Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, or CX, is increas­ing­ly being rec­og­nized as one of the main bat­tle­grounds for ambi­tious brands to com­pete, and dis­tin­guish them­selves to con­sumers. But which brands are lead­ing the way? Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence con­sul­tan­cy Nun­wood has revealed the fac­tors that define tru­ly great CX today.

A Nun­wood study, sur­vey­ing over 7,500 con­sumers and eval­u­at­ing 263 UK brands, has revealed that the top 10 UK brands deliv­er­ing excep­tion­al CX have yet again increased their lead in 2014. The study revealed how the top 10 per­form­ing brands for cus­tomer ser­vice, on aver­age achieved 10 times greater share price growth in the past year than the indus­try aver­age.

The top per­form­ing brand in the UK was online-only con­sumer bank­ing provider First Direct, which has built a great rep­u­ta­tion in recent years for deliv­er­ing fan­tas­tic cus­tomer ser­vice. Accord­ing to the study, “cus­tomers praised their per­son­able ser­vice, staff knowl­edge and abil­i­ty to answer the phone quick­ly with­out the need to nav­i­gate a tele­pho­ny rout­ing sys­tem.”

Lush, a hand­made cos­met­ics brand, came in fourth posi­tion. With an impres­sive, high­ly sen­so­ry in-store expe­ri­ence, vis­i­ble cor­po­rate ethics, and help­ful staff, the brand is a great exam­ple of well archi­tect­ed in-store CX.

(Source: Nun­wood)

Join­ing First Direct in the world of finance is build­ing soci­ety Nation­wide. The insti­tu­tion enters the CX top 10 for the first time, with the brand ben­e­fit­ing from a con­tin­ued invest­ment in its cus­tomer expe­ri­ence propo­si­tion, which has seen the intro­duc­tion of a 24/7 Twit­ter response team, a seri­ous over­haul of the mobile app, and the dig­i­tal roll out of in-branch video calls for mort­gage appli­cants, all dri­ven by pos­i­tive sup­port for CX ini­tia­tives at a board lev­el.

For the build­ing soci­ety, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is very much a reflec­tion of the company’s inter­nal cul­ture, as Jen­ny Groves, Nation­wide direc­tor of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, explained:

“Our peo­ple and cul­ture make the dif­fer­ence: we aim to engage and enable our peo­ple to deliv­er an excep­tion­al mem­ber expe­ri­ence.”

In the retail space, John Lewis remained in their posi­tion as the top UK retail­er, con­tin­u­ing their tra­di­tion as one of the lead­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence brands in the UK. Sur­vey respon­dents spec­i­fied their sat­is­fac­tion with immac­u­late in-store expe­ri­ences, and con­sis­tent cross-chan­nel ser­vices from the part­ner­ship. The brand’s super­mar­ket arm, Wait­rose, scored a sev­enth-place rank­ing.

Exceptional CX Reflects Company Culture

Nation­wide and John Lewis are some­what unique among British brands in that nei­ther oper­ate as lim­it­ed com­pa­nies. Nation­wide oper­ates as a mutu­al orga­ni­za­tion, and John Lewis and Wait­rose both oper­ate under the same part­ner­ship. In both cas­es, the num­ber of inter­nal stake­hold­ers runs deep with­in the busi­ness.

As the study reveals, in the cas­es of these two brands, this dynam­ic is intrin­si­cal­ly linked to the pro­vi­sion of excel­lent CX. Specif­i­cal­ly, employ­ees at all lev­els with­in Nation­wide and the John Lewis Part­ner­ship rec­og­nize that true val­ue is cre­at­ed at the point of inter­ac­tion between employ­ees and cus­tomers, and excep­tion­al CX nat­u­ral­ly fol­lows as a result.

An overused say­ing in man­age­ment speak is that “hap­py employ­ees make hap­py cus­tomers” and in this case the adage seems to have proved true. With­out excep­tion, all of the mem­bers of in the CX Top 10 also ranked high­ly in The Sun­day Times best places to work sur­vey.

Digital Players

Ama­zon main­tained a high score in Nunwood’s cus­tomer expe­ri­ence rank­ings, although they have slipped in the rank­ings for the third year in a row, in the pres­ence of greater com­pe­ti­tion and online per­for­mance of tra­di­tion­al British brands.

AO World is the newest play­er to enter the rank­ings, in sixth place. The brand has been reward­ed for their dar­ing dig­i­tal strat­e­gy, which com­bines a clear val­ue propo­si­tion for con­sumers, along­side a excel­lent ser­vice cul­ture. The brand goes as far as dis­play­ing com­peti­tor prices and pub­lish­es third-par­ty reviews, pro­vid­ing a lev­el of authen­tic­i­ty that has real­ly spurred cus­tomer respons­es to the brand.

John Roberts, AO World founder and CEO, also likened the pro­vi­sion of excep­tion­al CX to the inter­nal cul­ture which defines a brand:

“If I look at the top three impor­tant things in the busi­ness, num­ber one would be cul­ture, num­ber two would be cul­ture and num­ber three would be cul­ture. It’s the one thing we obsess about at ao.com because it dri­ves every­thing else.”

6 Pillars Of Great Customer Experiences

Nunwood’s study defined six pil­lars that unite the top per­form­ing brands. Brands can accel­er­ate deliv­ery of great cus­tomer expe­ri­ences in these six ways:

1. Per­son­al­iza­tion: As a brand, you must demon­strate that you under­stand the customer’s spe­cif­ic needs and cir­cum­stances. There won’t always be a one-size-fits-all strat­e­gy for all con­sumers, and brands will need to devel­op sophis­ti­cat­ed mod­els and analy­sis that are capa­ble of deliv­er­ing per­son­al­ized cus­tomer expe­ri­ences.
2. Expec­ta­tion: Increas­ing­ly, cus­tomers have expec­ta­tions about how their needs should be pro­vid­ed for, and these are being dri­ven raised by lead­ing brands. For brands, under­stand­ing, deliv­er­ing, and exceed­ing expec­ta­tions to delight cus­tomers is what sep­a­rates the top 10 from the rest.
3. Time & Effort: The effi­cien­cy of ser­vice deliv­ery is con­stant­ly being improved by lead­ing brands. Cus­tomers will set a bench­mark based on their speed­i­est, most con­ve­nient expe­ri­ence, and this sets a lev­el which all brands then have to aspire to and meet. Excelling in ser­vice effi­cien­cy is becom­ing a key char­ac­ter­is­tic of lead­ing brands.
4. Integri­ty: Integri­ty is won by con­sis­tent orga­ni­za­tion­al behav­ior that engen­ders trust among con­sumers. This can be the cul­mi­na­tion of thou­sands of trust build­ing moments built by indi­vid­ual mem­bers of staff, that cre­ates an greater sense of trust for the orga­ni­za­tion as a whole. For con­sumers, the lev­el which the orga­ni­za­tion is able to deliv­er trust remains top of mind, which builds integri­ty.
5. Res­o­lu­tion: Res­o­lu­tion comes into play when things, inevitably, go wrong. Hav­ing a pro­vi­sion and process that can win over cus­tomers who have had bad expe­ri­ences, and mit­i­gate any col­lat­er­al neg­a­tiv­i­ty. For retail­ers, there are two cru­cial ele­ments of suc­cess­ful res­o­lu­tion: a sin­cere apol­o­gy and address­ing dis­putes with urgency.
6. Empa­thy: Empa­thy plays a cru­cial role in CX pro­vi­sion, as it means being able to under­stand and express a con­sumer’s expe­ri­ence with the brand. Empa­thy helps builds strong rela­tion­ships with con­sumers and con­tributes to the way con­sumers feel, and ulti­mate­ly con­sid­er a brand.

Final Thoughts For Brands

Nunwood’s study pro­pos­es that brands that per­form well on all six pil­lars are the ones cre­at­ing the best cus­tomer expe­ri­ences – and achiev­ing the strongest com­mer­cial returns and poten­tial as a result.

We’re now see­ing the link between cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and busi­ness growth gain­ing wide­spread accep­tance across indus­tries. It has, as the study states, “moved from being a mar­ket­ing the­o­ry to a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of man­age­ment.”

With the lead­ing play­ers set­ting the CX bar high­er and high­er, remain­ing brands will have to meet ris­ing con­sumer expec­ta­tions. This response may start slow (across all 263 brands analysed, the over­all improve­ment in per­for­mance was less than 1 per­cent), but is begin­ning to gain momen­tum — with the finan­cial ser­vices sec­tor being a notable mover in improved CX, and brands seek to repair dam­aged rep­u­ta­tions as a result of the finan­cial cri­sis.

Ulti­mate­ly, pro­vid­ing excel­lent CX is a long-term com­mit­ment that must be imbued with­in the cul­ture of an orga­ni­za­tion, built on the six pil­lars defined above.

You can read Nun­wood’s full study here.

Do you agree with the find­ings of the study? What do you think are the pil­lars that define excep­tion­al CX?