Developing Bespoke Customer Experience

‘Customer Experience’ is a new terminology that many businesses are now focusing their efforts on, but what does it mean, and should your business be thinking about how your customers interact with your people, brands and organisation?

Put simply, Customer Experience is the experience customers have with every interaction with your business. From the meetings they have with your teams, from the emails they receive, to the interaction they have with the switch board or reception when they call or make a visit, to the brand marketing or company updates they receive. Every piece of communication or touch point creates a customer experience; It all creates a picture.

Customer experience is also in reference to consumer and shopper interactions with brands and corporations.  Today, we see consumer and shopper preferences shifting, which is driving a retail revolution of on demand ordering and delivery, with Amazon providing 2hr delivery slots and Ocado offering a 25-minute window inside of the M25. This creates a revolution in not only what you buy, but how you buy it.  Online is a material threat to big box retail.

As a result, retailers are responding to these changes in the environment by looking at hard cost. In the last few years we have seen Waitrose, Tesco and ASDA reducing head office costs. ASDA Watford used to be a £1.8m per week with c.600 colleagues, now it does £1.4m a week with 300 colleagues – which creates a gap in resource and focus, what does this mean for your products in the aisle?

This focus on reducing costs, also drives more of an internal focus rather than an outward one, and one that certainly doesn’t allow for partnership and development with suppliers and brands. So how do you get your foot in the door, to ensure that your brands are at the forefront, and that you are creating a positive customer experience? We believe, there are some key areas to focus on:

• Strategy and Rhythm: Be clear on where you want to get to and how you are going to get there; but at the same time, ensure it is aligned to the rhythm of your customers
• Skills and Tools: Provide the skills and tools your teams need to make a positive impact and be effective. Capability development is about change, it’s always a journey for the individual, the team and the company. Focusing on real issues, real work, not theory
• Metrics: You have to set, measure, coach and accredit common standards, to drive professionalism, improvement, ethics and diversity.
• Mindset: Instill the right behaviours and disciplines that are aligned to the strategy and rhythm to get where you need to be.

We call it our Pure Blue Ocean Success Framework.  Providing the tools, capability, direction and giving people the right mindset to win with customers. It is as critical as the products and services you market.

If you need help with your customer experience, contact us at help@pureblueocean.com