Customer centricity, the fail-proof way to build brands

AS SUMMER vacations close and schools reopen, those of us with kids get prepared to perform the chores relating to buying of new books, uniforms and the rest of it. This time though, I was relieved of the need to take half a day off from work to go to my kids' school to get their books, and painstakingly wrap them in time for the reopening day.

Thanks to an innovative offer from Fabmart, the online supermarket. Fabmart had contacted the school and offered to home-deliver the books, wrapped and labelled. The order fulfilment was seamless, the money paid upon delivery, so the overall experience was very positive. This prompted me to visit their site (which I had many times before, but somehow never transacted). The design was neat, the navigation quite intuitive and the category of items fairly comprehensive. And then I discovered that Fabmart stocked DVDs, and I even found a title that I had been hunting around for long and so I added this to my shopping cart, and after struggling a bit with the payment process (which was resolved in quick time by their e-mail help desk), ended up doing my first ever on-line sale out of India. Fabmart had successfully enrolled a new customer.

What impressed me most was the simple, yet innovative idea, accompanied by the near-flawless execution. Fabmart had identified a target segment with great potential as influencers as well as eventual buyers - school-going children - and also addressed a consumer pain-point. By providing the value-added service of wrapping the books, they demonstrated their willingness to go a little further in satisfying consumer needs. The use of Fabmart labels and the Fabmart branding on the back cover of note books was a neat idea - it was a clever way to create mind-share with school going children, who are a key target market for an on-line store selling books, music and toys for children.

Experiences in brand building

In sum, this is what I call astute branding. For those of us who think that brand building is all about glitzy ad campaigns revolving around superstars, it is time to take a step back. While ads and promos could be a part of the marketing mix, it is the customer experience that ultimately enhances or erodes the brand equity. For, contrary to popular belief, brands are created in consumers' minds and shaping these associations is best done through the experiences they have.

And, such experiences, good or bad, travel further through word of mouth, and the power of word of mouth cannot be underestimated. Going back to the Fabmart example, I was discussing this with a colleague of mine and she too felt that the idea was brilliant. And, she went on to describe her experiences and thus we reinforced each other's opinion. That is the power of a branded customer experience!

As Patricia Seybold, well known consultant and author of the bestseller customer.com says with reference to Virgin Airlines, ``Companies like Virgin spend a lot of money building and reinforcing their brand through advertising. But they also focus fanatically on execution. They ensure that every time they touch the customer, through any channel, the customer has had a ``Virgin" experience." Moreover, ``If you need to mind your dollars, and you don't have a large advertising budget, all you have left is a branded customer experience and execution. And that is what you should be focusing on anyway".

Shifting gears, let me now give a different example. My husband recently travelled to India from the U.S. on Singapore Airlines. On his arrival, he found that one of his bags had been badly damaged in transit. He filed a damage claim at Chennai for negligent service. The customer service personnel actively followed up with him, but did not agree to reimburse the claimed amount. My husband, on his part, refused to settle for anything else. This went on for over two months, with various personnel from the airline calling him up and negotiating. It was not the most pleasant of discussions, and we had all but written off the claim, when a week back, he received a letter from the airline acceding to his point of view and agreeing to settle the claim.

Two key learnings from this example: one, our impression of the famed service of Singapore Airlines definitely was marred by this experience in the interim, but since the case was resolved to our satisfaction, we still give the airline the benefit of doubt. Amidst all this though, we could not help admire the systematic way in which they kept track of customer complaints. Thus, this experience did eventually add to the brand of Singapore Airlines.

I cannot conclude this piece without referring to HDFC. I was recently listening to Mr. Deepak Satwalekar, Managing Director, HDFC-Standard Life, and former MD, HDFC. He was explaining how HDFC made its foray into the housing loan segment in the late Seventies. HDFC was targeting the middle-income segment, and for this segment borrowing money for any purpose was not yet socially acceptable. So, being seen negotiating a loan transaction was construed as a social embarrassment. Realising this, HDFC created cubicles in its offices that afforded a great deal of privacy to increase the customer's comfort. This deep insight into customer sensibility has been demonstrated in numerous other ways over the years, including a dramatic reduction in loan processing time, and has led to HDFC being held as an icon of customer centricity. Clearly, putting the customer at the forefront and exceeding his expectations, time after time, has built tremendous brand equity and loyalty for HDFC.

Alluring branded experiences, supplemented by well-orchestrated marketing programmes, can lead to abiding customer loyalty. The most important part of creating such experiences is understanding customer needs, and shaping experiences accordingly, as is evident from the HDFC case.

Globally, managing customer relationships through branded experiences is imperative today, as technology, and the Net in particular, have empowered the customer like never before. Further, the Net has opened up one more channel of interaction with the customer, and providing a unified customer branded experience across channels is a challenge as well as an opportunity to woo the customer.

The on-line pure-plays have a slightly different challenge. While it is far easier to conceive of and create branded experiences in a physical environment, achieving the same through the web requires more creativity.

But, as we have seen from the above example, and the more globally well-known example of amazon.com, it is possible. And the same technology that has empowered the customer can also be used effectively by organisations to draw customer insights.

In the world of the empowered customer, owning the customer or creating loyalty is effectively achieved through consistent branded experiences. And, while there are numerous enablers, including technology, to make this happen it is the mindset of customer centricity that will differentiate the leaders from the followers.

Sudha Kumar

Associate Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Infosys.

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