Interactive Minds Event: Customer Experience and Brand Loyalty

Interactive Minds recently put on a fantastic event that provided us an opportunity to meet up with some of our clients, network with the presenters and attendees, and listen to a great discussion on customer experience and brand loyalty. Guest speakers for the day included Michael Barnard, General Manager at Customology, Cassandra Evans, Customer Experience Marketer at MYOB, and Mark Kelly, Group General Manager of Loyalty & Rewards at Crown Resorts. Michael was the first to present and he shared his perspective on customer experience and how companies can improve each step of the customer journey. His take-home point was to look after your customers, as the most profitable ones are those who come back, bringing their friends along with them. Michael expanded on this notion that customer experience is 100% under your control by going on to look at each step of the customer journey. He broke the journey down and explained where business owners fit into each stage using an excellent system he called the 7 R’s. The 7 R’s  are as follows: Recognise how sending a simple ‘thank you’ message can go a long way. Research focus on your customers, their behaviours and interests, and curate messages tailored to them. Recommend products that compliment a customer’s previous purchases. This in turn is highly beneficial as it leads to increased conversion rates. Reward the customer behaviour you want to influence. For example, if you don’t want customers mainly purchasing during sale times and at reduced rates, don’t offer frequent sales. Remind customers of your value and the ease of receiving benefits. Re-engage targeted incentives for lapse customers. Reactivate; make it advantageous and easy for customers to return. Up next was Cassandra. She shared her focus on customer programs and how MYOB prioritise customer feedback, using it to influence change. Her three take-home pointers when it came to improving customer experience where:

1. To focus less on the number one, and more on what it will mean over time.
2. To not become bogged down by the bigger issues, rather tick off the one percenters.
3. To encourage a culture that supports customer feedback, with engagement from the entire business.

Bill Gates once said that “your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”. Cassandra reinforced this statement by explaining how reactive MYOB is to customer feedback. For example; some customers felt forced into upgrading, therefore MYOB reviewed the sales team changing their training and script. Others complained about being on hold for too long, as a result MYOB added free online content that was easy to find and consume, online chats, and an FAQs section to the website in order to direct traffic off the phone. All of which created a better customer experience. The final presenter Mark explained how he sees personalisation along with loyalty and rewards programs working with customer experience. He began his presentation by posing this question:  ‘can we leverage customer experience to influence loyalty and drive repeat purchase?’. He went on to answer this, arguing that this can be done by consistently providing a good experience, having every touch point aware of interactions history, knowing customer preferences, making them feel valued, resolving issues the first time around, and actively finding new ways to improve service. Crown Resorts has found that personalisation is the ultimate driver of loyalty. They use their rewards program to provide the critical data needed to work within their process of data > insight > action > measure, all vital aspects to understanding your customer.  It is important to note however that in the end it always comes back to the most important contributor of customer experience and loyalty; how you make your customer feel. Ending the presentation on that positive note, it was time for us to head back to work, all the while keeping the importance of providing a better customer experience at the forefront of our minds.