Building an experience
Whether a first time customer or a returning one, the customer’s experience with a brand is, in most cases, the ultimate decider whether they will invest time or money in a service or brand and the absolute decider whether the seeds of loyalty in a brand will be planted.
According to the 2017 ‘State of Personalisation report’ by customer data platform, Segment,
86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience
49% of shoppers have purchased a product they did not intend to buy after receiving a personalised recommendation from a brand
40% of U.S. consumers say they have purchased something more expensive than planned because their experience was personalised.
It’s evident that the success of a service is heavily impacted by its experiential merit. But it’s myopic to believe that experience is more of a priority at any one point of the customer's journey. Rather, there are simply stages to the experience which should be tailored to engage a brand’s ideal customer. When building an experience, there are three fundamental considerations.
Identify your personas
Research your personas
Who are your customers, what are their tendencies goals and values - personas
At what touchpoints will they be most likely to interact with your brand
How can you create a strong emotional connection - It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
Determine how often they need to return and develop a personalised retention strategy based on emotional connection
Brand experience caters to the customer before they become a customer. Customer experience caters to those with an awareness of a brand who have embarked on their customer journey.
Some make the mistake of focusing only on an experience to acquire new customers while neglecting the journey of returning customers.
The brand experience journey should be a cycle, building a progressively stronger emotional connection with a customer through a direct appeal to their values. Repetition of positive experience validates and solidifies the customer's initial perception of value that attracted them in the first place - Increasing brand loyalty through each positive interaction. Because of this, the development of customer brand loyalty should be seen as less of a continuum between ‘no-loyalty’ and ‘true loyalty’ and more as a loop or cycle.
Each time a returning customer goes through the enjoy & advocate stages, their bond and personal association with the brand gets deeper.
In a world where build quality, oftentimes, isn’t the differentiator or deciding point that it once was, it’s important that brands have an identity to attract customers through an emotional connection to cultivate customer loyalty.