Why polished diamonds beat polished turds

Isn’t it great when reality exceeds expectation?

This blog was inspired by a recent visit to Glasgow. More through necessity rather than choice I ended up staying at a Premier Inn. Being my first visit I thought it would be along the lines of Travel Lodge – lost cost and functional. However I was pleasantly surprised to find my room was spacious enough to bring agoraphobics out in a cold sweat. The bed was king-size, topped with a choice of soft or firm pillows depending on your preference with a great night’s sleep money back guarantee thrown in for good measure. The staff were incredibly friendly and helpful. Kids under 16 can stay and eat for free. The full fry up breakfast was great quality and offered lots of choice – with the best part being you could munch through as much as you wanted for £8.95 (which for me with hollow legs was like manna from heaven). And the check-out time was a leisurely 12 noon.

What’s not to like?  And the fact that I’m sharing this with you shows how the power of a great experience instigates word of mouth recommendation, which is the most powerfully persuasive form of ‘marketing’.

However not all companies are like Premier Inn…

Isn’t it shitty when expectation is let-down by reality?

Do you recall a time when a product or service failed to live up to expectation? I bet you can as unfortunately there are still plenty of brands guilty of delivering a sub-par experience.

Now, think of an airline company renowned for poor customer service. I would also wager that many of you immediately thought of Ryanair. Their CEO Michael O’Leary has famously been quoted in the past as saying  customers are  “idiots”, people that forget to print their boarding pass are “stupid” and told anyone looking for a refund to “**** off”.

Which is counter-intuitive, when you think how successful they’ve become in catering to 81 million passengers a year.  Or had.

It’s time to step up to the plate

As Bob Dylan once sang, ‘times are a changing’. Today, empowered buyers are increasingly demanding a new level of customer obsession. More connected, more informed and more discerning they are less inclined to put up with hyped up marketing promises some companies resort to (at great expense) to shore up shoddy experiences.

So it’s not surprising to see time also catch up with Ryanair who have recently seen passenger numbers dive resulting in them issuing a first profit warning in 10 years. However what is really interesting is that Ryanair is now looking to cast off its ‘bad-boy’ image having realised that customers do have a choice and that customer respect is necessary as good value isn’t solely represented by low price.

As a result of upping its customer service and improving its website experience Ryanair is now shifting its strategy and marketing budget to focus on more brand-led campaigns as they seek to attract a less price sensitive wider audience. Such improvements include cutting some fees, introducing allocated seating and offering a grace period where people can make minor alterations to bookings. O’Leary himself has even gone on a charm offensive aimed at addressing its poor reputation for customer service. “We want to people to like flying with us not just for the savings but also because they like us,” he says. As U-turns go it’s a biggie, however Ryanair have rightly taken the approach of putting the delivery in place before driving awareness around the ‘promise’.  A canny case of credibility before visibility.

Smart brands are flying high

Brands that put customer experience at the heart of their strategy lead the way with hard evidence from Forrester showing that a focus on creating great customer experiences far outperform the laggards in terms of total return.

This is supported by further research evidence from Accenture:

‘UK consumers are unimpressed by brands’ customer service in digital channels leading 53 per cent to switch brands in at least one industry.’

It  also estimates that the UK’s ‘switching economy’ – comprising the revenue from consumers who leave one brand for another each year – is worth £116bn, or 12% of UK consumers’ annual disposable income. This is partly the result of companies focusing marketing efforts on bringing in new customers rather than seeking to retain the ones they already have.

Accordingly, 36% of consumers rate their loyalty towards brands as 1 to 3 on a 10-point scale, with only 16% rating it from 8 to 10.

Coming back to airlines, in Australia the Promise Index, which measures whether a consumer’s experience exceeds their expectations, placed Air New Zealand (ANZ) joint top in their findings. It found that value for money, creating a customer experience and being empathetic to customer’s specific needs are what counts when it comes cultivating consumer loyalty.  ANZ’s commitment to customers is reflected in their company values which state ‘We serve all our customers with the belief that if we can make them smile or enjoy their day, it is such a privilege to us.’

Not unexpectedly, ANZ recently reported a 29% rise in interim profit before tax outshining other airlines in the sector. Perhaps another reason why Ryanair is belatedly beginning to taking notice?

It’s the age of the customer

As Accenture says, today the journey is continuous because the touchpoints consumers are exposed to are ‘always on’, and customers can constantly re-evaluate their purchase options. In what they call the “Nonstop Customer Model”, it is easier for customers to compare a provider’s promise versus delivery, and how the overall experience matches up to their own expectations.  Furthermore they say that companies that play to win recognise that today’s customers will define their own experience based on their personal expectations and needs.

More companies are waking up to this fact. The SODA Report 2014 asked companies to identify the ‘single most exciting opportunity for 2014’. The highest ranked response was ‘customer experience’.

For an optimal customer experience, I’d suggest companies need to ensure they have a deep understanding of human behaviour, harnessed creatively with the right technology and aligned to a flexible and responsive culture with an emphasis on ongoing testing and learning. At we are experience we’d go further to suggest it’s not enough to just deliver a good product or service experience at an operational level (such as airplanes running to schedule). Instead to prosper in the longer term, companies must seek to raise customer satisfaction through the roof with forward thinking ideas that enrich the overall experience and disrupt conventional market norms (such as when ANZ introduced the world’s first lie down economy bed in 2010).

For brands still faking it, now is the time to step up.  After all a shiny turd by any other name is still a turd. Surely it is far better to invest in polished diamonds by creating products and services that are worth talking about and delight consumers.

(Extract of a blog originally posted on the service design consultancy we are experience website - http://www.weareexperience.com/).