Spotlight: Customer experience will be the winner in new competitive battlefield

Pro
Aisling Bolger, Marketology

11 April 2016

In 2015, Gartner predicted back that by the end of 2016, 89% of companies will focus on customer experience as their primary basis for competition. To directly quote Jake Sorofman, research director at Gartner, “In many industries, hyper-competition has eroded traditional product and service advantages, making customer experience the new competitive battlefield”. Nearly three-quarters of companies expect to increase technology spending on customer experience in 2016.” 

Spotlight_Small

A company’s reputation, people and traditional product and service based differentiators are no longer enough to set it apart from its competition. Businesses need to become much smarter about how they influence consumers purchasing decisions. Enter the new differentiator, Customer Experience! If businesses really want to succeed and establish ongoing meaningful connections with their customers, then customer experience has to be at the epicentre of a brand’s DNA. This approach places understanding and improving the customer experience at the centre of every boardroom discussion. Customer experience can no longer be an add-on or an afterthought. It is now the Holy Grail. Companies who don’t adapt won’t survive long-term.

Real value is created when you connect customers with a valuable experience that is customised for them. Digitally empowered customers can now choose to interact with brands when and how they want. This ‘on-demand’ mentality has created customers that have increasingly high expectations. It has also created a huge opportunity for smart marketers to make an enormous and tangible impact on brand equity and value. As a result, the experience that you provide for your customers is of paramount importance and has to be the number one focus in both business and marketing strategies.

“If businesses really want to succeed and establish ongoing meaningful connections with their customers, then customer experience has to be at the epicentre of a brand’s DNA”

Customer experience is an all-encompassing term due to the range of interactions a brand can have with its customers. This can span from the message that you receive on a company app about a promotion or offer, to what type of in-store experience you have, to what sort of reward you receive at the till when you are checking out.  Companies who are serious about putting customer experience at the core of their business strategy will have to map out every possible step and scenario in the customer journey as it is only through doing this that you realise how many times you can positively influence the customers journey.

 

Aisling Bolger is co-founder of RoE2 and founder of Marketology

Read More:


Back to Top ↑

TechCentral.ie