United States
and we have one of the widest-travelled
populations on the planet, for business
and tourism,” he says. “The affi nity-card
model, which is rooted in MBNA’s DNA,
gives brands the opportunity to not only
reward customers for demonstrating
their loyalty, but to deliver a commercial
win for the brand and their customers.”
MBNA is uniquely positioned to
help organisations with large-scale
customer bases and/or global
or leading UK brands develop an
affi nity credit-card programme. For
more information visit
www.mbna.co.uk or contact
newbusiness@mbna.com

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Walking through the
doors of a shop will turn a
customer’s mobile device
into a personal virtual sales assistant
Omnichannel
BEST PRACTICE
IN RETAIL SETS
EXAMPLE
FOR OTHERS
Retailers have always lived
and died by the experience
they offer their customers
and, in a previous age, the butcher
who greeted customers by name and
memorised their Sunday joint was
likely to command loyalty.
Today a good customer experi-ence
still provides a genuine point
of difference in what can sometimes
seem a rather homogeneous land-scape.
Forward-thinking retailers
use fast-evolving technology to repli-cate
the butcher’s local information,
and give customers a more satisfying
experience in shops and online.
In store, for example, loca-tion-
based analytics like Shopper-
Trak follow customers as they move
through a store, using anonymous
signals emitted from shoppers’ mo-bile
devices. It means customers see
relevant marketing materials in the
right locations and find staff on hand
in the right areas at the right times.
But in-store is only one part of
the multichannel offer. The rise of
e-commerce means retailers offer
customers two or more distinct
sales channels – a bricks-and-mor-tar
shop, its e-commerce equivalent
and, increasingly, a mobile option.
And now that almost every retail-er
sells online, the most progres-sive
seek to differentiate customer
experience in increasingly sophis-ticated
ways. “Smart retailers are
shortening the purchase path,” says
Jo Coombs, managing director of
customer engagement agency Ogil-vyOne
UK. “Amazon said recently
they want to go from ‘I want that’ to
‘I bought that’ in 30 seconds, hence
innovations such as Amazon Dash.”
NON-RETAIL
Customers want a smooth and
speedy experience online, and that’s
as true for non-retail commerce as
it is for Amazon. Similarly, B&Q and
Next, praised for embracing online
communication channels and the
speedy resolution of online custom-er
complaints, offer an example to
other sectors.
On top of that, retailers are in-creasingly
integrating hitherto dis-tinct
channels – store, catalogue,
e-commerce, mobile – into one
coherent customer experience, the
so-called omnichannel approach.
Marks & Spencer’s “endless
aisle” means its physical stores and
e-commerce site become extensions
of each other, rather than distinct
silos. “Marks & Spencer reported
in May that over half of all online
purchases had an in-store element;
for example, goods ordered from
home for in-store collection,” says
Ms Coombs. Then there’s fashion
retailer Oasis’ Seek & Send service,
which will search the company’s
stores and send an item to a cus-tomer’s
home if it is sold out online.
Smartphones are pushing retail-ers
to embrace another aspect of the
omnichannel experience.
A shopper sees a product in-store
and checks out reviews on-line
before buying. They might
scan a barcode and comparison
shop in real time. They’ll expect
their brand browsing history to fol-low
them from web to smartphone
to tablet, and even be available to
staff in-store.
Most of all, the customer expe-rience
must be consistent between
these elements. “Brands cannot
afford for customers to have a great
experience when they visit their
website or mobile app, only for it
to be fundamentally different when
they then visit a store,” says Adam
Goran, director of customer engage-ment
at Grass Roots Group.
Sales assistants in-store have to
be informed, engaged and steeped in
the philosophy of the brand. Apple
is an obvious example.
CONTINUOUS COMMERCE
Retailers also increasingly use
the mountain of data thrown up
by online shopping habits to per-sonalise
messages and offers. And
that, too, is driving the goal of a
true omnichannel experience.
“Today, the focus is moving to-wards
customer recognition and
data connectivity across chan-nels,
media and devices,” says
Paul Hatley, data strategy expert
at data solutions company Acxi-om,
whose clients include iconic
London store Liberty.
Bricks-and-mortar stores, in com-bination
with their online opera-tions,
are slowly learning that they
can use that data, alongside other
technology, to offer customers a tru-ly
holistic, personalised experience
across all sales channels. In theory,
for example, physical retailers could
recognise individuals entering the
store from their online profiles, and
push relevant discounts and offers to
their smartphone or tablet.
“This seamless integration of
our online persona with our phys-ical
location ensures that retail-ers
can provide a more personal
interaction than that available
through internet-based shopping
alone,” says Scott Cairns, chief
technology officer for IT and tele-communications
service provider
T-Systems.
He sees a near future in which
walking through the doors of a shop
turns a customer’s mobile device
into a personal virtual sales assis-tant,
pinging pricing information
on a product they browsed online,
guiding them to its physical location
and providing other relevant details,
such as discount offers or informa-tion
on relevant accessories.
We’re not quite there yet, but in-terest
in omnichannel is building.
And it’s clear that, for all business-es,
retail and otherwise, customers
will soon come to expect a seamless
experience between real and vir-tual
worlds. Or as OgilvyOne UK’s
Ms Coombs says, companies need
to stop thinking in channels “and
simply think of it as continuous
commerce”. Those that get it right
will win.
With consumers using a mix of high street,
online and mobile shopping, customers expect
seamless and consistent continuous commerce,
writes Hugh Wilson
Image: Getty

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EDITION #0284
Personalisation
LET’S GET
PERSONAL
2
3
4
5
1
Offering the same old
customer experience is
becoming obsolete. What
consumers want is a
personalised service, tailored
to meet their individual
desires, budget and mindset.
As Charles Orton-Jones
discovers, it is possible to
offer a unique experience to
each and every customer, no
matter what sector a business
operates in
Google boss Eric Schmidt once
defined his company’s mission
as serving you just what you
want online before you’ve
even asked for it. The trend for
personalised advertisements
is making that aim feel spookily
close.
The most common way to per-sonalise
adverts is to look at
the users’ search history and
tailor adverts to match their
search criteria. For example,
James Villa Holidays, which
offers villa holidays across the
Mediterranean and United
States, uses search retarget-ing
to follow potential holiday-makers
across the web.
The process starts when a
user begins researching a
holiday online. They’ll type
in something like “Dalmatia
holiday villa”. Then James
Villa Holidays learns what it
can about the user from their
web history. It can then place
precisely the right banner ads
in front of the user by bidding,
in microseconds, for web
real estate. The firm uses an
automated system supplied by
search retargeting specialist
Captify. The result?
“Customers are incredibly
receptive to our personalised
digital ads,” says Sally Pemble
of James Villa Holidays.
“During a recent campaign we
doubled the click-through rate
compared with other digital
campaigns we’ve run and
increased the conversion rate
by around 60 per cent.”
Computer games tend to be
standard experiences. If you
play Angry Birds or Portal 2, it
is the same no matter whether
you are an 8 year old or a mid-dle-
aged hardcore gamer. This
is changing. The new generation
of games adapt to each user to
ensure everyone gets the game
they want.
One of the biggest person-alisation
consultancies is
Edinburgh-based deltaDNA.
It collects user data to help
designers tailor games to
different demographics. For
example, Heroes & Generals,
by games house Reto-Moto,
is an online Second World War
shooter game with 3.2 million
registered users. With multiple
game modes accessible across
multiple platforms, players can
choose to play as either heroes
fighting on the battlefields or
as generals devising the grand
strategy of a massive war
with thousands of concurrent
players.
Using the deltaDNA platform,
Reto-Moto is able to segment
players based on their playing
style and ability, ensuring the
playing experience is shaped for
different types of players. Nov-ice
players can be nurtured; ex-pert
players can be challenged,
especially in the early stages of
the game when churn is highest
as being cannon fodder isn’t fun
for anyone. The result is happy
heroes and happy generals, no
matter what level of compe-tence
they play with.
China is a huge market for
Scotch whisky. And what the Chi-nese
want more than anything
is the absolute top end. How
better to serve this niche than by
creating tailor-made whiskies?
Three years ago drinks giant
Diageo opened The Johnnie
Walker House in Shanghai. It
is marketed as an “embassy
for Scotch whisky culture”. The
crowning glory is the opportuni-ty
for members and guests to
have the chance to blend their
own bespoke whisky. The result-ing
product, your very own John
Walker & Sons Signature Blend,
is produced under the guidance
of Jim Beveridge, master blend-er
for Johnnie Walker.
The packaging – both bottle
and special presentation case
– is also designed to be tailored
exclusively to a client’s prefer-ence,
with both decanter and
bottle options. London agency
Sedley Place is responsible for
this aspect of personalisation.
Details on the bespoke
packaging extend to a client
monogram, personalisation of
the bottle or decanter marked
with the client’s signature,
a specially designed neck
charm and a certificate of
authentication.
The success of the Shanghai
concept has led to Diageo
opening new branches in Bei-jing
and Seoul. Each Signature
Blend starts from a price tag
of £80,000, which gets you 20
bottles. To date ten Signature
Blends have been produced.
Showing the same website to
all visitors is a lost opportuni-ty.
Ideally your website ought
to optimise for every individual
visitor, showing them precisely
what they want to see.
SkiWeekends.com is a ski
holiday booking website cov-ering
24 ski resorts, serviced
by 17 UK airports. The travel
agent behind it has 30 years’
experience and is at the
cutting edge of personalising
the online experience.
The site uses a service called
Sitecore Experience Platform,
which gathers all available
data to personalise what
each visitor sees. It takes
into account factors such as
search terms and the visitor’s
location, using their IP (inter-net
protocol) address, to tailor
site specifics such as desti-nations,
transport options,
promotions and incentives.
Since the start of the 2013-14
ski season, sales revenue
at SkiWeekends.com has in-creased
by 16 per cent year on
year, thanks to a 55 per cent
rise in conversion of site visits
to its online booking pages.
The site has attracted 15
per cent more unique visits,
increasing to almost 200,000
in six months. But, more signif-icantly,
the improved usability
and personalisation means
32 per cent more visitors are
finding their ideal ski holiday –
all done by a firm with just six
full-time members of staff.
Children playing football don’t
need any encouragement
to keep playing. They’ll stay
outdoors kicking the ball until
it’s too dark to see. But why
don’t they behave the same
way with maths homework?
The goal of personalised
learning is to bring the same
thrills and emotions to learning
that games offer. The latest
iteration in personalised learn-ing,
developed by the global
IT trade body CompTIA, tracks
emissions of the pleasure
hormone dopamine to ensure
learners are kept at the perfect
mental state: excited, curious
and happy.
The Chicago-based Computer
Systems Institute is trialling
CompTIA’s new system, called
CertMaster. Questions are
presented at specially timed
intervals to help each student
remember, and each question
must be answered accurately
and confidently twice before
the system shows they have
mastered the topic.
An algorithm looks at
things which signify optimal
dopamine levels, such as
confidence level, based on
what types of answers they
choose and time they take to
answer, the speed at which
students master topics, and
how well they memorise what
they have learnt.
This approach creates a dopa-mine
effect and a self-perpet-uating
positive feedback loop
to keep learners’ attention
and boost knowledge reten-tion.
In early trials, CertMaster
claims 80 per cent knowledge
retention
YOUR OWN PERFECT WHISKY
LESSONS YOU WON’T WANT TO END
SHOWING ADS YOU WANT TO SEE
NO MORE CANNON FODDER
PERSONALISED WEBSITES

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LOYALTY
80
60
40
20
0
SALE SALE
Source: Forrester, April 2014 Source: Forrester, April 2014
80
60
40
20
0
95%
86% A
67%
B
81% C
46%
71% D
34%
of data within
organisations
remains untapped
53%
of marketers want
to add online
customer data
to their customer
profiles and be
able to use that
information
49%
39%
46%
35%
39%
40%
30%
26%
28%
AGE OF PERSONALISATION
The big data problem
WEB
ACTIVITY
Personalisation
approaches
How do you
evaluate
consumers'
expectations for
personalisation
across various
channels?
The segmentation opportunity
Big data drives results despite challenges
increase in
revenue growth
for companies
that invested in
analytics versus
those that did not
of marketers say
they can't turn
their data into
actionable insight
of organisations
don't target any
customer or
visitor segments
higher return on
investment for
companies that
invested in analytics
compared to those
that did not
of marketers think
data is collected
too infrequently or
not in real time
of marketers
believe it's
important to
identify actionable
insights in large
amounts of data
of marketers
say data has
improved customer
engagement
through
personalisation
of organisations
don't use real-time
on-site behaviour
to personalise
the customer's
experience
of marketers
are unaware of
which high-value
customers to focus
their marketing on
A
use personalisation and targeting,
based on broad segmentation and
simple clustering techniques, to
execute campaigns
CALL CENTRE WEB
SOCIAL
ACTIVITY
STORE
INTERACTIONS
INGESTION
LAYER
PERSONALISED
PRODUCTS AND
SERVICES
STORE
INTERACTIONS
MOBILE LOCATIONS AND
COMMERCE
of companies surveyed ask how
consumers would like to receive
their marketing offers
83%
B
use personalisation and
targeting, based on simple
business rules, and execute
campaigns across channels
53%
use metrics that indicate the
strengths and weaknesses of
personalisation programmes to
guide decisions
C
personalise products, offers and
content based on the collective
insights of users with similar
preferences
have a robust testing and
optimisation programme that
gives insights into the types of
content, offers and products
consumers prefer
D
use real-time, self-learning
analytics to drive personalisation
and targeting across digital
channels
use real-time decisioning
technology to guide
personalisation so consumer
interaction drives the offer versus
prebuilt propensity scores
A B A B
C D C D
Source: Monetate
Data
Knowledge
base
Customer
direct input
Transactions

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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND LOYALTY
21/10/14
EDITION #0284
Customer Communities
BUILDING
A FANBASE
Businesses launch customer
communities for a variety
of reasons – to help cus-tomers
with products, to improve
the effectiveness of marketing ef-forts,
to create customer feedback
loops, to use market data and to im-prove
customer satisfaction.
North of England-based open-ac-cess
train operator Grand Central
has developed an extraordinary rep-utation
for great customer service,
largely through word of mouth and
the efforts of its very vocal fanbase,
the customers.
The company’s communica-tions
and stakeholder manager
Kate Thorpe says its success in this
area has a lot to do with the need it
serves. “As an open-access operator,
Grand Central Rail exists because
the local communities we serve did
not already have a direct rail link to
London,” she says. “Local support
for our services in the early days
gave communities a sense of owner-ship
of Grand Central Rail services,
and we work hard to maintain and
develop close co-operative links.”
Ms Thorpe says Grand Central
seeks out opportunities to support,
promote and develop local initia-tives
which benefit the community,
“from supporting Brass Factor – a
brass band talent competition in
West Yorkshire – to jobs fairs and
other stakeholder activity”.
The company runs a station am-bassador
scheme manned by volun-teers.
“As a small company which
does not own or manage any sta-tions,
we do not have the infrastruc-ture
or resources to staff stations on
Sundays, when smaller stations are
traditionally unstaffed and the ma-jority
of rail engineering work takes
place, disrupting rail travel across
the country,” she says.
“The station ambassadors mod-el
we adopted allows us to provide
face-to-face customer advice on
travel, tickets, rail replacement
services, taxis and directions
using fully trained, uniformed
volunteers from local business
communities, who donate their
time in order to provide help and
assistance. Their presence has had
a positive effect on our passengers
and staff, and contributes to devel-oping
rail travel in the North East
and Yorkshire.”
It has paid off. Figures released
by Passenger Focus earlier this year
found that 95 per cent of Grand
Central passengers were “satis-fied”
or “very satisfied”, which is
something you don’t often hear
in the same breath as the words
“train company”. Enterprise busi-ness
technology provider Avanade
uses social media as a core plat-form
for its thought leadership as
well as creating dialogue with its
customers. Jessica Brookes, global
director of media and analyst rela-tions,
says: “Simply put, we listen
to the market, making sure we are
staying on top of developing indus-try
trends, emerging technologies
and enterprise pain points that
are on the minds of our enterprise
customers. The data we glean from
this active listening helps inform
our marketing campaign focus and
content creation.”
Avanade generated 3.5 million
impressions on LinkedIn last year
and has 25 different groups there,
with 15,000 members combined.
But using social media to mobi-lise
customers isn’t about gather-ing
followers indiscriminately. It’s
about how well you use the follow-ers
you have. Avanade uses social
media channels to manage its
brand presence online, identifying
who its audience and influencers
are, and measuring how effective it
is at reaching them. “We tailor our
content to be relevant and person-alized,
and respond in real time to
questions, comments and trends,”
says Ms Brookes.
“We do this at a corporate lev-el,
regional level and with specific
‘digital executives’ who share their
unique point of view. We are aim-ing
for two-way communication
with social platforms such as our
blog and Tumblr accounts.”
TWEETCHATS
Avanade hosts regular tweet-chats,
and even uses Instagram
and Pinterest. Though Instagram,
which isn’t typically used by large
companies, might seem like a
time-consuming and non-cost-ef-fective
use of labour, Avanade’s
chief marketing officer Stella Gou-let
says it’s a great way of human-ising
the company and showing its
personality, and this filters down
to the bottom line.
The company joined Instagram
about 18 months ago and says Ms
Goulet: “We leverage Instagram
with teams and customers at vari-ous
tradeshows, Formula 1 [motor
racing] events, as part of its spon-sorship
with Lotus F1 Team, and
showcase fun things happening in
our offices worldwide.”
Social tools such as Instagram
might not gather millions of follow-ers,
she says, but they, “ increase em-ployee
engagement and, hopefully,
communicate to potential recruits
that Avanade creates change”.
Research into consumerisation of
enterprise sales, published by Ava-nade
at the end of 2013, showed that
enterprise buyers are beginning to
mimic consumer shopping behav-iours
and the value of the customer
experience is now more important
than cost in the buying process.
The research found that the value
of the customer experience surpass-es
cost as the top factor in a busi-ness-
to-business (B2B) purchasing
decision. Customers report they
are willing to pay up to 30 per cent
more for a superior experience. In
fact, 56 per cent of those surveyed
report paying more for a product
in the last six months because the
customer experience was better
than other less expensive options.
According to the research, 61
per cent of B2B buyers report
third-party sites and feedback
from business partners, industry
peers or social channels as more
important than conversations
with a company’s sales team when
making a purchasing decision.
They also talk about their busi-ness
purchase decision publicly
– 32 per cent posted a review on
social media channels and 19 per
cent posted comments about the
company on Twitter.
Most companies know how to use social media to promote their
business, but some are building successful cohesive and supportive
online and offline customer communities, who are working almost as
hard to back the brand as the paid employees. Hazel Davis reports
Communities thrive
on shared interest,
engaging dialogue,
freely exchanged stories and
mutual support
Data
is key
Page 13
Image: Getty

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Case Study
RESIST SELF-INTEREST
Jim Prior, chief executive of
brand consultancies The Partners
and Lambie-Nairn, says: “Com-munities
are built in the virtual
world in the same ways as they are
in the physical world. They thrive
on shared interest, engaging di-alogue,
freely exchanged stories
and mutual support, and tend to
resist more dictatorial or self-in-terested
approaches.
“For companies, successful
community building requires a
different approach to the one-way
broadcast technique of traditional
marketing. It needs companies to
‘GRAZING’ FEEDS
THE BOTTOM LINE
Mail-order snack subscription compa-ny
graze has built an entire empire on
involving the customer in its develop-ment
process.
“A big part of graze is letting customers
influence the products we make and
the ones we stop making,” says Angus
McCarey, the company’s chief market-ing
officer. “They do this through the
ratings they give us.”
The company takes the 15,000
product ratings they get every hour on
their website and launch new products
every week in response to what the
customers are telling them.
“In fact,” says Mr McCarey, “it takes
a mere 24 hours to launch an entirely
new product thanks to communica-tions
technology, bespoke machinery
and a supply chain that is designed
around late customisation.”
Recently, the company even asked its
customers whether one of its more
controversial snacks – Holly’s Spicy
Satay – should stay in the range.
graze has a community of more
than 150,000 people on Facebook
between the US and UK. It also has
nearly 100,000 on Twitter and it has
started using social media to extend
its customer influence, “for instance
by letting people tell us whether a
particular recipe should be launched
or not”, says Mr McCarey.
The company tracks the number of
people who read its posts, and how
often they are shared and commented
on. “We’re proud that we often achieve
far higher levels on these metrics than
other brands or typical comparisons,”
he says.
“This data also allows graze to do
something that traditional retailers shy
away from – take risks and surprise
customers with a product they might
not usually choose. It creates a truly
novel customer experience.”
Because graze develops, manu-factures
and sells directly to the
consumer, unlike traditional retailers,
it gives the company a unique
relationship with its customers. It
prints personalised customer inserts
in every box sent out which, says
Mr McCarey, “enables us to know
whether a customer recommends us
to other people because they have a
unique code”.
The company takes the
15,000 product ratings they
get every hour on their website
and launch new products every week
in response to what the customers are
telling them
be prepared to listen and respond
to their audiences, in real time,
with honesty and humanity.
“They need to be prepared to
go ‘off-script’ – there’s no place in
social media for carefully crafted
press releases and catch-all cor-porate
blurb – and engage in con-versation
with their customers as
human beings would. They need
to think less about what they want
their customers to do and more
about what their customers might
like to do, providing them with in-vitations,
but not instructions, to
contribute and share their thoughts
and ideas. This kind of approach of-ten
goes against the instinct of large
Social media
marketing with
highest return
on investment
Facebook
Ratings and reviews
Twitter
LinkedIn
Participate in industry
Blog/forum
Company/brand
Community
YouTube
Company/brand blog
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Source: Raconteur
companies – it requires them, in
part, to cede some of the control of
their brand to the customer.”
And then, of course, this control
needs to be carefully managed. The
best companies do this in a very
subtle way. Mr Prior concludes:
“The key to managing them is to
stay a part of the dialogue with-out
appearing to exert too much
control. The most fundamentally
important point about building so-cial
media communities is to think
and act like a human being, not a
corporate machine.”

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EDITION #0284
Commercial Feature
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FUTURE OF WORK
16/10/14
EDITION #0000
Commercial Feature
Delivering optimum customer
experience is must-do for business
Brands must start looking at the customer experience
from the point of view of the customer, not their own – a
change that is easier to implement than many may think,
says Tash Whitmey, group chief executive of Havas EHS
We’ve all had the much-talked-about
experience. You visit a website, type
in your details, do a search and in-put
your preferences. Then you ring
the call centre… and go through the
whole business all over again be-cause
the person on the other end
of the line has no access to what
you’ve inputted.
Or you have a lengthy conversation
with the call centre representative, then
fi nd yourself having to repeat it yet again
when you visit the store.
Ironically, we clearly know what a cus-tomer
wants – because we are custom-ers.
Yet we have organisations who defi ne
themselves in silos, focusing on product
or operational deliverables, and still many
brands lag way behind their customers’
wants, while they struggle to put a cus-tomer-
fi rst philosophy into practice.
To put the customer experience fi rst
is now essential. There is no captive au-dience.
Customers are more demand-ing,
more selective and more savvy.
They want brands that are committed
to them and take time to understand
exactly what they want. If a brand fails
to recognise customer priorities, then
social media at every level provides a
powerful platform for customers to be
heard and deliver their choices. And in
turn a new wave of startups, such as
giffgaff or ASOS, fl eet of foot and with
no legacy systems, challenge well-es-tablished
brands to deliver a smoother,
more integrated customer journey.
CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE
We believe brands need to have the
ability to look at the customer experi-ence
through the lens of the customer
themselves, while being clear about
which parts of the organisation are con-tributing
to it – a two-way mirror.
But why do so many well-managed,
sales-led, hitherto successful brands
baulk at starting with the customer? In
a way you can hardly blame them. They
perceive the answer as being a potential
re-engineering of whole sections of the
organisation or replacement of entire IT
systems. And if that were the case – yes,
it would be pretty scary.
“Do we really have to change
everything?” clients often ask us. The
good news is that the answer to this
question is a resounding “No, you don’t.”
Changing everything is like boiling the
ocean when you really just want to make
a cup of tea.
The Havas EHS approach is we
make the difference that will make a
difference. We create a single way of
connecting all the different views of the
customer, from unknown to identifi able,
and work out how to manage all the in-teractions
in-between. Then we map a
customers’ journey to deliver new and
better experiences that, if tested and
work, are scaled up.
DATA IS GLUE
Data is the glue which creates our
insights and enables us to know where,
when, why and how to focus on creating
better customer experiences.
There are so many moments that a
customer “touches” a business, and
we need to be able to defi ne which we
should infl uence and where we can have
the most impact; not just what happens
“at the moment”, but what we do before
and after each interaction.
This is customer experience context.
Many businesses don’t have a view
about the data they have; they don’t
know what is available, what it means,
how it can be supplemented or where
it should be combined – digital data, as
well as transactional and social data,
web analytics, channel metrics, contex-tual
data, data from inside and outside
the business. I could go on – the broader
meta data which enables us to look at
the customer in entirety and use our cre-ative
and data intelligence to drive more
compelling and inspiring customer jour-neys
and moments of interaction.
We start with pilot strategies to deliv-er
proof of concept and build a common
approach which links back to business
objectives. And we blend our insights to
create experiences indistinguishable
MAKE THE DIFFERENCE THAT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE
INFLUENCES
TRIGGERS
EMOTION INTENT TO ACT
LANGUAGE RELATIONSHIPS
TIMING CHANNEL TOUCH POINTS
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
from excellent service. This approach
means that we don’t throw out existing
customer relationship management
(CRM) systems or reinvent tools or tech-niques.
It means we can work with what
is there, creating fast, fl exible and quick
ways to deliver real business value.
In the beginning CRM was designed
to replicate the old-fashioned grocer ex-perience,
where you were known, recog-nised
and delighted. The difference was
the grocer was able to use face-to-face
interactions to gather a deeper context
from the customer – what was important,
why it was important, what the customer
was or was not happy with.
What we now need to do is replicate
the ability to gather that context utilising
the plethora of data available to us. This
will enable us to hear and enable our cli-ent
to give customers what they want.
By introducing the context of the cus-tomer
experience, we can really under-stand
a customer’s needs. So we look
at the customer’s situation. Where are
they? In a store or in the street with a
mobile device? We also think about how
they’re feeling? As they interact with
the brand, are they excited, anxious or
unhappy? What happened before the
transaction? Did they try another route
to getting an answer, but couldn’t fi nd it?
The imperative for brands to adapt
has never been greater – empower the
customer by adopting their perspective,
so the customer gets what they want and
the business achieves its objectives.
For example, we are providing a clear
“next best action” for customers booking
a fl ight with easyJet, whether through the
contact centre because of direct com-munications,
or through the website. Our
communications and customer experi-ence
has to deliver the right information
to the customer based on signals they are
sending, as well as provide compelling
reasons to take those actions.
In summary, regardless of where
your brand is, what its barriers are
and at which point on the journey you
are, the necessity is to fi nd the com-mitment
to this approach across the
business. Start small, understand
your data landscape to fi nd something
meaningful to customers. Test it, learn
what works and then scale it into day-to-
day business. Your customers will
reward you for the effort.
#HAVASCX
CUSTOMER CONTEXT
The imperative for brands to adapt
has never been greater – empower the
customer by adopting their perspective, so the
customer gets what they want and the business
achieves its objectives

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Customer Data
IN THE VANGUARD
OF UNLOCKING DATA
Businesses are deluged by data – a wave of
information that has opened up new possibilities
for a far-sighted few, writes Marcus Leroux
The proliferation of con-nected
devices, from tab-let
computers to the inter-net
of things, saturated broadband
coverage and the rise of the mobile
internet has all lead to reams of in-formation
about customers. At the
same time, improved software plat-forms
and analytics better enable
this information to be harnessed.
A better use of the wealth of data
lurking in the cloud, in customer
relationship management systems
and in sales figures can improve
customer retention and satisfaction
– and, ultimately, the bottom line.
But there are inherent challeng-es
and tensions in using data. First,
customers can find it unnerving if
a company knows too much about
them. Second, the security of data is
a major concern as high-profile data
breaches appear all too common for
the public. Most recently, J.P. Mor-gan
Chase fell victim to a hack that
compromised the accounts of 73
million American households.
Getting hold of the data can be is
as big a problem as keeping it safe.
Asda’s challenge has historically
been that it lacks a loyalty card,
unlike its two biggest rivals Tesco
and J Sainsbury. If a company has
no way of tying baskets of goods to
particular individuals, then it must
rely on batch-processed, top-level,
aggregated data, an approach that
many have already consigned to the
20th century.
SMARTPHONES
Part of Asda’s attempted solu-tion
has been to find ways to tempt
consumers into making that link.
Last year the supermarket group
introduced a trial run of a tech-nology
that allowed customers to
scan products as they go around
the aisles using their smartphones,
making the check-out process re-dundant.
According to Asda chief
executive Andy Clarke, the need
to gather data was a key part of the
motivation.Chris Nott, IBM’s chief
technology officer for big data an-alytics
in the UK, says he has ob-served
two new trends in recent
months. “Firstly, organisations are
taking a much more rounded view of
customers, and trying to understand
their current context so they can be
much more personal and individu-al
in their interactions. They want
to be much more seamless across
channels and they also want to be
much more in-the-moment in terms
of applying insights,” he says.
“That’s driving demand for re-al-
time capabilities. They want to
use data while the customer is with
you, rather than after they have left.”
Social media represents the sec-ond
new frontier, but is an awkward
part of the jigsaw to integrate with
other data sources. “There are some
technology components which will
help you to realise that single view
of the customer,” says Mr Nott.
“It’s also about having a coherent
approach to technology across the
organisation so that you can take on
increasing numbers of data sources,
such as website activity, mobile app
usage or social media, which you
need to be facilitated into the struc-ture
if you want to build up that
richer picture of how a customer
interacts with you.”
Consumers appear to be show-ing
an increasing willingness to let
companies share their information
by signing in to services or online
stores via their Facebook or Twit-ter
accounts.
Some 84 per cent of 18 to 34 year
olds use social login when register-ing
or signing in to websites, allow-ing
brands access to some of their
profile data, compared with 59 per
cent for the population overall.
Patrick Salyer, chief executive of
social login and consumer manage-ment
technology specialists Gigya,
says that allowing sign-in through
social media yields better data and a
better relationship with customers.
“Personalisation depends on access
to high-quality and authentic data
about customers. If you ask custom-ers
for permission to use their data
and explain what you are going to
collect and why, you will learn more
and establish a foundation of loyalty
and trust,” he says.
The advantage of superior data,
pioneered through supermarket
loyalty schemes such as Tesco’s
Clubcard in the late-1990s, is the
ability to target customers with of-fers
tailored especially for them.
SHOPPING JOURNEY
The next phase of the develop-ment,
for retailers such as Kroger
in the United States and Metro of
Germany, is targeted offers that ar-rive
on a mobile device as a shopper
strolls through the store. This capa-bility
to offer a promotion to a con-sumer
at precisely the right moment
in the shopping journey is already
standard among grocery websites,
such as Ocado in the UK and Fresh
Direct in the US.
In the cut-throat world of mobile
phone network operators, better
targeting of offers and marketing
can prevent customers defecting.
Pakistan’s Ufone at one point had
a churn rate of 3 per cent a month,
which meant that it had to replace
nearly one customer in every 30
monthly just to stand still. It shifted
away from conventional marketing
campaigns – flyers, TV advertis-ing
and so on – in favour of a more
targeted and analytical approach.
It found that customers who were
under-using their pre-pay packages
were more likely to leave, and so it
developed offers targeted at particu-lar
types of user, which increased
customer satisfaction scores and
reduced churn.
In the insurance industry, Infinity
in the US used analysis of fraud cas-es
to reduce the workload of its loss
adjusters by weeding out certain
low-risk accidents, which cut costs
radically and speeded up payments.
The return on investment was more
or less instant and customers were
less agitated by delays in payments.
Such virtuous circles – saving
money by using data to give the
customer what they want when they
want it – will become increasingly
common for businesses at the van-guard
of unlocking data. But experts
say that the key is in asking the right
questions – data is a means, not an
end in itself.
Gigya’s Mr Salyer concludes: “Or-ganisations
must reject the outdat-ed,
and quite frankly careless, no-tion
of asking as many questions and
collecting as much data as possible,
then sorting through it later.”
The key is in asking
the right questions –
data is a means, not
an end in itself
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21/10/14
EDITION #0284
P00 POWERING THE FUTURE
15/0000
Commercial Feature
What customer experience
really means for retailers
The phrase customer experience is frequently used, but
defining it is less easy. That’s why customer centricity
consultancy 5one has developed five essential principles of
customer experience, says chief strategy officer Trish Ferguson
Every decade has its business
buzzwords. Today it’s almost im-possible
to talk about customer
engagement and loyalty without
hearing the phrase “the customer
experience”. The words might be
familiar, but what do they actual-ly
mean? Ask ten marketers and
you’ll probably get ten very differ-ent
definitions.
In parallel, the growth of big data of-fers
huge potential for understanding
customers and their experiences more
precisely, and at a more granular level
than ever before. However, it can raise
more questions than it answers.
At 5one we recognise that sifting
through the vast and expanding ocean
of facts, figures and other records that
big data offers is overwhelming. We work
with businesses to identify the informa-tion
they can use to really understand
customers, and help them focus on
what is relevant to them and what they
actually need. This is increasingly impor-tant
as more data becomes available.
Big data needs to be distilled into action-able
information.
FIVE PRINCIPLES OF
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
At 5one we don’t just manage data, we
use it to help clients understand the full
customer journey and so, we're increas-ingly
finding ourselves helping a wide
range of retailers and other businesses
to analyse their customer experience,
and to transform it into something they
can action to leapfrog their competitors.
At 5one we’ve developed what we call the
five principles of customer experience. As
a leading customer centricity consultan-cy,
we find these simple rules help our
clients as they seek to understand their
customers better and develop more ef-fective
engagement strategies.
A customer’s value to a business
is driven by their experiences.
This means that each interaction, good
or bad, a customer has with a brand has
an impact on the way they view that
brand. The experience is a cumulative
impact of all their interactions and in
turn determines their value. Historically
there has been a focus on what consum-ers
are buying as a way of understanding
their behaviour at the point of purchase.
However, we’re finding that in order to
be able to deliver a personalised cus-tomer
experience, businesses need to
analyse more than just this one part of
the journey.
Customers’ experiences are
broader than simply transact-ing.
In fact, the customer journey is
cyclical. We interrogate data to under-stand
the complete customer journey
when they consider a purchase, read
a review or have a conversation; when
they shop in store or online; and after-wards
when they enjoy (or otherwise)
their purchase, speaking to customer
support or reviewing on social media.
Customer value is both personal
and social, so it’s vital that cus-tomers
aren’t just measured by the val-ue
of their shopping baskets. They must
also be evaluated by their influence,
their online reviews, social media and
blogs, among other outlets. Creating
and recognising advocates is key to suc-cessful
businesses.
Customers seek different ex-periences,
dependent on both
their personal preferences and their
shopping situation. For example, when
a customer buys a sandwich at lunch-time,
they want the experience to be
quick and easy. On the other hand,
when the same customer buys trainers
from a specialist store, they expect ex-pert
advice and time devoted to them
to understand their needs. Depend-ing
on whether the retailer is selling
sandwiches or trainers, the customer
experience they provide will be very
different and so each retailer must
offer the customer experience that is
appropriate to them. Brands need to
tailor this experience depending on
where they play in the retail space.
In addition, they will have to take into
account the individual customer and
the situation in which they find them-selves
to create the most appropriate
customer experience.
Simple rules help our
clients to understand
their customers better
and develop more effective
engagement strategies
You can't maintain or enhance
customer experience without
understanding and measuring it. We
work with our clients to help them con-tinually
improve the experience they
give their customers. With marketing
campaigns, for instance, we ask have
we increased sales to the customers
we’ve targeted? With website chang-es,
have we decreased the rate of
abandoned baskets?
Customers are becoming increasingly
demanding and vocal, so understanding
their customer journey is more important
than ever. But every retailer is different
so, as well as recognising the complete
customer journey, we enhance the jour-ney
through our personalisation tools. At
5one we can implement the right tools
and solutions for your business, which
ultimately leads to giving each customer
their desired experience.
For more information please visit
www.5one.com
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND ENGAGEMENT
It takes twelve positive
experiences to make up for one
unresolved negative experience
=
NEWS OF BAD CUSTOMER SERVICES REACHES TWICE AS MANY PEOPLE AS
PRAISE FOR GOOD SERVICE EXPERIENCE
9 people hear of
happy customers 22 people hear of
unhappy customers
80%
of companies say they deliver
superior customer service
8%
of people think these same
companies deliver superior
customer service
15%
of incremental sales per
customer can be driven through
personalised experiences
CONSIDER
ENJOY
SHOP
Becomes aware of
offerings and begins
consideration
Enters the store or
site and makes a
purchase or booking
Uses and talks
about their purchase
CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE

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Opinion
CUSTOMER FOCUS
IS CENTRE STAGE
Two experts in customer experience
consider the future for business-to-consumer
and business-to-business
companies in fast-changing times
The 2014 Temkin Experience
Ratings found that only 7 per
cent of 268 business-to-con-sumer
(B2C) companies earned excel-lent
ratings. On the surface that seems
pretty bad. Less than one in ten com-panies
provides great customer expe-rience.
So are consumers destined to
B2C
live in a world of mediocre customer
experience?
Not likely. The story changes when
we take a longer-term view. Compar-ing
the Temkin ratings from 2011 to
2014 shows that the percentage of
companies with good or excellent cus-tomer
experience has grown from 16
per cent to 37 per cent, while the per-centage
with poor or very poor ratings
has dropped from 48 per cent to 25 per
cent. Consumers may not be getting
great customer experience, but it’s
trending in the right direction.
The outlook is good for consumers.
Nearly six out of ten large companies
that Temkin recently surveyed are
aiming to be the best at customer ex-
B2B
The experience which customers
of business-to-business (B2B)
companies have will pretty
obviously vary enormously from one
organisation to the next and from one
sector to the next. At one extreme, you
have professional services firms, where
key clients are managed by partners
and therefore the customer experience
is highly personalised; at the other, you
have highly commoditised markets such
as bulk office, where price is everything,
brand counts for very little and ongoing
relationships are tenuous.
Clearly both the nature of the custom-er
and the value that they represent to
the organisation are key in defining the
experience that an individual will receive.
Although the vast majority of B2B
organisations exist in between these
Bruce Temkin, chairman and
co-founder of the Customer
Experience Professionals
Association, says the future
of business-to-consumer
customer experience is bright
Joel Harrison, editor in chief
and co-founder of B2B
Marketing, explains why
business-to-business brands
are waking up to a customer
experience revolution
1
2
3
4
perience in their industry within three
years. They have good reason to be.
Temkin Group’s latest return-on-in-vestment
research shows that a mod-est
increase in customer experience
at a typical $1-billion company can
generate an additional $370 million in
revenues over three years.
If you’re a B2C company and aren’t
focused on customer experience, you
should consider these questions:
• Are consumers likely to expect less?
• Are your competitors going to
get worse?
• Is technology going to lower the bar?
For most of you, the answers are no,
no and no.
To succeed in the future, you will
need to know more about your cus-tomers,
use that information to re-spond
more quickly to their changing
needs and recover in lightning speed to
any mistakes.
FOUR CORE COMPETENCIES
Improving customer experience isn’t
easy. Companies can’t just slap on a ve-neer
of customer experience on top of
their complex organisations and expect
that consumers will find them easy to work
with. To make sustainable improvements,
companies must master what Temkin
Group calls the four customer experience
core competencies:
PURPOSEFUL LEADERSHIP
Companies need to (re)introduce a
clear purpose for their organisation that is
more compelling than increased profits – a
raison d’être that aligns the myriad of day-to-
day decisions.
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Engaged employees are valuable as-sets
for business health plans. They trigger
a “virtuous cycle” driving good customer
experience and superior business results.
Our research shows that engaged employ-ees
try harder, engage customers and drive
stronger business results.
COMPELLING BRAND VALUES
True brands are more than just mar-keting
slogans – they’re the fabric that
aligns all employees with customers in the
pursuit of a common cause. Companies
need to clearly define their brands in terms
of promises to customers, and find ways to
get all employees to understand, embrace
and deliver on those promises.
CUSTOMER CONNECTEDNESS
In most companies, decisions are
made with woefully little customer in-sight.
People often rely on their “gut feel”
or outdated anecdotes about customer
needs, desires and feedback. But any com-pany
that wants to improve its customer
experience needs to embed deep custom-er
insight in every aspect of its operations.
two polarised extremes, their focus on
customer experience has often been
conspicuous by its absence.
This has in part been due to the age-old
tussle between sales and marketing for
primacy – the key question being, “who
owns the customer?”
Historically sales has had the upper
hand in many organisations, being given
responsibility for the bottom, and often
much of the middle, of the traditional
buying funnel. Marketing was margin-alised
to top-of-funnel, driving aware-ness,
and sales personnel were reluctant
to let anyone else in on a potentially ex-tremely
valuable relationship that they
had fostered.
But the onset of the digital age is in-creasingly
making the old-fashioned
funnel redundant – the notion of the
funnel depended on brands being in
control of the information exchange,
and business customers being contact-ed
at a time and place when it suited
the brand.
Today, Google and the power of
searchable content, including videos,
slideshares, infographics and so on,
means buyers are now in control, and
are only willing to engage with sales at
a time to suit them, when much of the
decision-making process has already
been taken place.
MARKETING IN DRIVING SEAT
This means that sales no longer
owns the customer, marketing is now
in the driving seat, and is increasingly
responsible for all aspects of interac-tion,
both before, during and after the
purchase. B2B marketers have never
been in a better position to drive and
determine their customers’ experi-ence
of their brands. Marketers are
increasingly waking up to this new
level of authority and the consequent
responsibilities.
And that’s a good thing too, because
increasingly social media is changing
the ground-rules regarding custom-ers’
expectations. The “instant gratifi-cation”
culture of generation Y, those
who have grown up with the internet,
demands that queries or complaints be
answered decisively and immediately,
rather than vaguely and after signifi-cant
hassle. Put another way, the op-portunity
to call, e-mail or write to an
organisation, to receive a response in
their time, is laughably unacceptable.
Social media-enabled customers or
prospects demand better from their
business product or service providers,
and if they don’t get it, will complain vo-ciferously
and visibly, just as they will in
their consumer lives.
Proving a good customer experience,
in good times and bad, is no longer an
option in B2B – it’s an essential. Those
B2B organisations that don’t acknowl-edge
and embrace this are living on
borrowed time.