Frictionless vs. Memorable
More on CX Strategy: Competing on Experience
The first step to a successful customer experience strategy is to be clear about what type of brand you are.
In one sense it’s simple: every brand exists on a continuum from big established brands to small challenger brands, and every brand competes on a continuum of friction-free to memorable. Both determine the type of customer experience that is most likely to have the greatest impact on customers’ buying behaviour.
By incorporating a brand’s market share and how customers perceive their experiences with the brand (as either more friction-free or more memorable), it helps to place your brand into one of four categories, as shown in this “Customer Experience Matrix”:
Courtesy HBR
So what kind of experience management strategies should you apply to these different segments? Can they be the same? (Hint: Not usually). Can there be exceptions (Hint: Always, but not many).
Mass Market Brands
Oh, to be a mass-market brand. It’s so much simpler for a brand with a high market share and frequent usage. It drives your growth, and in growing, you need to keep making everything simpler to ensure your availability, your placement, and your agility. Making the consumer experience as frictionless as possible is part of that because memorable experiences in a mass market is difficult to maintain, as customers quickly get used to them.
Convenience Brands
Convenience brands largely compete on the ease with which customers can meet their needs. Convenient, frictionless experiences are expected. Unlike their mass-market counterparts, there are typically barriers to further scaling their service environments, such as geographical or market size limits. Convenience brands often have opportunities to have more balanced frictionless and memorable customer experience strategies, but they win a share of wallets on their frictionless qualities.
Boutique Brands
Boutique Brands compete primarily on the memorability of their experiences. Sometimes, certain types of friction help improve the memorability and value of these experiences. In most cases, memorability is enhanced through well-planned, immersive customer journeys. While there is an opportunity to remove friction, it should be done to make it easier for customers to become immersed in the experience.
Aspirational Brands
These brands are much rarer. Some think of them as Gravity Brands, because they are able to raise their market share despite the natural forces that tend to limit the growth of companies whose strategy focuses on creating memorable experiences. They are often iconic, with high emotional resonance, and operate in unique competitive environments that allow them to distinguish themselves and attract customers. Building memorable experiences is typically achieved through investing in superior hiring and training processes, high-quality experience components, and great physical environments.
Regardless
No company should forget that managing the customer experience is equivalent to managing customers for growth. The path to winning in business has remained constant even if the strategies for achieving it over time have changed. Make certain that your customers want to keep coming back.