I spent two days in Paris to observe the latest trends as far as distribution is concerned and also to attend the “stratégie clients” show which was dedicated to customer relationship, loyalty, CRM and the like. This show was reserved for marketing professionals and exhibitors were actually mainly suppliers in the IT and call-centre fields. As far as I’m concerned I found that it had therefore not much to do with the relationship itself but more with the exploitation of the relationship.
This being said, one conference sounded especially interesting to me as it promised to deal with customer experience and in particular with how a differentiated customer experience can be created. Four experts were debating:
- Armelle BALENCEU, COO of Direct Energie
- Jean Denis MARIANI, COO of Betclic
- Christian BEJJANI , head of the customer relationship association in Libanon
- Julien MOREL, COO of Nespresso
What surprised me at first was that the customer experience concept was presented as new (created 4-5 years ago according to one of the participants). Actually it is much older and on the one hand dates back to 1997 and 1999 when Bernd Schmitt popularized it with his two first best-sellers, and on the other hand was dealt with at the academic level by Maurice Holbrook even earlier. Customer experience is therefore not new; let’s say it’s new for France and most European countries where such a customer-centric concept has difficulties to be accepted.
The participants were more confused about the very definition of customer experience. They often mixed it up with customer service and, too rarely, dealt with the emotional and sensitive parts of the customer experience. If I remember well Armelle Balencieu was the only one to mention it. If customer service is indeed important it is only of the many facets of customer experience which starts well before the consumption act. By focusing on the service part participants also tended to forget that many experiences are exempt of service.
Julien Morel stressed rightly that the customer experience covered all touch points in the relationship and gave the example of Nespresso which now gives its customers the possibility to order in advance and pick up their coffee at their favorite sales point without waiting time. I think it is indeed a great improvement for all customers who experienced a crowded Nespresso store on a Saturday afternoon. Well done.
My take:
In spite of a few meaningful examples I found that this debate was lacking consistence. The customer experience concept was not well understood and the participants were too much focused on the service part. I’m not blaming them; perhaps it’s just because the marketers at the origin of customer experience have failed to define it precisely. One of the few precise definition I could find in the literature dates back to 2009 and his given by Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello (2009)
« The brand experience is conceptualized as sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioural responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand’s design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments»
Posted in Strategy.
