Positioning to win attracting consumers

Let’s get the politics out of the way first…

I’ve been observing with keen interest the general election build-up as each party unveils their manifesto plans for leading the UK forward. There was a wry smile on my face to read in this morning’s headline that the Conservatives are now ‘the party of the working people’ a claim long held by the Labour camp. The reality is when you unpick the ideological rhetoric, at a policy level the main parties have become more alike in their convergence towards the centre in recent years.

This loosely leads me onto the role of brand positioning…

Let’s face it, like politics there’s a lot of very similar brands out there trying to grab attention in what is already an over communicated world. From the moment we get up to whenever we slump back into bed we’re bombarded with over 3,500 marketing messages each and every single day. So how do brands cut through the clutter?

Many marketing text books say the easiest way to get into people’s minds is to be the first brand to enter a specific market. Which suggests the hard way is to be 2^nd, 3^rd…or last to enter a market. While there is some truth behind first-mover advantage, it’s over simplistic to suggest that brands which subsequently enter a market are already dead in the water.  Here’s a couple of early day Internet examples either side of the fence to illustrate:

1. First mover failure - Netscape, the first to market an Internet browser, enjoyed massive initial success before being supplanted by the rise of Microsoft’s Explorer browser.
2. Subsequent mover success – While Yahoo might not have been the very first search engine on the market it was massively popular by the time Google entered the market 2 years later.  And we all know who won that battle, with the coining of the new verb ‘to Google it’.

First mover advantage is dependent upon many factors including the situation a company faces in the market place, as the table below courtesy of HBR shows:

The reality is subsequent movers into a market can learn from and capitalize on the mistakes of earlier entrants. But to do so, they can’t fight fire with fire. What I mean by this is whilst the end product may sometimes be similar (think Coke and Pepsi) developing an ownable and compelling brand positioning is necessary to succeed. So this rules out been seen as a ‘me-too’ brand relegated to an also-ran in the category. And it also rules out falling into the ‘everybody’ trap of trying to build a position that tries to be all things to all people.

Middle of the road is for road-kill…

If you have something that is a little better than the competition then that is a good start point. However to borrow from Seth Godin ‘it is more important to be different than to be better’. Which leads me back to politics. To gain attention, political parties like brands must stand for something that provides a compelling point of differentiation.

Or to look at it another way, as Jim Hightower, a colourful Texas populist, is bluntly fond of saying, "there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos."  

Something for Dave and Ed to think about.

(First posted to Linked In, 14/04/2015).

On the road to customer excellence

Supporting the bottom line

I’m very passionate about attaining excellence in the customer experience, both in my work and private life.  I know I'm not alone in that respect - in fact a past American Express study, showed that receiving great customer service triggers the same cerebral reactions as feeling loved.  And it’s not only good for the heart, but good for business too. An Accenture study established that 66% of consumers switch brands due to poor customer service – with 82% of those switching saying the brand could have done something to stop them.

And the great news from a consumer perspective is that many companies cite Customer Experience as their number one priority in 2015 and beyond.

Strengthening the weakest link

Across the customer journey there can be many types of possible interactions from consideration to purchase to consumption to managing potential post-purchase dissonance and the ongoing value relationship.

Therefore a company is only as strong as its weakest link given the many different points of interaction worthy of consideration.

For example great User Experience (UX)  - say through a website interface to purchase a product - doesn’t equate to a great Customer Experience (CX), if for example, consumers are let down by customer services being unable to answer subsequent questions. A failure in one part of the experience is all it takes to create a negative impression. In this particular case UX is one element within the overall CX.

That’s why seeing the big picture and developing a holistic approach is vitally important to achieving overall excellence.

    

So who champions this?

Taking a bottom-up approach that empowers and supports key ground-floor staff to provide customer excellence is essential across the client organisation.  It also needs top down senior level sponsorship to help imagine, foster and deliver this too. But who ‘owns’ sponsorship of this experience:

-          Is it Customer Services?

-          Perhaps Sales?

-          Possibly Marketing?

-          Or maybe Operations?

Any of the above functions could lay claim to this. However, arguably individual ownership within a function won’t deliver the best outcome. Not even if the senior executive co-ordinates across all groups within the company. Put simply they are unlikely to achieve an enterprise wide solution if their primary priority and attention is still the remit of their own department.

So given the importance of this role, many larger organisations, especially in the US are investing in dedicated Chief Customer Officer (CCO) roles. The role of the CCO is to then imagine, define and orchestrate their customer strategies across the entire organisation through championing and acting on behalf of the consumer.

Ready, steady, go…

Finally, some pointers for client organisations to think about on the road to achieving customer excellence:

1.  Focus on the sweetspot where customer value and business value intersect
2. Think about the entire customer journey to address the weakest links across the entire organisation
3. Develop a mix of top-down sponsorship and bottom-up empowerment that moves beyond silo ownership of the customer to enterprise ownership to drive excellence across the client organisation
4. Adopt outside-in thinking through customer feedback loops to gather and act upon valuable insights as well as learning from comparators best-in-class experiences. 
5. Promote and foster a ‘brain-trust’ type working environment for partner agencies to collaborate together and excel in delivering a fully joined-up superior customer experience 

What does it mean to make a brand promise and deliver on it?

Let’s start with an upfront disclosure. I’m a lifelong customer of NatWest.  They got me as a 17 year old student with some long forgotten freebie incentive. A classic case of bait and hook. And while I don’t feel any particularly strong loyalty to them, I’m still with them all these years later in what I’d best describe as being a ‘passively satisfied customer’.

A few years back they launched ‘Helpful Banking’, and while no longer overt within their marketing, it’s a legacy they continue with. While it initially attracted some flak and a fair few detractors they started building some credibility beyond marketing say-so, through actions mandated via their customer charter.

Earlier today I saw a nice little video on Facebook - a sponsored post - with the enticing invite ‘we’d like you to meet Janet’ which made me think of Helpful Banking. It turns out Janet is super happy with her Cashback Plus Credit Card which gives cashback rewards on everything she buys using her card.

However I’d like to introduce you to ‘Mike’ from NatWest who I had a telephone conversation with a couple of weeks ago.

It turned out Mike was my personal bank manager.

Even though I’d never asked for one.

I’ve never met Mike.

But he was forever calling.

Probably because I kept ducking out of his calls.

Too busy you see.

But Mike was persistent.

He really wanted to be helpful.

Mike seemed to know an awful lot about me too – in a scary big brother kind of way.

And he wanted to make sure I had the proper financial products and coverage.

Like mortgage protection. And travel insurance. And lots of other ‘stuff’.

I think Mike was maybe trying to sell to me.

Which was the real reason I’d been ducking out of his calls to begin with.

I tell him I don’t need much of a relationship with my bank.

An online banking service that works.

Decent returns on my savings account (I wish).

Access via ATM’s.

And someone to speak to if I need any help or have any queries.

Or being proactive and letting me know of a better account to switch to.

That would be a nice first.

We then discuss a problem with my branch around updating security credentials.

He said he’d sort it out.

So we left the call at that.

And then I didn’t hear from him.

So I chased him up.

By email.

Twice.

Nothing.

I was quite content not having a personal relationship with my bank.

Until Mike popped up.

Then he raised my expectations.

And failed to deliver.

Now I feel grieved and hard-done by.

You see I believe Mike was thinking transactional relationship.

Not customer relationship.

So if Mike ever phones again I’ll be back to ducking his calls.

The moral of this tale is a simple one. If you make a promise, then make good on that promise. That goes for brands too. Whatever a brand promises to stand for has to be 100%. At all levels of the organisation and across all touchpoints.  

And Mike if you’re reading this. Apologies – it’s nothing personal.