Customer experience is fundamentally about the quality of the interaction between the consumer and the company offering the service.  Companies are very keen to ensure that their declared brand values are seen as represented within their delivery experience.  A company called Havas Media publishes annually a report called “Meaningful Brands®” which seeks to measure that customer assessment of the overall experience.   It is fundamentally a report focused on measuring and understanding the dynamics around brand strength.  However, it adds the context of looking at how our quality of life and wellbeing connects with those corporate brands, i.e. the value judgements we make as we experience the service.  The research scale is impressive, 1,000 brands, 300,000 people, 34 countries and covering 12 industries. The report states that it “covers all aspects of people’s lives, including the impact on our collective wellbeing (the role brands play in our communities and the communities we care about), in our personal wellbeing (self-esteem, healthy lifestyles, connectivity with friends and family, making our lives easier, fitness and happiness) and marketplace factors, which relate to product performance such as quality and price”.

The Meaningful Brands® 2015 research shows that customer experiences that are felt to contribute significantly to the consumer’s individual quality of life or that of their society are rewarded with stronger business results.   In hard commercial terms the research claims that well rated Meaningful Brands outperform the stock market by some 133% and on average gain 46% more “Share of Wallet” than less well perceived players.  This analysis appears to support the assertions that many analysts have made that the transparency implicit in the digital age (reviews/referrals being examples) makes the integrity of the brand and the reality of the customer experience critical.   Interestingly as a technologist there are 5 technology companies in the top ten global performers and 3 in the top five; Samsung, Google and Sony. Geographic variations are also interesting, only 31% of brands are trusted in Western Europe and only 22% in America.  The percentage of brands that are perceived to contribute positively to quality of life are only 7% and 3% respectively.  In Latin America that measure is reported at 38% and even higher in developing countries in Asia at 75%.   Maria Garrido, Global Head of Data & Consumer Insights at Havas Media is reported as saying:  “Brands that enhance the wellbeing of people, communities and societies are more meaningful. In the West, we have a more functional relationship with brands so continuous innovation and product delivery is key. In high growth markets, the relationship between people and brands is one that focuses more on personal benefits. In these regions people look to brands to help them achieve economic status, better experiences and every-day inspiration”.   There is a wealth of information and analysis to be found on the Meaningful Brands website and it repays the time spent reviewing.

I would argue that customer experience is not just about the quality of the interaction during the purchase transaction.  It is about the values of the brand and how they are felt by the customer as they experience the service and the degree to which they feel connected to that company.  The integrity of relationship and the ease with which disappointment can be widely shared are key factors in providing a compelling customer experience.  Digital technologies are enabling more direct interactions for companies with their customers.  The cost of direct engagement with customers relative to the recent past has dropped and is continuing to do so.   Equally at the same time digitalization makes information to assess service quality easily accessible and is enabling ever more transparency.   This complex relationship is explored in an excellent article in The Drum by Tash Whitmey entitled “Creating Experiences Customers Actually Value”.

Delivering highly valued customer experiences certainly includes the quality of the product offered and the qualitative nature of consuming it.  However, it also seems to be increasingly about how that consumption experience relates to the declared brand values and whether they are consistently lived by the company.   Indeed we have seen over the last year or so the impact on corporate reputations which have been tarnished by perceptions over their entirely legal but not admired tax optimisation strategies.  At the heart of this dynamics is a complex relationship between consumer and vendor.  How that relationship is valued by either party and how the integrity of the interaction is defined has become far more holistic and interesting in the digital age.

This post was previously published on the Business Value Exchange.
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