The customer experience

Converse, or Chuck Taylor All Star, has just launched its ‘Made by You’ campaign to celebrate the brand’s 100th anniversary. In essence, the company will display thousands of portraits of customers wearing their rubber-toed basketball ‘sneakers’ (that’s trainers in English).  

The company hopes that this campaign will photo-document the ‘individual’ and the ‘unapologetic’ way of how this iconic brand of trainers are worn by people all over the world. In the words of Geoff Cottril (VP – Brand Manager, Converse): ‘People have used Converse as a badge for self-expression for decades now.’ 

‘Made by You’ will tap into that self-expression and (hopefully) the pictures will show the world through the eyes of peoples’ trainers. The portraits will appear in a street-level “gallery” in New York’s Flatiron district and Converse fans that don’t live in New York, will be able to view and share the portraits through social media feeds including Instagram and Facebook.

Before going any further, I must confess that I am a big fan of Converse and I ‘unapologetically’ love the brand even though I am now a ‘young’ 40-year old. I love what the brand stands for, its history and its powerful simplicity. Yet despite all this brand admiration, the product itself is also very good. My point being that it is not just brilliant marketing and brand building. Converse trainers are excellent: comfortable, all ways stylish (they never seem to go out of fashion), flexible (you can wear them in a variety of social situations) and durable (they tend to last for a long time). 

The point I am trying to hammer home is that clever branding on its own, which ‘Made by You’ undoubtedly is, simply isn’t enough. The brand promise must be kept and this can only be done if the product and the customer experience live up to that promise over time. 

In the words of Converse ‘Made by You’ campaign: ‘Our mission is to unleash the Creative Spirit through products and experiences that inspire and enable each of our consumers to be his or her true, authentic self.’ 

Business people out there need to appreciate that we are now all in the business of delivering customer experiences. Great products alone are no longer enough nor are great marketing campaigns. You need to deliver great customer experiences. 

In fact, business research shows that measuring the satisfaction on customer journeys is 30% more predictive of customer satisfaction than traditional satisfaction surveys. Why? Because that’s all that matters in today’s day and age: the customer experience. In fact, paying attention and investing in the customer journey and making the customer experience consistently good, has the potential to increase customer overall satisfaction by 20% and to lift revenue by up to 15% (Source: McKinsey). 

The problem is that businesses today operate across multiple channels, hence if the customer experience varies (i.e. it is not consistent) across these channels you actually undermine your brand. It is, therefore, important that businesses take a journey-based approach to understanding the customer experience and invest in improving it. 

Here are four tips to help you improve the ‘customer experience’: 

1. Make sure the customer experience – ranging from employees answering the phone, to serving customers in a shop or interacting through social media – is always consistent. There is no point having a wonderful FB page but a lousy, slow, response on the phone; 

2. Identify the five most important customer-journeys and focus on improving them. I would suggest the customer-journeys that contribute the most to your profit formula; 

3. Give priority to removing ‘negative experiences’ immediately, since business research shows that ‘…a single negative experience has four to five times greater impact than a positive one’ (Source: McKinsey);  

4. Set up a committee to track the progress and identify ways how to innovate and improve the customer experience. The committee will need to come up with metrics needed to measure performance in this regard. 

The truth is that the customer experience is the next competitive battle ground. I used Converse as my example in this article not just because I have an affinity for the brand but also because I think they do a good job in delivering a valuable customer experience. 

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes (excuse the pun) and carefully understand the experience you are offering them. If it sucks improve it and if it is good, make it better. 

Finally, make sure you are consistent in delivering across all sales and communication channels a uniquely, valuable customer experience, since this is where your competitive advantage primarily comes from. 

In the words of Maya Angelou: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ 

Conclusion: I hope your customer experience makes customers feel good.