Customer experience experts share universal truths
Top marketers from the National Australia Bank, marketing consultancy CustCore and Madman Entertainment shared their insights into the customer experience and what it means for brands at the 2016 Alumni Reunion, moderated by Samuelson Appau, former radio host in Ghana and Brand Management teacher at Melbourne Business School.
Your brand is the customer experience
After working at Telstra for 12 years, panellist Shane Goldberg (MBA 2005) started CustCore two years ago to help companies deliver better experiences to their customers.
“Your brand is the customer experience and delivering a good customer experience requires a strategy, which must be embedded in your company’s culture,” Shane said.
“Getting new customers costs more than retaining existing customers – some five to 15 times more – and giving them a good experience is the best way to keep them. And they’re willing to pay more. A good experience is more important than price for 64 per cent of customers, and the percentage is growing.”
It helps if you’re the customer
General Manager of Pop Culture at Madman Entertainment, Dean Prenc (MBA 2015) describes himself as a professional geek, which certainly helps him deliver a better customer experience at the niche, Melbourne-based company.
“We know our customer really well because we are our customer – we’re geeks and proud of it. We employ geeks – they wear mohawks and have piercings – and we make sure they’re fans of popular culture,” Dean said.
Madman currently owns 90 per cent of the growing the Japanese anime market in Australia and New Zealand and is leveraging that dominance into new areas, including its locally developed streaming platform, AnimeLab.
“We also meet our fans often and go to about 30 events, such as Supanova, Oz Comic-Con, PAX Australia, a year, putting us in front of up half a million fans. Being involved in events is future proofing for us – we’re in a disruptive industry, where DVDs and blu rays have gone the way of the dinosaur and Cosplay is now a big part of our business.
“While data is plentiful and immensely helpful, it is no substitute for spending quality time with your customers – you have to get out of the building and meet your customers.”
Trust is critical
Customers share so much personal data with us, we endanger our relationship if we lose their trust, but we’re getting close to being able to tell them what they need before they realise it themselves,” Jo Pizzey (MBA 2010), NAB Customer Strategy Manager, told the audience.
She also said that delivering a reliable service is important to retain customers.
“Our customers are becoming central to all our decision making. People leave when our service breaks down, so we must deliver a great experience to keep them.”