Miriam Palà is an advocate for Customer Experience as a driver of brand loyalty and business growth. As the co-founder of the international consultancy Thinking Luxury, she has a strong track record of designing and delivering Customer Experience strategies across a wide spectrum of industries. In this exclusive guest article, Miriam offers an expert take on the value of turning customers into brand ambassadors.
Do you have ‘go-to’ brands for certain items you buy? Are there brands with which you feel an emotional connection, maybe even ‘love’ if that’s not too strong a word?
Consumer goods and services brands – especially those in the luxury environment – certainly hope that you do. But are these brands doing enough to earn your loyalty, and more especially to transform you from customer to brand ambassador?
For me, at the heart of the loyalty question is the experience a customer has when he or she interacts with a brand. But before I talk more about Customer Experience it’s important to first make the distinction between Customer Experience and ‘customer service’, since the two terms do often get confused.
Customer service relates to standardized, transactional procedures. For example, in a hotel, it’s completing the check-in process; in a store it could be gift wrapping. Anyone capable of following the basic steps can provide this type of service to a customer.
Customer Experience, on the other hand, goes way beyond the simple transaction to something that really touches the heart of the customer, creating a connection at an emotional level. This is where the magic happens, and where bonds of loyalty (leading to the all-important repeat business) are formed.
To give an example, as a consultancy we worked with a company that creates sports-related events. They had been growing very strongly, consistently selling out their various packages. However, the company was experiencing quite a high rate of clients who booked packages but dropped out before the events themselves took place. The events were getting excellent reviews from participants, so it was clear the quality of the product wasn’t the cause. It seemed there was something in the customer journey – which typically took a number of months from purchase to delivery – that was triggering the high dropout rate.
We analyzed the customer journey and found that the interactions between company and customers all tended to be very transactional, with little emotional engagement to build excitement or anticipation in the run-up to the event.
In response, we suggested introducing additional communications and interactions, giving extra information and building a closer connection to the customer while he or she waited for the event. The result? Cancellations decreased from 26% to 12% – i.e. by more than half. That’s the power of Customer Experience if you get it right!
Understand your customer
It’s not just that every customer is unique – we can also be different customers all wrapped up in one person. For example, depending on the circumstances I can adopt totally different personas when I stay in a hotel or resort. If I’m traveling for business, I want everything to be quick and efficient; if we’re traveling as a family with my two young daughters that’s a whole different set of needs; and if my husband and I are lucky enough to get away for a romantic break we’ll be looking for a different experience again.
It’s absolutely crucial for businesses to understand the different personas we’ll adopt according to different scenarios and needs at any given time; and equally important that the employees we come across possess the emotional intelligence and empathy to act accordingly.
Can these attributes be learned? I believe they can, although we must acknowledge that some individuals are naturally more engaging and empathetic than others. In hospitality especially, but also in luxury retail, the critical thing is to recognize and attract ‘people-oriented’ individuals, then strive to nurture and develop them once on board.
One way hotels can achieve this is by giving more space for employees to truly be themselves and not feel constrained by policies and procedures. Of course, operating standards and guidelines are necessary to ensure a consistent approach; but people also need some room to put themselves in the client’s shoes, so they can deliver a more personalized service, as well as being given the confidence to try things without fearing the consequences of failure.
If this is an aspect of enhancing Customer Experience that interests you, then you may wish to subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter ‘Walking in Their Shoes’ which covers a variety of topics related to this field.
Think like a customer
I chose the title of my newsletter because I don’t believe it’s possible to deliver a great Customer Experience unless you truly put yourself in the customer’s shoes and try to think like them.
This is where hospitality has a big advantage over other sectors, for the simple reason that the customer interactions are much longer, giving more time to get inside their minds. In a retail store you might get 30 minutes with a customer. In a first class airline cabin, perhaps a few hours. In a hotel, you have the guest with you anywhere from a day to two weeks or even beyond. There’s so much opportunity to get to know each individual guest and to discover the experiences that will be the most valuable and memorable to them.
The hospitality industry has come a long way in this regard, not least with its adoption of technology. When I started out with Ritz-Carlton in 2009, we had a guest profiling platform called Mystique, which was a kind of basic CRM (customer relationship management) system which stored guests’ likes and dislikes; information which could be shared among the different properties in the group.
Even what is a relatively short while ago, having a platform like this was still quite rare. Now you’d struggle to find a company in hospitality or luxury that doesn’t have a sophisticated CRM and Guest Profiling systems. But technology on its own is not enough. It takes people to turn that information into a great Customer Experience; one which will touch customers’ hearts.
Sometimes, it can be quite simple things that accomplish this. If I think about times that I’m traveling with my daughters, it’s nice to get to the hotel room and find a complimentary selection of cookies, or a hand-written note from the General Manager. But do you know what I really want to see? It’s a footstool in the bathroom, so the girls can reach the wash basin more easily! These small gestures really show when a business has put itself in the guest’s shoes.
Luxury’s Customer Experience challenge
The luxury industry thrives on feeling. A customer will spend $15,000 on a handbag from Hermès because of how it makes them feel. Practicality rarely comes into the equation: after all, the Hermès bag buyer will carry the same items in it as they would a $25 equivalent from H&M.
That’s not to ignore quality of materials and craftsmanship, which also justify spending significantly more on a luxury item than a mass-market product. However, these attributes are a given for any serious luxury goods brand, so they become almost irrelevant when choosing between, say, Yves Saint Laurent and Givenchy.
This gives the luxury industry both a unique power and a daunting challenge: if a customer is buying on feelings, what happens if that feeling fades? It’s a challenge we’ve seen intensifying with generational change, as GenZ consumers are known for being less brand loyal than previous generations.
The industry’s response to this increasing new consumer includes building communities to foster a sense of belonging, while using authentic storytelling to create a more engaging brand experience.
A very good recent example of this is Hermès and its HermèsFit initiative. This popup fitness gym has been touring the world, touching down in the United States, Japan, Singapore, France and China among other locations.
Complete with a boxing ring for live performances, plus 30-minute fitness classes including ‘Carré Yoga’ and a ‘Small Leather Goods Workout’, this popup space is described as being “where fitness meets fashion” and it provides a fun and interactive way to connect with the Hermès brand.
Can you do it every day?
It’s relatively straightforward to generate engagement by investing in an eye-catching concept like HermèsFit; the far bigger challenge is delivering it day-in day-out across your retail store portfolio. This has been a major area of activity for our consultancy, and it’s where we use our hospitality backgrounds to good advantage.
For example, we worked with a luxury watch retailer to bring some of that hospitality essence into their stores. By that I mean transforming those stores into places that were comfortable and inviting for their clients to meet friends for a drink, with no sales pressure, just a really nice environment in which to hang out.
By doing so, it set these customers on the path to becoming true brand ambassadors, the ultimate goal of any Customer Experience strategy. And it makes the store a place people have a desire to visit, adding to the overall brand experience.
The same is true in the online world. I was speaking recently with a partner company which specializes in 3D visuals. My contact pointed out that many luxury brand websites struggle to provide a more immersive and engaging experiences than their more mass-market equivalents. This is an area where I think the luxury industry has significant room to improve.
Conclusion
There’s so much more to discuss when it comes to Customer Experience; I’ve merely scratched the surface with this article.
To recap, the fundamentals for success are an ability to put yourself into your customer’s shoes; and to put Customer Experience at the heart of your corporate culture, so that it becomes a responsibility shared across every part of the organization, not just one department or team. Last but not least, it’s essential to nurture and retain employees with the skills and attributes to delight your customers – and to give them the freedom to be themselves.
Get this right, and you’ll transform your customers into brand ambassadors.
About the author
Miriam’s journey across five countries and a decade in corporate roles revealed a passion for Customer Experience based on empathy and resilience. Starting in luxury hotels across Barcelona and Dubai, she later expanded her expertise to financial services with deVere Group. Now, as Co-founder and Head of Growth at Thinking Luxury, she empowers businesses with Customer Experience strategies that build lasting client connections. Miriam remains committed to innovating Customer Experience approaches that prioritize human connection and sustainable impact.
Connect with her on LinkedIn here
Photo credits
Main image: sakchai vongsasiripat/Getty
Customer experience graphic: Iurii Motov/Getty
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